ColinB

Does anyone have a diagram or photo of what is pin 1 of the DCC connector on a class 87 circuit board. I have looked for dots, squares on the pcb but so far have found nothing. The reason I ask is I cannot get the cab lights to work, so does anyone know where the resistors are on the board? There are loads of diodes on the PCB so trying to do a continuity check is not that easy. Trouble is normally pin 1 doesn't matter by this has lights so it is so important.

I doubt he will, the guy with the curtains still maintains his prices even though some of his items have been there for years. I suppose if you are charging those high prices then you have to send it Special Delivery, but there again I have been charged Special Delivery prices only to find they sent it second class.

You are not going to like this but after buying the latest class 92 from Accurascale, the immediate thought that goes through your mind "is why is Hornby bothering". They are always late, super expensive and just lately short on quality. Sorry someone has to say it. I have the latest 9F produced by Hornby and I have to admit it is good, but when I look at the price for the new class 87, it is more expensive, will have a cheap plastic pantograph (compared to a driven metal one) and be at least two years too late. My latest Hornby Doublo Duchess is a disaster, did they not think I would run it?

The other thing you can do which I did to mine was add an extra pickup to the non powered bogie. I screwed the pickup to the bogie with thin self tapping screws. I think Lima did the same with their later models.

Well Deem EBay used to be cheap, but as it became popular the prices began to rise. Frequently a brand new loco is cheaper on the web than EBay especially when you have certain retailers always doing deals. Sometimes you are lucky and you find someone that has bought one and just wants to get rid of it, so the price is reasonable. I buy a lot of Hornby spare parts off EBay, again you need to check the web as well. There is one guy on EBay that sells Hornby parts at horrendously high prices, you can always tell it is him as the photos are always taken in front of those same curtains. I suppose he eventually sells something it someone is desperate. I compare EBay as going round an Autojumble (I say that as I used to go to a lot). There are stalls where Sellers sell stuff at high inflated prices (second "Snap On" tools for virtually the same price as new ones), you just look but never buy.

Well whoever listed it hasn't sold it, it is being relisted. To me at a maximum it is worth about £500 ( £300 for the loco plus £200 for the carriages ) at the most. Usually the best guide is if the item goes to auction then you see its true value.

I wish Hornby would sell packets of stepped bolts and conrod screws. You can buy small parts packets for an individual loco but generally these are always sold out and generally you can buy all the other screws from other sources. The stepped bolts and conrod screws are the things that get lost when doing a service.

The other thing to consider is maximum current, I did the stall test on my Lima locos and found the maximum current was over 500 milliamps, so if you are thinking of using a TTS decoder you might be above the maximum current limit.

I have two sets off Peco curved points on my layout, my A4s traverse them perfectly ok. The only issue is that you have to make sure that there is a gentle curve going into them. It might be with me because I use flexi track. A4s are no worse that any other loco, if anything they are better than most.

I build loads of A4s from spare parts as well as having several ones bought from new. They are probably one of Hornby's best chassis. None of mine derail on points, admittedly all my points are Peco electrofrog. There is a spring on the front bogie which if missing or is the wrong tension then that could cause issues or the infamous back to back spacing between the wheels on the bogie, but generally they are really good runners.

I generally use LaisDCC decoders for this as they are the cheapest around and it doesn't matter about loco control. So LaisDCC decoders are perfect because all you want is a light switch that works on DCC.

It seems motorised pantographs are the domain of Bachmann and Accurascale. A Hornby loco is expensive enough, how much do you think it would cost with an electrically controlled pantograph. Then you have the fact you would need a special DCC decoder for control of the pantograph. Given Hornby's development times the loco would be well worn out before the decoder appeared.

Is it made out of metal rather than the normal plastic?

Yes the Oxford Rail (OR I assume) one has the room to fit sound but the Hornby one has far less room. Funny about the coal bunker coming out on the OR version to give space for the decoder. Do you know I mailed OR for information on how to fit a decoder as I had spent literally hours trying to fit one. They didn't mention removing the coal bunker, suggesting to buy a direct fit one. There is nothing like knowing your own product. I found on my OR loco that it kept blowing up decoders, eventually I tracked it to a large blob of solder on the motor shorting on the wheels when the loco went round a curve.

On the RMWEB forum it said that the Black 5 had been pushed back to 2024. Is it true. I looked for it on this site but couldn't find it.

I think you have issues finding the space to fit one, I remember fitting a small decoder was difficult enough.

In the car industry, by law I think they have to provid spare parts for 10 years. As someone said earlier just charge a fortune for them, someone would rather pay £30 for a spare than £300 for a new loco. The thing that intrigues me, is I can understand not supplying the parts that don't usually break, but things like buffers, motors, pickups, valve gear are always breaking.

There are many post on this forum of phoning/mailing Hornby and getting no joy. I would be interested to know if anyone has contacted them and got success.

I buy virtually all my spare parts off Lendons so I deal with them a lot. Paypal will only reimburse him if the package is delivered to the registered address in Paypal, I can understand that. The reason he seems to have so many spares is not many people go to him. He does not offer next day service as he is a "one man operation", whereas Peters Spares does, although you pay heavily for the priviledge. I also get the opinion that Peters Spares are not so interested about selling spares as the other companies I deal with, virtually always being out of stock, they have lots of 1980s Hornby stock. I suppose the only solution is find a friendly Brit to buy the parts and send them to you. As to Hornby I think they need to decide in the very near future what they actually want to do long term.

Yes Twintop you are right I have seen that sort of thing happen in my old company where the managers were on "Pay for Performance". All dumb ideas, you have met your targets whilst in the background your company is slowly going "legs up". Well I am glad I paid for that sound decoder with Paypal.

I would agree with the issues with RM, a loco bottom I ordered two days ago from New Modellers came today as did a loco body I ordered at the weekend. Now the sound decoder I ordered from Road and Rails a week ago and another order from New Modellers at the same time, have still not appeared. So it is not last in, first out. It probably all depends which sorting office handles the sort, I know my one tries really hard, so it is not them Record is a parcel from Peters Spares, posted in September, delivered end of November. Annoying thing was, I thought it was lost so ordered the parts from someone else.

Actually Andy Mac you are right in that we should pay more for postage, although Royal Mail prices are significantly higher than the other Couriers. The issue now for all the Couriers is that they cannot find the staff to employ. I talk to my postman a lot, we have a mutual interest in bikes and trains and the issue at his sorting office is that there are just not enough of them. They keep leaving and as the remaining ones get even more work, they leave. Hermes/Evri have the same issue. All new starters for Royal Mail are on casual contracts, trouble is that lots of employers have found, they spend all day phoning up "zero hours" employees trying to find someone who will work for them on the day. Then there is the liability, if you Courier decides to drop or lose your £200 loco, then employing cheap staff becomes a huge overhead.

Jenny Kirk would have used a Train O Matic decoder which I think is smaller than the Hornby one. Her channel is sponsored by Train O Matic so that is always her decoder by choice for obvious reasons.

I have one of these but I can't remember what type of 8 pin DCC pcb they used, there are about 3 different types. What they do when they wire these up is just tack the wires to the underside. What they are supposed to do is feed the wire through the hole so it solders to the bottom. I suppose it takes too long to do this, so they tack the wires to just the underside, so it is easy to solder the insulation rather than the wire. If you are going to add TTS buy one of the super thin speakers off Road and Rails, not only do they fit better but they sound a lot better.

It probably is a badly soldered joint on the DCC socket, Hornby are renowned for soldering the insulation rather than the wire. What I do is lift the loco off the track and move the tender around on the track to see if the loco wheels move. It can't be the 4 pin connector as the loco would only work with the tender pickups, which is the opposite of what you are experiencing. So check connections to the pickup strips and the 8 pin DCC socket.