ColinB

No Brew Man it was DPD I have got used to Amazon doing it although of late they have been knocking on the door. Yodel left one in front of the Garage behind the skip I had at the time. Evri have to get a photo of it delivered by an open door, but of course with them a fair percentage never makes it to the Courier, and this is the business model Royal Mail wants to adopt.

When I used to travel all over the world with my job, one of the things that hit me was that things in other countries were not always that much better. Even the mighty Germany had its faults. Trouble is people go there on holiday and only see the good things. I have to admit though our delivery firms are getting worse, I like paying the cheap postage and packing but I think it is not a long term option, these delivery firms cannot get decent staff to work for them. So there seems to be an increasing chance that things go missing.

Well after all those good words, I had a delivery from Rails. I got a mail telling when the package would arrive, time slot passes, so I thought they are late. Went out to the bins and there on my doorstep is my £200 loco for all to see. I was in sitting in the loung, the kitchen light was on, the doorbell is working and is above where they placed the box, so there is no excuse.

The one that really does get me upset is the various m2 and m2.5 "stepped" screws that are used to hold the body, bogies and drawbars and also conrod bolts. These cost pennies to produce but they could sell for at least £2.00 a go. They are virtually impossible to source as spares although I did manage to get some stainless steel ones from China. They are also the things that go missing if you have to take the loco apart.

Yes you are exactly right the right hand bush must not touch the chassis and as you said swap orange and grey wires to achieve direction. When you have done the conversion check there is an open circuit on the multimeter between both brush holders and the rails. The other thing to note, the 5 pole ringfield draws less current that a normal ringfield but it is marginal for Hornby decoders, so fit a dcc decoder that has a current drive of 0.8 amps. I think Train O Matic, Zimo and several others support 0.8 current, Hornby's only go up yo 0.5 amps. Hatton's say theirs do but I found they don't when connected to a ringfield motor, it blew up immediately the loco stalled on a point. On my 5 pole ringfield based HST I do use a TTS decoder so it can work, but I am always worried it is very near its current limit.

Why not, it didn't bother them last year. Announce a ton of locos that either you don't have the resource or money to make. At least it sells a few catalogues.

Ande P I know how you feel I have a Princess Elizabeth where the chassis had the infamous rot. I regularly look at EBay for a replacement chassis but the closest I get is a replacement complete chassis for the price of virtually what my loco is worth. I agree with the comments about stocking spares, I build classic Triumph motorcycles and there is a guy in Essex that has barns of spares. All his spares are at a premium, but as he says if you want the part you will pay it. You will probably moan but if you need it, you will pay. Bachmann seems to have no issue supplying spare parts, where they limit it to them and them alone, so they must think it is worth it. If it is a £200 loco and you break the valve gear, even £50 is cheaper than a new loco. Some people and if you look at a lot of the posts on this thread are devoid of forward thinking, if you want your product to die, just have a ton of quality issues and then don't supply spares to fix them. We have plenty of examples of this in our past.

Well Topcat you are right, but when I ordered them I assumed they would be delivered by the date stated, although possibly a month later. When I complain on this site that the normal practice is not to put something in a catalogue unless you are at the pre production phase, people on this site seem to be quite happy about it. I think it shows a lack of detailed planning. The trouble is if you don't pre order it by the time the model arrives they are sold out. I learn when I started working for the motoring industry never to buy a newly released car, but to wait at least 6 months for them to iron out the bugs. We used to have a job1+ 90 review date when things got fixed. Fortunately I don't have that much need for new locos, so I only buy if there are a special one that appeals to me. The only good thing is Hornby currently honours the original price which means if the model is 3 years late they lose all that profit.

I suspect that you have a late 3 or 5 pole powered ringfield motor. The early ringfield motors picked up power via the axles on the tender and loco if it was a tender driven loco. If it was a diesel they used the front and back bogies axles. The issue with this was if you over oiled the axles the loco wouldn't work as there was no electrical contact. So later on they added pickups to the loco wheels and tender wheels. To do this on the tender made it a bit difficult to carry on with the existing arrangement so I am pretty sure they swapped the connections for chassis and live around. Now I imagine that the reason you ask is you want to convert this motor to DCC operation. If it is the really late type you will find that one of brush screws, screws thro the plastic plate into the chassis. What I did is tap the holes out that hold the brushes with a m2.5 or m3.0 tap and use really short laptop screws that only screw into the plastic and no further. You will read on a lot of sites to replace the earthing screw with a parallel thread nylon screw. Not a good idea to do this as it will eventually shear off as you try to jam a parallel thread screw into a self tapping screw hole.

It is either the spring on the cross member has fell out or the little clips that move with the blade on the point are not making contact. My points occasionally do it.

Yes Dublo collector my loco is under warranty, which is why mine is going back, I just feel sorry for the retailer that has to deal with Hornby's issues. I am not so sure in your case as I am sure my one of these arrived over a year ago. Having said that I didn't check my one thoroughly, I checked it ran on DC ready for when I get round to putting a decent sound decoder in it. I would have thought that these range of locos are Hornby's flagship they would take a bit more care producing and packing them.

Just to keep you happy Fishmanoz I will buy one and analyse what it does, although I must admit reading the description on the Rails website I am not really sure I need one.

Actually I am not bothered by the reward points, I would just like my preordered items a bit quicker rather that waiting the 3 years as I do with some. I only joined the club to get the cheap loco.

Trouble is AndyMac if you don't supply the spares your item becomes a "throw away" if something breaks. Now if the loco was £50.00 then most people would accept that. The current Evening Start is nearly £300 you are not going to be tempted to throw that away. So basically your product becomes worthless on the second hand market. I know in the automotive market if you don't supply spare parts your product becomes less desirable. Hornby could do a lot to improve things like using things like common motors across models. I even noticed on my latest Hornby Dublo City of Lichfield (which incidentally is badly made and has a fault) they even decided to wire the 4 pin plug upside down, which means they have to keep two variants of the circuit board.

I went and watched the video, thanks 96RAF and it all came back to me, termination resistors. On a CAN link you have to put a termination resistor at the end of the chain so that is what the snubber is probably doing plus a bit more. The thing is, it is not as simple as in the video, as the loco could be anywhere on the track so the transmission line is not the same length all the same time. You can get "ringing" of the square wave signals as the drivers switch on and off, but that is what the capacitors on the decoder are supposed to stop. Anyway it is a red herring to this query so I suggest it is best ignored.

I know 3rd year of my degree in electronics. Effectively you match the load with the source, more applicable to microwaves. That is why I said it probably occurs on large layouts, but if it is sectioned less so. I suppose I could go and get my old notes and work out what it is at 50 kilohertz which I think is the DCC frequency. I know the limit of CAN is about 6 feet. Also DCC is not a fixed frequency. I am sure the snubbers probably do something not sure you really need them if you have decent wiring, then you have the issue of them combined with the capacitance of the ballasted track rounding off the DCC signal. As I said in this case the issue with the loco is probably a simpler fix. My layout is 16 foot by 10 foot in DCC sections and no I don't have any snubbers and virtually all the decoders that die have been due to overheating (Hornby decoders are poor at heat transfer). On 50 hertz it is miles but they do switch in different lines to match the load, the bigger issue is having no signal in the middle.

I have saying about this for ages. In their defense making and storing spares is expensive and as every loco is unique they would need quite a lot. The thing I cannot understand is why they don't make spares for the things we know will fall off, buffers etc. Then we have mazak rot, they did make replacement chassis for the Royal Scot/Patriot but that loco has so many faults perhaps they felt guilty. I just class Hornby as a toy company which internally designs a toy, in this case a loco, and then moves onto the next one. Unfortunately they don't charge toy prices.

I am a bit concerned about the description of "ringing" description on this thread. A short circuit is as it says, it shorts out the signal so it cannot ring. Now "ringing" generally occurs when you have a load which you suddenly remove generally caused by inductive effects. I suppose if you have a large layout you may get transmission line effect. I suspect something more simple like dodgy points as 96RAF says or an issue with your track. Sometimes it is the 4 pin connector not pushed in completely.

When I was phoning up the Retailer about my broken City of Lichfield they said normally they would test the loco before they sent it out. In this case because it is a collector's item they don't test them, I assume to avoid marking the wheels. I suddenly thought, I wonder how many broken ones there are out there that have never been run. It probably also applies to all those Elizabeth II locos, I doubt many have been run. I run DCC so the first action on any loco is to find the DCC socket, which normally means bits fall off (the ladder in this case).

Well DPD should very soon have my new class 59 from Rails. I am wondering if it will beat the other one sent by Royal Snail last Monday. Royal Snail seems, even without the strike, to be delivering mail in a very irregular way. No post Monday or Tuesday, probably too cold to get in the van. It appears they have a manpower shortage, that should be sending a message to their top management.

Well after all my good words about Hornby, my Duchess of Lichfield arrived today. As I was testing it on DC I thought there is something wrong with the right hand side valve gear. Anyway it appeared that the cylinder rod was not fitted into the cross slide (I assume they are the right bits), so I carefully clicked it in and slightly oiled the cross slide. It ran a bit then the link to the middle wheel dropped off. Fortunately I was only testing it on DC on a metre length of track so no other damage. Oh and the cab wasn't glued properly to the boiler. Needless to say it is going back for repair by Hornby.

For TT is a non starter as I have an extensive OO collection, but here are my thoughts. If Hornby are the only outlet for TT then you will need to be patient if they release models with the frequency that they do in OO. Of course there will be a rush in the beginning, but eventually they will lose interest. Model shops have a difficult life, the successful ones embrace mail order to give them a steady income but still have a physical presence so if a customer wants to look at a model they can. When I holiday around York, there is am extremely good one in York itself. Admittedly it is expensive but I do buy the odd loco from them at full price. It is worth it for the fact they stock so much. If you want such things as paint, mail order is really difficult especially if you only want one spray can. Yes I have been to the model shops where they would rather talk to their mates than serve you but most of those seem to have disappeared.

My EVRI courier is brilliant and so is her replacement when she has a day off. Trouble is with EVRI you are you reliant on the courier, funny the women seem to be the best.

I am not surprised Sultan, I didn't realise that it contained two decoders, so you are not alone. I think it may have come down to ordering it (they were significantly cheaper when I ordered mine) and finding that there was two of them.

I am pretty sure I have had mine for over a year. I haven't run it yet on DCC, but I definitely checked on DC as soon as it arrived. I haven't run it on DCC as I thought it deserved a decent sound decoder and I haven't quite got round to it. After all this time I doubt Hornby will be interested.