ColinB

To me it sounds like a dodgy controller, but you have changed it. Are you sure the replacement is ok. It sounds like a diode effect, so have you anything attached to the rails that could cause that, things like lights or frog switching circuitry. I suppose the next thing is to check the voltage on the controller terminals where they connect to the rails and check you are getting the right voltage in forward and reverse.

Sadly people die it is a fact of life. They will probably repaint it for the new King's Coronation and then Hornby can make another model. As to the existing model, well it can remind you of better times when she was alive.

Well DarkRedCape I use Zimo ones, they are expensive so I only fit them into my decent locos. TTS seem to have got better lately, there was a time when they were always failing. I don't know it there is enough room in your tender but you could buy a 21 pin to 8 pin converter and then use an 8 pin decoder. Alternately buy a 21 pin header off bwtechnical services and rewire the 8 pin to fit it.

You would be amazed what people copy, we found out that the Chinese were doing copies of our diagnostics software and we are not talking simple circuit diagrams but complex lines of code. My attitude when I was in design was you can have all my old stuff as I am working on the new stuff. I have little sympathy for the firm who LaisDCC copied. They obviously decided to save money and get their product manufactured in China, so they were asking for it to be copied, as does anyone that decides to do the same. China does not adhere to any "copyright" agreements. As to the decoders, the complexity is in the software, the circuits are going to be pretty standard, so we come down to basically how much "on board" memory the device has, as that determines how much code you can use.

I convert many of my old Hornby steam locos so that the DCC socket is in the tender, it makes it easier to fit the sound decoders etc as there is more room. I have struggled to find the right sort of wire to use, even resorting to wire off new 8 bit sockets that come ready wired (the ones from New Modellers have long lengths of wire on them). I found 7/0.2 wire is too thick to solder into the 4 pin socket PCB. Some people do DCC wire, but generally this is a PTFE based product and does bend very easily and is a pain to strip. Then others sell single code wire wrapping cable that again is not really suitable. Anyway I found this 10/0.1mm Electrical Wire at Eileen's Emporium, absolutely perfect

It always makes me laugh when firms try to protect their circuit diagrams especially one for a model railway loco. A decent electronics engineer can easily work out the circuit. Some firms even go to the expense of removing the numbers off the integrated circuits.

Hornby have always found ways to get their special projects done quickly. Look how quickly Captain Tom got released, so I suspect this is the same. You would have thought though with a bit of forward thinking they could of got it released quicker, but I suppose they didn't know the Severn Valley railway would do the repaint. I suspect Hornby likes doing these as it is "free money", most people that model these locos have probably already got one, but by doing a special the market opens up. As to the decoder put a decent sound chip in it.

When one of my locos did the same, it worked out to be a wire that got trapped when the body got put on, cutting the wire in half.

I am currently fixing Hornby Royal Scot/Patriot loco. This one has the infamous Mazak rot where the post that holds the motor clamp to the chassis shears off. Not a big fix just buy a new chassis and move things over. The thing that fascinates me about this loco is how badly it is designed. Why go with that over complicated cantilever clamp when they could have stuck with the same system they use on the A1/A3/A4 and Duchess locos. It would even be cheaper as it uses less metal. Even without the rot the post is not really big enough especially as it is cast. Then they clamp it with a self tapping screw which is not a good idea. I normally thread the post with a M2 thread which makes for a much more reliable clamp. Also with the DCC socket in the loco Hornby didn't allow enough clearance to get the chassis in and out easily without breaking things off, as the DCC socket is slightly wider than the gap.

Great, thank you Going Spare. Thank you for being so helpful.

96RAF I know Hornby still market that loco but it is incredibly old. I got mine years ago. We all know Hornby does minimal upgrades. I suppose the only upgrade they have done on a lot of steam locos is move the DCC socket to the tender, but they were forced to do that as without it most of their steam locos wouldn't have enough room to fit sound. I think just fitting the DCC in the class 71 is a major effort. The really good bit about the class 71 is that it has a decent pantograph. I think it was the first of their diesel/electric models to drive all wheels.

I won a Dominium of Canada A4 on EBay over the weekend. It turned up today and amazingly it had the actual flat backed corridor tender that is the same as my one that is missing its corridor connector. So Hornby must model the various types of A3/A4 corridor connector. So it looks like I need to find a broken corridor A4 corridor tender to rob the corridor connector.

@Going Spare, I didn't include a photo of the sides of the tender but both are carrying the old British Rail logo rather than the new one, so it looks like they are modelled before 1962.

Ok, in the top photo the corridor tender as fitted to all my other A4s is the top one. The lower one is the one missing its connector, supplied with Wild Swann (second hand loco, so who knows where it came from). If you now look at the lower one, the back ends of the tender are square rather than round. The coal space is also smaller. The lower tender dimensionally resembles the tender without a corridor, but in this case it has the moldings of a corridor. Were the corridor tenders fitted to A3s different to A4s and I have an A3 corridor tender missing its corridor connector? I have always assumed they were the same. Is that any clearer?

I bought a Hornby Wild Swan A4 loco recently. It turned up with the corridor connector missing from the tender. I knew it had the issue when I bought it. Anyway I managed to source a replacement corridor tender, easier than sourcing the missing part. Anyway as I started to dig a bit deeper I found the tender with the missing corridor connector is different at the back than any of my other corridor tenders. All my other tenders have rounded backs to the tender whereas this one is square. Has anyone any idea if this is a rogue tender, or did Hornby change their design. THe joke of it is Wild Swan was released with a non corridor tender, so I don't know if the previous owher removed the corridor so it looked right.

I only suggested changing the decoder just in case. So it is not the decoder, I think 96RAF might be right for it to suddenly not work anymore without you doing anything does tend to indicate something electronic. I suppose the pads the springs sit on to connect the body to chassis could have oxidised so the connection is no longer made. I know how annoying it is when the lights don't work.

Looking at the Hornby news 2023 marks Flying Scotsman's Centenary and Hornby have been selected to be part of the celebrations. I suspect next year it will happen

Looking at the Hornby news 2023 marks Flying Scotsman's Centenary and Hornby have been selected to be part of the celebrations. I suspect next year it will happen

The waveform is a digital pulse train so not that easy to measure. I must admit when I measured it with a Fluke multimeter I think I got about 16 AC. So I assume you are trying to work out the bleed resistor for the LED. Generally it is a good idea to put a bridge rectifier in the feed from the track DCC to your LED. So wire up the bridge rectifier and see what voltage you get on the DC output. I suspect it will be 12 to 15 volts.

The favorite has got to be a wire fell off or not soldered correctly when it was made. The constant vibration may have made it come loose. LEDs very rarely fail but I suppose they do occasionally. Alternately, the DCC port may have become damaged and can no longer drive that channel. What make of decoder are you using?

I think as you said earlier 96RAF the TTS decoders don't probably have the memory to support them anyway.

Yes 96RAF I changed the speaker to a decent one from "Road and Rails" and to be quite honest there isn't much difference between the TTS and the LokSound. The only major difference is when the one with the LokSound slows down you hear the braking. The TTS doesn't do that but that is why the LokSound is a lot more expensive. The TTS was horrible with the supplied speaker.

I have got to admit 96RAF I stopped looking, I was after class 60, Princess/Duchess, class 50 ones. Surprising I found the Duchess one at the Keithly and Worth Railway shop at Haworth when on holiday, it must have been really old stock. I have noticed recently that class A1/A3 ones are difficult to get. I recently bought a cheap Bachmann class 20 loco with sound fitted thinking I would take out the decent decoder and put it in mine. I was horrified to find that it was a TTS decoder, I didn't even realise Hornby made that one.

They were about £35.00 to £42.00, since the price rises they have edged about the £50.00 mark. I must admit I thought that they were nearer £55.00 but that may be profiteering, which is what prompted the last post.

I think at the moment Hornby's business model to put it mildly is chaotic and then there is the world wide chip shortage. There are firms in the UK that will update hardware, even up to several thousand. When we made a mess up on a software release for some vehicles we got this firm in that reprogramed the modules (it was cheaper than replacing all the modules). When I questioned how they were going to do it I was told they would do it on a car by car basis and this was for about 2000 cars. We all know from the Hornby program how easy it is to reprogram them as we saw exactly how their electrical guy did it (very similar as to how I would program an engine management unit). If you are any good you can write a script on a PC to do it, just telling the operator when to put the next device in. I don't quite know what the logic is for releasing the different loco sounds, it doesn't seem to bear much relation as to what locos are currently being released and the only locos currently that have them are generally Railroad ones. From a business point of view it is easy money just blow a sound file into existing hardware, no new development costs other than getting the sound file. The only issue is that they aren't the most reliable of devices and they are getting very expensive.