ColinB

It is definitely not the repair I made all I had to do was add a connector and power supply. The controller works with every other decoder I have so it definitely points to the new one. I suspect Zimo designed the decoder to the tighter end of the DCC signal timings, hence why the issue. I doubt Zimo are going to do a fix for a 20 year old controller, but I suppose it depends how many people in Germany and Austria have one, as I assume it would be more popular there. Anyway the DCC generation with be produced by software on a microprocessor so a bit difficult to mess up without changing the software. I could go into my Thompson 01 and remove any capacitors as that might effect it. I eventually will get a DigiKeijs, it is substantially cheaper than a brand new Hornby loco.

It was the new Zimo sound decoder the Zimo MS480R. I phoned up YouChoos and they were going to raise a request to Zimo. It is not Hornby's issue as it works perfectly well with the Elite, so I doubt that they would be too interested, but if they want to borrow my Fleishmann to test it, then I would be quite happy to lend it to them. I suspect it is timing on the signal, I think that they had set the window too tight or it is the way that they are interpreting the commands. It is a shame as the sound is a substantial improvement. All the other commands work, it is just weird that is only goes in one direction. Fleishmann don't support the twin track controller anymore so I know that is a wasted request. As I say I have been thinking of buying a DigiKeijs in the future, so eventually that is what I will do. It is weird though, especially when you tell it to go backwards and it goes backwards for say a length of a point then decides to go forward without any input from the controller.

Here is a brain puzzler for you. I bought a new sound decoder for one of my locos, the company that produces these has upgraded their technology (I won't say which one). I have an Hornby Elite which I program the locos and a Fleishmann twin track controller that I run the locos on the track with. Program up the sound decoder on my Hornby 01 loco and change the address, runs perfectly backwards and forwards on test track. Take the loco to my main layout and no matter what direction I set on the Fleishmann the loco only goes in one direction. Sometimes it will move backwards a bit but then goes forward although you have selected backwards on the controller. So I replace the Fleishmann on the layout with the Elite and the loco runs perfectly. So obviously the newly designed decoder doesn't like the DCC signal coming out of the Fleishmann. All my other sound fitted locos work perfectly with it (LokSound, TTS and old Zimo), so has anyone else noticed this behaviour with any other decoders. I was thinking of replacing the Fleishmann with a newer controller long term, so it looks like it may well be necessity in the future. The Fleishmann is very old, I bought it broken for £30 and fixed it so fortunately it is not a big loss, it is just it is so easy to use and setting up my Heljan turntable is really easy. Unfortunately the Elite is not as good for running the locos, although it is tons better at programming them.

I suppose it depends on the loco my 0-4-0 Hornby Caledonian after I had wired it to a 6 pin socket had enough room for a YouChoos stay alive circuit board and capacitor. I use electrofrog points and sometimes 0-6-0s get stuck, unfortunately as the points age they distort a bit, so not making them absolutely flat.

In my experience "stay alive" is only really needed with locos that don't have enough pickups or a long enough wheelbase. So if you take a modern Hornby loco with pickups on loco and tender wheels then you don't really need "stay alive". If you take a Bachmann with no tender pickups, an old Hornby ringfield motor loco or an 0-6-0 then you probably do, especially if they have traction tyres.

Sorry, last post should say I have no financial interest.

After fitting one of my carriages with a home made units. I realised that I have 5 coaches that I want to use with my new Rails class 812 so a ready made item was a quicker and much better option. I contacted a guy on EBay that 3D prints seating units for old Triang coaches and he printed me some inserts that are tons better and cost virtually the same as the "home made units". So if anyone is interested in getting seating for these carriages, the same guy is now selling them on EBay. I have financial interest in this product, I just thought that they were incredibly useful. I now have a rake of coaches that are cheaper than their modern day equivalents and are the right colour to go with the loco.

I tried many decoders when I first started using DCC, LaisDCC is far from the worst. Obviously this is not the forum to list them, but in the end I settled on one which was good value for money and reliable. The only thing I found lacking with the LaisDCC was its response to a dirty track, in that it didn't perform very well. There again a lot of the other makes didn't either and they were a lot more expensive.

Really, I use them with the Hornby Elite and they work perfectly well. The only issue you might have is that the reset command is slightly different. I am pretty sure that they will work with the latest Select software.

"Stay alive" is just the act of putting a capacitor across the regulated DC supply that the DCC decoder generates internally ( I could get into the technical but I will keep it simple). This is what feeds the motor, so effectively powers it if there is no input voltage. In my initial post I said about a second of power. To be quite honest I think this is probably an exaggeration on my part, it depends on the capacitor used and the motor current. "Stay alive" causes issues with a DCC controller not just the Select. It shows itself in not being able to read values out of the decoder, caused by the programming voltage not being fed to the decoder for long enough to charge the capacitor fully. As the capacitor is not fully charged, then the decoder's supply is not at its proper value, so the decoder does not function properly in programming mode.

The extra pickups definitely improves things before you add "stay alive". If lets say you convert your HST, if you are crossing points and the not powered bogie transverses the plastic frog of the point, so it doesn't pickup power. The power bogie can only get current from the one set of wheels, so normally the loco would stall, but "stay alive" might give you an extra second of power which might be enough time to transverse the point. On the old style of locos I have, and my converted 1980s HST, I added extra pickups to the non powered bogie and added "stay alive". They will never be as good as a modern loco, but will be substantially better than they were.

Pickups are the means by which the loco "picks up" power from the track, normally wipers (small pieces of copper) that touch the wheels. Now there was a time when Hornby used the axles to pick up the power as is the case with your loco. On the front bogie the wheels on one side are solid, the wheels on the other side have insulators. On the other bogie the arrangement is swapped round. So the chassis of the power bogie is connected to one rail and the non driven bogie is connected to the other. Now this works ok if your track is perfectly clean and you don't go slowly over points, as all the wheels have to make contact. To make the loco run better what you can do is ad pickups to both wheels on the non powered bogie by either buying the pickup piece from a later Ringfield based HST although they are difficult to come by, or buy the pickup piece from a class 90 and shorten it. The pickup piece clips onto the bogie and obviously you will have to change the wiring but it makes running a bit more reliable. On the later Ringfield motored bogies they did add pickups to both sides, but in reality because of the traction tyres it doesn't improve running that much.

I use a vice, generally in life I have found G clamps only seem to be useful for gluing pieces of wood together. Whenever you try to use them as a press they generally bend, meaning that the force is exerted at an angle.

@ANDYMAC well I have sold quite a few locos on EBay and I always state what the postage will be, admittedly I have a load of loco boxes and bubble wrap from locos I have bought, so packing never costs anything. I have never had one complaint about the postage on any of my items. "First class signed for" on a loco is £4.85, I think second class is about a £1.00 cheaper. If they don't like the postage then they can always not bid. There will always be someone that complains, I just accept that.

@DarkRedCape yes I don't mind paying postage either. The thing that really annoys me is the tendency for EBay Sellers to always use second class postage. I would quite often pay the difference to get it quicker. Then there is the Seller that charges £10.00 for postage and then sends it by the cheapest means possible. As to the free postage I figured that one out long ago. There is one major supplier that charges a base cost of £5.00 even for something that would cost "large letter" amount to send it. When I sell on EBay I always send "First Class" as I hate waiting for stuff to arrive, so I assume my buyers do as well.

@96RAF that would be the way I would do it. Perhaps the long term plan was to replace it with the eLink box plus RailMaster. The trouble is the level of complexity goes up a notch and if the loco doesn't work there are so many things to check.

If you buy the 6 pin socket it comes with the right coloured wires so you ditch the Hornby wires and use the ones supplied with the socket.

To be quite honest the amount they make of Elites they would be better off actually making them in the UK. The pcb population will be pick and place by a machine (the processor legs are too close together to manually solder) and given the numbers they make at a guess less than 2000 it is usually difficult in electronics to find a firm willing to do that small a run in consumer electronics. I could be quite wrong but I know when I wanted to get some pcbs populated for a small batch to do with my old job, it was really difficult finding a firm that would do it.

This is how I did it on an 0-4-0 Caledonian. I wired in a 6 pin socket and then used a Zimo 6 pin decoder which is super small. The bit hanging down the side is the YouChoos Stay Alive circuit that also fits. I am sure it will fit even with the weight in place. The other advantage is the Zimo has a higher current rating that the Hornby, which is what I think this motor needs. THe two blobs at the bottom are the driver and fireman.

I think a lot of people are blaming the global chip shortage, just like they blame Brexit and whatever else is in fashion. Generally I doubt Hornby sell that many units for it to be too much of an issue. The only thing that could be causing an issue is that most of their designs are very old so the processors they use, will probably be as well, so perhaps the manufacturers aren't tending to make them as there is not a big enough market for them. Probably the bigger issue is access to the production facility, again for the Elite the market can't be that big, lets say compared to an automotive controller so they probably have issues trying to find someone to make them for the price they want to pay.

Thanks Going Spare I didn't know that. I have a Lima class 66 that I converted to the Hornby specification by fitting a new chassis and bogies and an Evening Star class 66 bought from new. So I suppose it could be the traction tyres are not gripping, but you should hear that otherwise it tends to point to the motor.

My class 60 and N15 turned up this morning, just perfect. I had said I wasn't going to buy anymore locos but these were too good a bargain to miss. Fortunately I have the class 87, bought when Amazon were having a really cheap day, but I am pretty sure it wasn't as cheap as the Hatton's one. The funny thing was the N15 came with a driver and fireman, I thought Hornby had stopped including them ages ago.

Further to my post yesterday, I tried my other Hornby class 66, Evening Star. This one runs even better. Both of mine have the latest Hornby chassis/motor, but I don't know if your one is ringfield based or like mine. Perhaps it just needs lubricating.

Sorry 96RAF assumed whining noise was from TTS. In that case I haven't got a clue. All the test are still relevant.

I just tried my one and it definitely ran quite fast, fast enough to derail. My one is the Lima one fitted with a new Hornby chassis with the 5 pole motor, not the ringfield motor type. It is also DCC sound. The only thing I did notice was it sped up appreciably between 80 and 100 % setting, so perhaps the voltage is not high enough.