ColinB

Actually the Mogul was that good, I have one and he was not that wrong. Generally the locos that he has tested that I have, he has been spot on.

I must admit I assumed RM was picking up its own driver on Windows 7. I know it didn't work on the default one and when I went into the System Manager and asked it to load the driver, it picked up one that worked. Now on that machine there are a few USB drivers for apps that I have written, so it may be using one of those for all I know. I don't intend using it, I just loaded RM to see how good it was.

You have got to be kidding DBfan, they are the last reviews you want to read. Generally they are given samples by the companies to review, if they give a bad one no more goodies. The Hornby program endorsed that for me. It is like the motoring press, most reviews are positive otherwise no lend of free cars for the foreseeable future. I remember hand delivering a car radio for review by the Press, our team had checked it over thoroughly and seeing I was hand carrying it to Germany, it was not supposed to go in the Hold for fear of it getting scratched. People that buy the trains with their own money and then feedback on how they perform is the best sort. I remember watching a review by Barrie Davis about a particular loco, he does go on a bit, but his knowledge is second to none and he was absolutely right as I bought the loco. Sam did a review of it later, as Hornby were doing them very cheap and he said exactly the same. Those are the sort of reviews I listen to.

Yes 96RAF you are right, all my PCs run windows 10, then I remembered the one I tested RM on is Windows 7 Professional. Yes, my apologies, do the comms work any better on Windows 10.

As for Sam he is a guy that does reviews, a bit annoying at times but generally if he says it is a good loco it is. He also notices things other reviewers don't, one I know never seems to find fault with anything, I know she gets freebies, so sometimes the reviews reflect that. Sam's track is Hornby laid on carpet so generally if a loco runs round that it will run round mine. The only one I did think he was a bit unfair with was the Bachmann 9F. I have one of these and to me it runs and looks ok. There again it depends whether you get a bad one.

These are what most people use :- https://ftdichip.com/product-category/products/ It is a bit academic really but interesting. When Hornby developed that cable there probably weren't off the shelf ones available, there probably are now if you search hard.

These are what most people use :- https://ftdichip.com/product-category/products/ It is a bit academic really but interesting. When Hornby developed that cable there probably weren't off the shelf ones available, there probably are now if you search hard.

Reading your post 96RAF I assume the cable was a standard USB cable but with some level shifting logic at the Select end and a different connector.

I get the opinion the Select was developed as a low cost option to get people into DCC with the ultimate aim of getting people to buy an Elite or go down the Railmaster option with elink. So developing the USB link was a good development exercise but probably they assumed if they marketed it, it would take sales away from the other two products. I don't know if Hornby publish a list of USB commands that their products support, Fleishmann on their two dcc controller publish the commands available over their RS232 remote interface in the manual. Before you could even consider using a JRMI interface you would need to know if JRMI supports the same commands.

I suppose it all depends whether the interface software in the Select actually works. I assume jmri stands for Java Model Railway Interface. I think the Elite gives you a lot more than a Select and if the Select doesn't support the extra functionality by a set of remotely called commands, it is probably not going to work anyway.

The thing is with the Manor it ticks all the boxes, don't have to take loco apart to fit DCC so that the separately fitted parts fall off. I ordered the sound fitted one as it is a good deal for sound. At the price Dapol are charging most sensible people will be happy.

I just wish Hornby would have sold those 21 pin PCBs as a spare part. They obviously did at one point because most of the spares stockists have them listed as a spare part but even if they had them in stock the price is horrendous. I did pickup a couple second hand, hence how come I realise that they were a good part and they fit on the same two posts as the 8 pin one.

I suppose that is the difference, I never hard wire the decoder. It makes maintenance more difficult and if there are issues with the decoder, it is not an easy job to substitute another one. Generally if space is tight I use a 6 pin socket. I have one Hornby loco City of Sheffield that has Hornby's attempt at a 21 pin socket, really nice circuit board that is well engineered. Why they replaced it with a poor 8 pin pcb that whenever you solder to it creates solder bridges, defeats me. The latest T version of the PCB is much better and is easier to solder to, but you have the issue that you have a decoder with effectively 9 wires, connecting to a socket that has only 8.

Actually the loco I was referring to was the Merchant Navy East Asiatic Company, long before Covid or anything else. As to the rest you have your opinion, I have mine. Working in the motor industry for many years I have worked on many projects that never saw the light of day, other than a few prototypes but they would never have been put in a catalogue or asked a buyer to pre order it. You would lose too many customers that way.

Why don't you just buy a different decoder say a Zimo and see if it improves it. I checked mine yesterday, runs perfectly with the lights on, but I use Zimo decoders. For £20.00 (it may even be cheaper in France) than sending it back. Then at least you can see if it is a motor fault.

I was thinking long ago why is it I hate 8 pin DCC sockets so much. I mean I am always fitting them into my old converted non DCC ready locos and today really summed it up. I was fitting a sound decoder into a Hornby Rebuilt Royal Scot/Patriot loco. I had moved the DCC socket into the tender so there was enough room, then you start hitting all the issues. For a start you have a huge length of wire that you have to find room for, then you have that flying lead that you must insulate as it is a port and it touches the body, the decoder goes bang. Then if you don't like the speaker, you could try resoldering the new speaker wires to the decoder if you have super steady hands and a decent soldering iron but generally it is cut the old one off and solder the new one to the leads and insulate with heat shrink. Then the next issue is with a Hornby tender because of that huge length of wire you spend ages trying to make sure it is coiled out the way. So the 5 minute fitting job is nearer an hour. With the 21 pin socket you just push the decoder on, making sure that the missing pin is in the right place, 2 minute job. If the speaker is wrong, you just solder the new one to the large pads on the 21 pins socket PCB. So what do other people think?

Well Topcat there is another one R3985 LNER, P2 Class, 2-8-2, 2003 ˜Lord President ", that was a pre order in 2021 and then there was the all singing and dancing one "The Prince of Wales" with smoke etc. that was announced in the 2022 catalogue. Of course then there are the current Railroad versions which is what they are selling now. So yes very confusing. The technology for the "Prince of Wales" looks challenging so that has been pushed back to 2023, but seeing as the 2021 one is late, I wouldn't hold my breath.

Things being a bit late, that is a bit of an overstatement. Bit late to me is possibly 3 months, not 3 years which has happened many times. As for duplicates Hornby do it regularly and it appears Bachmann does it now. Companies develop what they think will make them money, so if they can make a product better or cheaper than the competition they will go for it. Do you actually see the model go through its development stages? You see a couple of articles about it in the Hornby magazine or video and then it goes into this black hole. The P2 was even featured in their TV program, does anyone know when we will see that? Perhaps I am different, to me a catalogue is what is available, not a nice to have. Perhaps next time I am down at TLC electricals I will ask them why there aren't any products that are in there that they might sell in 3 years time. Somehow I think they would look at me as if I was mad.

I must admit I am a bit stumped, generally if there is a current issue the decoder in the case of Hornby ones, the decoder blows up the function output, but for lights we are talking function 0 which might be different to the other function outputs. If I get time tomorrow I will go in the loft (it is horrendous up there at the moment) and dig out my class 71. I can't remember what decoder I used, generally there are always Zimo but I did experiment with other makes early on. My class 71 is one of the early ones.

Hornby's issue is the fanfare in January announcing a new catalogue. It appears Bachmann have dispensed with this and just advising 3 months in advance. Accurascale are substantially cheaper than the other two makes I mentioned, so most people will put up with the delays, I know when I order a special from Rails it will take years as they don't have the perceived resources of Hornby. Unfortunately as is the case with Hornby, you order it from your model shop in January 2020 at lets say £160 and if you are lucky it eventually might get to your model shop (if they have been given an allocation) in 2022 at a price of £224. That is why people get annoyed. Now I know the simple solution is to order off Hornby direct, currently they honor the original price, but how long do you think that is going to last in the present climate of huge costs. Simple solution, bin the catalogue or only display what is currently available and adopt the 3 month release scheme.

From what you say it sounds like a current issue in the Hornby decoder, I can't remember whether the class 71 has leds or bulbs. I have one but I just fitted the decoder and it worked perfectly. I though use Zimo decoders which have a much better specification and drive higher currents. I gave up using Hornby decoders as I had many of them fail when driving my older locos (yes I know it was probably over current) so I started using Zimo ones, which weren't that much dearer than the Hornby ones and worked perfectly every time. I will add I also had lots of issues with the Zen, but perhaps that is just me.

I assume you are using Railmaster to do the connecting. The communication between the PC and Elite is very poor, I have written a lot of USB to external devices and it even took a while for me to get mine to work. Normally one of the issues is Windows loads its own USB driver which will not work with the Elite, so you have to go into your PCs System Manager to get it to load the right driver usually found in the Railmaster install directory. Even then the comms are still not that good, on mine it has a few goes to connect, I have to power the Elite on and off as per Railmaster instructions to get it to work. Now there will be lots on this site that will say "mine works perfectly", but then as I have found from years of bitter experience on one PC USB comms will work perfectly on another it gives issues, quite often when people are using the same make and model of PC.

I think they make them in batches, 96RAF says that they are working on a new one, so perhaps that is the reason. I suppose we could use the normal excuse that it is due to the worldwide shortage of integrated circuits but I notice other firms products are coming back on line, notably Zimo, so that is a bit of a lame excuse.

A microswitch triggered off the point lever probably works just as well. I found those Peco point switches are a constant source of issues. You could even use the blade and rail of the point to energise a relay (I put a post about it ages ago).

Sounds like you need an isolating section of track on the branch line, long enough for the loco and tender on the branch line, driven by a switch on the points. When the points are in the wrong direction, there is no power to the isolating section, so the loco stops.