ColinB

Well you tell me, there isn't a great deal on that board that would stop it working. Many decoder manufacturers make a point about them working with coreless motors, there must be a reason for that. Putting on my electrical engineering hat, it is well known that they have the ability to draw more current, so I assumed that their current would peak at start up. That is the only thing that I can attribute that to. I don't have one of those tester so I can't test the theory, I have a LaisDCC one which has a normal 3 pole motor.

As I said earlier Hornby make some excellent 21 pin PCBs they were originally for West Country locos. They have ids on the PCB for track left and right with labels TL and TR and M1 and M2 for motor. So it is extremely difficult to get it wrong. They also seem really good quality. The big issue with the 8 pin sockets is the early PCBs from Hornby are such bad quality that it is amazingly easy to create a solder bridge between pins without realising. If it happens between 1 and 8 or 4 and 5, it blows the decoder.

It is probably the coreless motor that is causing the issue, has anyone checked it works with HM7000?

No there are no extra pickups, when designers/engineers design things generally they do a bit of forward thinking in what might we need for the future. To use one part for all your products makes assembly easier. So Bachmann standardised on a 21 pin decoder on some of their older locos they used an 8 pin but then moved to the 21 pin. On a lot of their tank locos they use the Plux18 but that is more to do with space limitations. The 8 pin suffers from a lot of design issues, there is that mountain of wire to worry about, then there is that trailing extra function lead ready to short out on any available piece of metal, you need to add extra pads to the PCB for the speaker wires and finally the sockets are terrible (well the older Hornby ones are), a constant source of bad connections. Of course finally you can get the connection 180 degrees out of phase meaning that as a supplier you get reports of the lights not working simply because the connector is in the wrong way round. All these issues are solved by the 21 pin arrangement although the PCB it sits on is generally larger.

Actually there is a couple of locos that are a bit of an investment, not to that greater level but fetch a reasonable amount. Wrenn original build West Country/Battle of Britain and the Royal Scot. These regularly fetch high prices. I was looking at the going rate for my Wrenn City of Wells and was really surprised at how much it would cost to replace it. Those two loco designs were the better of the Wrenn Locos, so perhaps that is why they fetch so much. The rebuilt version of the West Country fetches nowhere near as much.

It is all in the words, "major". There have been a lot on little incremental price rises. The OO black five with steam has gone up by about 10% since it was first announced. The B17 just being released now, has had the same sort of increase. Very subtle the way it has happened an odd £10 here and there. I know because the wonderful website shows the preordered price. Unfortunately with TT120 you are a bit of a prisoner, with OO many of the locos are over 30 years old so you can buy a pre used one that is virtually the same, but with TT120 there are not so many options. TT120 is probably going to take the biggest hit because there is no competition, whereas in OO say a class 60 is being undercut in price by two competitors, they are having trouble shifting them now, with 10% on the price, you probably know the rest.

I did wonder, in which case give their Customer Services a call, they should have contacted you by now. Last time I called about an order they were extremely helpful, although I do wonder if that may have changed with the new management.

I don't know which one you ordered, but if it is the green LNER one according to Rails they will arrive later. I thought the same as I ordered the green one from Hornby direct.

I am not so sure about that, I suspect a lot of buyers that bought it thought it would be an investment. Even now go onto EBay and you will see some people charging well over the odds for them, fortunately they are still on the site. Hornby did make a motor in loco one which fetches a lot more, I think in that form it is desirable. The issue with the later ones is that get through final drive gears because the drive is on the end wheel, so it does more work than if it was off the centre wheel and the valve gear is very easy to break. It sits on some hangers from the chassis and it is so easy to break when you are putting the body on.

You are absolutely right for most locos you don't need the extra functionality a 21 pin decoder gives you. From a practical point of view, fitting it is an awful lot easier you don't have that long length of wire draping everywhere. The other advantage I like is you can wire the speaker permanently to the loco without having to connect it to the decoder. One less thing for the wires to drop off when you remove the decoder. Hornby do some nice 21 pin sockets on PCBs which you can buy as a spare part.

If it doesn't stay in, really it should be a return to Hornby. Rather than gluing which is a bit permanent use something like black tack which is easy to remove.

You obviously didn't read my earlier post about the Dapol A4, otherwise you wouldn't have said such a thing.

Actually I can afford it but with everything I buy I decided whether it is worth what I am paying. As I keep saying if you guys are happy with the price then no issues. As to Hornby not being a charitable organisation I suspect we all know that, I don't even know why you mentioned it, least of all me.

I know that all too well. There again eventually you get down to point where the company cannot go any lower. In automotive savings were in cents or percentage of a Euro. On radio program we knew that if we used the micro with the bigger memory it was one Euro more. As we were very near the maximum memory size we had someone go through it to thrift the compiled code. Again that Euro was the difference between profit and loss. Zimo seem to do quite well with their decoders. I suspect there are other issues like with Bluetooth it won't fit into the available space on many models.

They are generally PIC processors I suspect they are still around but not at the right price. I have to admit the Auto Industry is at the top of the chain for buying processors so they will always get them first because they use so many, but there again not usually PICs (they don't always meet the temperature range).

No, January 2025, I suspect this price rise will not be enough.

It is not so simple as that, Hornby designs a range of products so it can shift designers between products so there is less idle time, a small company cannot do that. Then you have the fact that Hornby has been designing products for years so it has the advantage of existing designs it can modify. It also has a knowledge base of where to get things, again a small company will have to learn that. Actually you seem to be homing in on Accurascale aren't you forgetting Dapol, manufactures certain models in the UK and China that also undercut Hornby. I have worked for a very small company and two very large ones, so I have seen it from both sides. At the end of the day forget the emotions, if your product is too expensive it doesn't sell, so you die. We have seen some extremely good examples in the last few years.

So by your business model a Lotus should cost considerably less than a Ford Fiesta (if they still made them). There is the other issue that a lot of their products are not selling at the old price. Either way it doesn't matter, fortunately we are not forced to buy their products.

Actually when I joined Ford in 1980 I was given a map of all the locations in Essex, there were so many. Now there are two, Dunton (the R and D centre) and Dagenham (diesel engine plant). I only found out about the Capri when a guy I worked with, mentioned it. It starts at £48000 so I don't think I will be buying one. The old 2.8 in good condition goes for about £10,000 but they are really nice if you get a good one.

I was looking up the West Country Braunton, its RRP is £266.49. It has got to be at least a 30 year old model with minor tweaks. If they increase its price by 10% that would make it nearly £300. I preordered that loco because I thought they must have improved it (I have many of the old ones) and was horrified to find it wasn't much different especially as I have upgraded all the old ones to decoder in the tender. I only paid £220 for it as it was preordered but still felt it wasn't worth that. There will always people that will buy them but are there enough? Of course there is a silver lining for some people on this site who have this obsession with Sam running his locos on a carpet, he has an upper limit of £200 for a loco, so I doubt he will be doing many Hornby reviews.

Ford have just released it as an electric car. Probably nothing like the old one (it wouldn't pass modern crash criteria) but it is a Capri.

It would be very interesting to know how many people took them up on their offer.

Road and Rails the sound decoder suppliers in the UK are doing a promotion this weekend, buy a HM7000 and get a free bass speaker worth £10. Now you are going to say but the HM7000 comes with a speaker, but the speaker you get free, fits and sounds better. That is the sort of deal that attracts me and I am sure a lot many others. An out of date catalogue has very little appeal.

I figured that when I saw the mail. I think 8 year old Jonny was priced out that market years ago, most go to collectors. I haven't looked around much at paint I don't know where Humbrol sits pricewise with the rest. I think that they are cheaper than Precision Paints but there again you only buy those for something really special.

Really, well it takes all sorts. Most of what is in the catalogue was preorder, I suppose the track might be useful. We live in a digital age if you were going to buy it there are lots of photos "online". You had to spend £50 to get one.