ColinB

With Evri/Hermes the local courier is excellent, trouble is the organisation behind it is rubbish. The Royal Mail or Snail as I tend to call it was brilliant but just lately the service has gone down hill rapidly. The local postman is really good but you never know what time they are delivering, again a lot relies on the organisation behind which seems to be getting worse. I get the opinion Royal Mail is trying to race to the bottom to compete with Evri, I recently got delivered a package from Peters Spares that was in their system for 2 months (yes, two months). I must admit I have had no issues with DPD.

To be quite honest it doesn't need anyone to damage a manufacturers reputation they do it pretty well themselves. There are plenty of reviews out there on the web. There was a one out there by an elderly gentleman about the W1 Hush Hush, now I had bought one one these so I knew their faults which incidentally agreed with what Sam's review pointed out. This gentleman basically said it was a wonderful loco, it wasn't until a month ago when I noticed he was running the latest W1 by Hornby with the twin chimneys and faults improved, that he mentioned that the one he reviewed earlier was a terrible model and he had offloaded it. So at the end of the day you watch the review and make your own opinion. As to Sam I doubt he worries too much he is obviously doing ok. As to the 9F, I will add a load of coaches to mine and see how it performs.

Actually reading the text it makes no reference to the low torque, I was going to say that the title needed changing. As to the review by Sam, even he said in a later review that perhaps it was just a feature of the current motors used. He said the same about the Bachman 9f, I have one of these and I noticed no issues. As with all Sam's review you have to watch them and come to your own conclusions, generally he is right. Sometimes he doesn't test them in the right conditions so he is wrong. Generally though out of all the reviews I watch, his are the most factual and he is usually right. He said the Bachmann class 812 (special from Rails) had no torque, with 6 four wheel Caledonian coaches (Hornby Railroad with modern wheels) it cannot climb my gradient. So on that one he was spot on but he missed the fact that the drawbar is flimsy and easily broken (Jenny Kirk didn't notice either fault). The latest 9F is a good loco, a bit expensive, but definitely a vast improvement on the old one. With the 21 pin socket and the bass enclosure it is also more "user friendly" for fitting DCC (I have a Zimo sound decoder fitted).

Firstly it depends what 9F you are talking about, the recently released one or the old Railroad version. The Railroad version uses the X6367 motor, which is dimensionally the same as the X4026 without the flywheel, so if there was an issue with the original motor you could swap it for the X4026. I have not taken the new 9F loco apart to check the motor but I doubt even Hornby would use an unreliable motor on a new design. If they have then I can only assume the quality has to have been improved. I have the latest Evening Star made by Hornby and I have not noticed any significant issues, although I only pull 4 coaches at a time.

Possibly something to do with "cookies" it leaves on your browser. The other day one site kept crashing until I cleared the cookies on my browser.

Even though I often criticise the Elite I have never had many issues programming with it. I know it programs Zimo and LaisDCC Next 18 decoders because those are the ones I use. In fact programming is one of the really good bits of the Elite. I have had issues with DCC Concepts ones occasionally which I think are the ones Rails sells as its own brand, I also had issues with some Gaugemaster ones. These though were the 8 pin variety. The important thing to check is does the loco have "stay alive" fitted this definitely causes issues. The other thing to check is if the Next18 decoders are firmly in their sockets.

Hornby standard class 4s, new design with decoder in the tender. I was really surprised as to how well they run.

From what you describe Mike65 it sounds like you are doing nothing wrong. The Loksound from my experience seems to not be very tolerant of a bad DCC signal compared with a Zimo and even a Hornby, so it could be that. What it might be and I am assuming it has a Next 18 decoder in it, is the decoder is not properly making contact with the socket. On my Bachmann 812 I had all sorts of issues, Rails who I bought it from, suggested taking the decoder out and putting it back in again. That didn't work until I cleaned all the socket pins with alcohol. I have had it happen with another Next 18 decoder in a different loco. Obviously if you don't have a Next 18 decoder then ignore what I have said. If all else fails and this is expensive, is buy a normal decoder and see if that improves it. Then at least you will know what is wrong. LaisDCC do decoders which are quite cheap and are perfect to just test out locos. The other thing to check is that someone hasn't fitted "keep alive", that makes programming difficult.

Do you know on three attempts of reading it I never noticed. The autochecker normally doesn't let you post without the b.

Yes it is those motors I was on about. You will be surprised to know that the motor fitted to the rebuilt Royal Scots and Patriots is exactly the same size as x4026 and works just as well, for some reason in the loco it looks smaller. It is also half the price and you can still get them (probably not after this post).

I am very surprised out of all my locos those two are probably the most reliable. Even the A4 chassis I buy secondhand are very good. Now if it was a Patriot or Royal Scot I could believe it. You are not using those cheap motors Sam used, I found that they were a lot less reliable than the ones I bought from New Modellers (for some reason they seem better than those sold by anyone else).

Looking at this site it appears that is pre order, as it is not available until 2023. Sadly as we all know Hornby are having big issues with production, it can't be design as this is an old model. If you want it urgently then cancel your order and do a web search for one. Generally there are loads on EBay secondhand and being they are the Railroad range less likely to have bits missing.

Hornby bodies do seem to have an extremely low melting point for plastic. A few years ago I was adding lights to an unrebuilt West Country. When I heatshrinked the cables using steam from a kettle I noticed the body had warped. Also if you ever had one of those locos with steam in the 1980s, Stowe comes to mind, look at the body and you will see it is slightly distorted even though Horny tried to avoid it by putting foil around the steam generator.

Mine was a weathered Hornby R2716 Standard 4 class. It was advertised as broken with the speedo fallen off and the front buffer beam completely wrecked. I took the buffer beam off one of the scrap tender bases I have ( I convert most of my Hornby locos to decoder in tender, so I have lots of old tender bases). It is not concurs with the fix, but it doesn't not matter to me. The rest of the loco is immaculate and runs really well.

Well 96RAF I used to use iphone speakers in virtually all my sound locos only changing them when Road and Rails came up with their ultra thin ones which sound a lot better. Seeing as in most of my locos the speaker fits in the tender an iphone speaker is short enough to fit. The iphone speaker, if I think back to my audio days when making my own speakers, are of horn design so are generally very efficient but lack a great deal of bass. I must admit generally I look at the space where to fit it and buy a suitable speaker. So sometimes I buy them from YouChoos sometimes from Road and Rails. I have found some of the YouChoos speakers although they fit aren't very loud. The ones I found the best were their ice cube ones and they fit in the front of Unrebuilt Battle of Britain and West Country, they also fit in A4 ones as well. No four ohm speakers are not a good idea for TTS decoders as the halving of the impedance, doubles the output current, which the output drivers in the TTS cannot handle so will be damaged. In fact on my Fell I took out the 4 ohm speaker (it has a LokSound decoder) to fit a Road and Rails ultra thin 8 ohm one to lower the decoder current, it not only lowers the current but sound infinitely better.

Thanks 96RAF for the circuit. I spent ages looking at my LaisDCC PCB trying to work out whether the little smds were resistors or diodes. Now I know what it does I can see if they are working properly, by looking at the voltages across the diodes.

It wasn't always like that Potterton, I remember when I was a child in the 60s some things in the catalogue did give a date when then would be available in the shops. They also were usually late with those dates by a month or two. Definitely no preordering. Now we have fictional release dates where the model may come out one or two years later. I find it amazing, like with the new real steam models that they put it in the catalogue when they haven't even built a prototype.

Well Topcat it does make you wonder. I just think the release of the catalogue in January is one of those things that Hornby/Simon has to do. I wonder what model they will "retool" or design from scratch.

Generally with my locos it is the valve gear, generally the front conrod bolt/screw hitting the rod that connects with the valve chest slider.

I bought one of those circuits off LaisDCC that is meant to lower the voltage so the trains stop, but it failed to work with any of my Zimo decoders. So it could have been the circuit or the decoder at fault.

Seeing as very little of the 2021 items have been released and even less of the 2022 items, perhaps we could run a competition as to what to call it, rather than a catalogue.

Well I spent this morning putting in my fix, talk about dubious engineering. Sam criticised it for not being able to release the "keeper plate" well if they hadn't used a clip to hold the wire it would be a doddle. It is not a good idea to have a plastic clip on wire that thin, as it strips it as you push the wire into the clip. It is better to have a channel as Hornby do on most of their models. Anyway I bought a Hornby Thompson replacement bogie which has pickups, amazingly it is the same wheel centres as the Fell bogie and is a better part. I needed to slightly enlarge the slot it moves in but it was minor. Hey presto it now works reliably. I think I will convert the other bogie.

People do that with a new model of car when if you work in the industry you realise that it is best to wait a while until they "iron out" the bugs. More so now with all the software involved. Quite often it is a good idea to buy the previous model as it gets super seeded by the new one as all the issues have probably been fixed. As to locos, I buy a lot of the older ones although they must have the motor in the loco. I run DCC with sound so generally it means modifying the loco to tender connection to put the decoder in the tender as there is more room. I must admit though I compared my old Railroad Evening Star against the brand new one and it is substantially better, but it is an awful lot more money.

I suppose it is like anything, if it is rare and a lot of people want it then the price goes up. Just watch an episode of "Bangers and Cash" and you will see my point. I sold a couple of limited edition locos from the 1980s/1990s the tender driven ones and they didn't fetch that much. I have known people buy special edition cars ( usually when the model is the last of the current style and the manufacturer wants to get rid of those expensive bits) and be hugely disappointed when they fetch not much more second hand than the standard model. So my attitude has always been, buy it because you like it and if it is worth a lot more when you sell it that is a bonus.

Yes, I have tried it with the sound off and it runs a bit better. What I am going to do is replace the 4 ohm speaker with an 8 ohm. The Road and Rails ones are better for sound and being 8 ohm will draw half the current. I am also looking in to adding pickups to the bogies as on some Hornby models. I won't be returning it to the manufacturer so it doesn't matter what I do to it.