ColinB

I have done this with virtually all my old tender drive models. Yes the Duchess fits perfectly. The old unbuilt West Country/ Battle of Britains don't. The rebuilt Merchant Navy ones will fit but generally you have to move the DCC decoder to the tender as the chassis weight holder comes back too far. You can remove a bit as Hornby did when they did the conversion but much easier to just put the decoder in the tender. Very early A4s you need to make up a plastic post on the front of the body as on the early ones the front clips onto the valve gear, I did it with plastercard and a captive m2 sleeve bought from China. On all the tender driven A4s you need to make a rear clip for the chassis to fit into, a thin piece of plastercard across the back works. The tender driven Flying Scotsman and A3s you need to machine away the back of the loco below the cab as the tab on the back of the chassis is smaller. The Duchess is the easy one it should fit perfectly, it did on all mine. I even found buying the tender driven ones was a cheap source of bodies. So yes they do fit. Same applies to the 0-6-0 locos from the 80's.

I have had so many issues with the pin and fingers connection, where the loco just suddenly shorts out, that I convert all my tender locos to the 4 pin type one. I find the connection much more reliable. The important thing to remember is that the the loco and tender have to be permanently connected together, so it means on many cutting out the polystyrene on the box inlay. Yes they are fragile so should be respected. The other thing to be wary of, is even with the proper puller you can pull the plastic surround off the plug. I find it is safer to lever it a side at a time with a small screwdriver to loosen it, before using the tool. The tool is better once the plug is loose. I also once I convert a loco, twist the wires together and then cover them with clear nail varnish. Make sure though that you leave about 4mm untwisted at the plug end, to avoid the twisting action pulling the wires out the plug.

To be quite honest if the loco doesn't have lights it doesn't matter that much. The worst that can happen is the loco runs backwards. The way I do it is look for the blue wire, for me it is the most obvious, it should be near the top of the socket, assuming pin 1 of the socket is at the top.

Yes these fall off regularly, fortunately you have the part. Superglue on a cocktail stick works well. Hornby seem to use glue that fails after a couple of years. To be fair they can never be right, put enough glue on and the Customer complains about glue residue, not enough and the part falls off.

I don't know if many people know this but Peter's Spares sells Rebuilt West Country valve gear which is virtually the same as that fitted to a Merchant Navy. Now an important fact missing from the site is that it will replace the Merchant Navy valve gear but you must use the corresponding Rebuilt West Country Cylinder block. I didn't realise but I could not understand why the newly fitted valve gear was sticking when fitted to a brand new Rebuilt Merchant Navy cylinder block. Eventually when I sourced the correct West Country part I noticed that there is about 1 mm difference in the distance between the location pin hole and the piston rod hole between the two. So it you use the Merchant Navy cylinder block the piston rod sits at an angle which can cause issues (it did on mine). Added to that as in thread "Hornby getting spare part numbers wrong" Hornby are supplying the Rebuilt Cylinder Block with the wrong part, it is the unrebuilt part. I sourced one second hand. This is not a criticism of Peter's Spares the part he supplied is absolutely correct and I was grateful that I could use it instead of the Merchant Navy valve gear which nobody has at the moment. I just thought I should point out that you need the right cylinder block for it to work correctly.

P-Henry generally a company does that to make sure its protocol gets universally accepted. Remember Beta Max verses VHS, Sony locked up that protocol with licenses, that eventually it died, even though from all reports it was a better system. The guy that developed the container system used universally on lorries, trains and ships gave away the designs for free, they made their money on being first with the product. So if Hornby wants everyone to use it, it is in their interests to make the protocol freely available or it will go the way of Zero 1.

The easiest way to compare prices is to do it as a percentage of the average wage at the time. I think in 1980 the average was about £2000 to £3000 a year, now it is about £34000. I let someone else do the maths. As a rough approximation the set should be 10 to 12 times the price it was in the 80's, so just under £200. You can still get sets for £200, although the locos generally are 0-4-0s. I think Hornby have overpriced themselves, although a lot of people on this site disagree. I generally compare the price of a competitor loco with similar complexity with that of Hornby and generally Hornby are at least 10% more expensive. Now disagree if you want, but that is my opinion.

I have the blue and yellow set, I have owned it since I was about . I have blue and yellow diesel, I would love to run it but the wheels derail on my Peco Electrofrog points. I keep meaning to change them to some finescale ones. I have the observation coach and coach with the upper observation feature. I would say that the coaches are more HO well the seats in the observation parts are much smaller than OO. I recently added seats to all the coaches as someone on EBay was selling 3 D printed ones. They never had seats from new.

You can buy brand new shouldered screws in stainless from China via EBay. I use these a lot.

I think you will find the Railroad version doesn't have a spring whereas the special detail one does. The mounting bracket is also different, the super detail one has a tab that fits into the cylinder block whereas the Railroad version doesn't have this. Being TTS, I imagine the loco is a Railroad version.

I recently bought a cylinder block for a rebuilt West Country/Battle of Britain loco. It arrived this morning. When I looked at it it only has one hole for the valve gear as per the unrebuilt version, not two. So I looked up part number X9679 on the site I ordered the part from and Lendons. On both sites the part number is right for the rebuilt version but the photo is for the unrebuilt version. This is not the first time, they did a similar thing with the front bogie spare part. I may be wrong but looking at the part on two sites with that number and the one fitted to my rebuilt West Country they are totally different. The single hole for the valve ear is the give away. I may be getting it completely wrong but it definitely looks that way.

Yes going spare I did consider using the 2 pin version in my original build West Country/ Battle of Britain locos to remove that dreaded pronged drawbar., but as you say you cannot buy the circuit board separate. In these locos there is more than enough room to mount full sound in the loco but those dreaded drawbars are always causing issues putting shorts on the loco when one of the prongs inadvertently touches the pin. In the end I even went with the 4 way lead although I only use the two outer wires. I did use the two pin on another loco as I had an old Britannia tender where I converted the loco to decoder in tender (again very little room in loco to fit sound decoder).

I have converted all my old Merchant Navy locos to DCC and in fact I am doing two at the moment, Port Line and Brockelback Line. On these type there is no room in the loco for a DCC socket, you can make room by cutting back the weight mounting (this is what Hornby did on their later DCC fitted models in the loco) but I wouldn't recommend this. Fitting the DCC decoder or even a sound decoder is a pain as there really is not enough room and you might break the valve gear trying to do it. So the best idea is to retrofit a DCC socket into the tender. Now with all my locos I like to do it so that the loco doesn't look modified so I will explain how I do it. Buy a Hornby x6113 lead or a a equivalent off EBay. Connect the wire in the loco that goes to the pickup to one of the outer wires on the x6113, connect the ground connection/other pickup wire to the other outer wire. Now connect the motor to the two inner wires of the x6113. Buy a Hornby x9958 tender connection socket. Now open up the tender and you will see the wire that goes to the drawbar pin. Snip this off and lever off the pcb it is attached to from underneath. Snip off other wire to drawbar. Now cut a rectangular hole in the tender for the socket to fit, making sure the front edge of the hole is where the tender base front bulkhead is. Cut the hole in tender plus tender base, being careful when cutting the tender base that there is enough plastic left to prevent it from splitting. Fit x9958 and drill a little hole 1.6mm diameter to take the self tapping screw to hold the socket in place. Now wire the socket to the DCC socket plus pickups. Two outer wires to pickups and pins 4 and 8 on the DCC socket. Make sure that the pickup on the tender connects to the right pickup on the loco when the lead is in place or else loco will short out. So if you wired right outer pickup on loco to outer pin 1 on plug, so tender right pickup must go to outer pin 1 on socket. Wire pins 1 and 5 of the decoder socket to the inner pins of the x9958. Mount the DCC socket onto the weight by a plastic holder of tape. I use threaded studs but that involves drilling and tapping of the weight which is more difficult. Finally when all wired up screw socket down and do continuity check on DCC socket (covered in outer posts) to make sure you don't have the pickups connected to the motor (DO THIS WITHOUT A HEADER SOCKET FITTED TO THE DCC SOCKET). That is how I do it. There are probably easier ways.

I am assuming that it is a very early tender driven loco. You can tell the difference between the screws, if it just has one slotted head screw on the centre wheel but none on the front and back driven wheels then it is the early type. If if has hex headed screws on all wheels it is the later type. The centre wheel has a plain screw, no shoulder on all the Flying Scotsmen I have. So if it is the old type you want a valve gear screw with a slotted head but no shoulder. If it is the newer type just before they went back to loco driven locos, then it is a hex head screw again with no shoulder.

Well I agree with all the comments, especially when the response is included in the original message. I took Going Spares advice (thank you for the really good advice) and bought the kit for a source of stepped bolts for drawbar attachment on my other locos. I can confirm that as I have said previously they are m2 thread. Other than the coupling rod screws witch are some incredilbly small thread size, Hornby according to my experience never go less than m2. Bachmann however frequently use 1.6 mm thread screws and in their tenders captive nuts of the same thread.

There is a batch of Bachmann decoders that exhibit this type of behavior. The easy solution as someone said, is replace it with a Hornby or Zimo decoder. They behave a lot better. I think someone said you can play about with CV values, but a better solution is to save the Bachmann decoder for running the lights in dummy unit.

I noticed that with the West Country Class "Braunton", this is about a 20 year old model with just the DCC socket added/moved to the tender. It retails for over £260. Hornby are charging what it thinks the market will pay. Perhaps they should look on EBay for the second hand prices to get a guide as to what people will actually pay. I am sure people will tell me that the cost is justified but seeing as it is the most simplest of locos (slab body, simple valve gear) I am not so sure. Compared to this a new Hornby Doublo A4 is good value at £320.

Yes, I have had the same issue with that spares supplier, surprising really you would think that they would know but I have asked the same question on other parts and got the same sort of reply. The screw thread is probably an M2 (2mm ) although sometimes it is a M2.5. Sometimes on some really old designed loco chassis it is some BA thread like 8BA although this is really rare. On the A1/A3/A4 tenders Hornby use a self tapping thread, which if it is like the rest is M2.2 self tapping, generally I buy a drawbar kit just for the screw. The kit Going Spare suggests is the cheapest way to get the screw, especially if you order it from someone different like Lendons (if they have the kit). For some reason that particular supplier seems incredibly expensive. You can buy "stepped" screws in stainless steel from China that work really well (I have bought many) but again expensive.

The only other thing I have to add is if possible get the latest X9084T socket. The early ones are a pig to solder to and because of the way the PCB is make are more susceptible to creating solder splashes (thin string of solder connecting two tracks together). The later ones are tinned with plated through holes and much easier to solder to.

You will realise what trouble hardwiring a decoder is when you have issues with the loco and want to run it on DC. The thing to remember is the connections are diagonal. Motor is 1 and 5, track inputs are 4 and 8. It doesn't matter which way round the track inputs are as the decoder bridge rectifies this. It will make a difference on DC, the loco will run backwards. Get the motor ones round the wrong way and again the loco runs backwards. I test with a multimeter set on ohms with sound on, then test adjacent pins for a short. The Hornby sockets are really easy to inadvertently put a thin solder connection between pads, so you need to test between all adjacent pins. You should only measure a low resistance between pins 1 and 5, which will be the motor. Now check that neither pins 1 or 5 are connected to the track. Make sure the DC header is out. I blew up loads when I first started, this check takes about a minute.

Well my Tesco isn't, well that is what it appears is going on.

Actually Lendons are currently the only retailer that has them in stock. If you get stuck they sell them on EBay with thicker multicoloured wire.

Does anyone know if Tesco are selling the Hornby Magazine and Hornby catalogue together at a discount this year, like they have done for previous years.

@LT&SR_NSE I sold the decent ones that were still in their boxes until I realised that the old tender driven loco bodies fitted the new loco driven chassis. With some I had to do some machining but basically I converted those that were left to loco driven. The only ones I didn't convert were the 4-4-0 like the Schools as these worked ok as tender driven.

To be honest when I saw it sliding along the track, I did wonder what they were doing, I never realised it was the original tender driven model. Surprising, really as I have spent ages trying to fix my old locos from doing the same. In the end I took the sensible solution and sold them to be replaced with the newer loco driven variety. Tender driven locos must be at least 30 years old.