ColinB

I didn't realise it was a new one, if it is then it is a return job.

There are lots of things that can do this. I have recently been rebuilding this model from parts for many different duchess locos (I bought two broken chassis off EBay). One issue is the gear on the wheel centre axle splits and "freewheels", if this happens you can either buy a new set of wheels which will come with a new gear, buy a brass one or buy a gear set and use the chassis mounted gear which on my one was the same gear. It could be the transmission gear that connects directly with the motor, although I got to admit in my case it is extremely rare. What it might also be is the wrong motor alignment. On these it seems Hornby didn't quite get the design right. The rear motor bracket slot is too short. So the motor is supported at the front by the motor front bracket which allows the worm gear to engage with the toothed wheel. On the rear motor mounting bracket I found the slot was slightly too short, so as you screw down the rear mount it basically lifts the front of the motor disengaging it from the gear. You can easily tell by looking at the gap between bottom motor bush and the top of the chassis, if it is less than 1mm then that may be your issue. On mine I just filed the slot to be a bit longer, surprisingly you don't have to file it by much to make it fit properly. Hope that helps, I suspect motor alignment.

If it the same as the the R2617 Ladas A3 that I have been rebuilding it has one screw at the front. Now here comes the issue, the motor is a tight fit into the body so you have to pull it forward slightly to remove the back tang on the chassis from its slot in the body. Then pull it out a little, then move the chassis back towards the cab. It should then come out. Alternatively just wriggle it about a bit and pull. If you look at underneath of the body there is a bit that sticks out into the boiler area this is what stops it coming out. Also check you don't have a speedo attached, if you do you need to disconnect it. Putting the chassis back in is equally as difficult, make sure you tie all the wires down to stop them getting trapped. No embarrassment, these things are just awkward to get out, better to ask than damage something.

@37lover, going by my rebuilt one I suspect they have. Seeing as nobody has given me an answer I suppose I better measure the two and see if there is a difference. Trouble is the W1 is so flimsy I don't like to touch it too often. As to the fettling, I agree I don't think I should have to, if I got it at half price then yes, but I didn't.

The only reason I remove the capacitor is that is prone to going short circuit, taking the decoder with it (been there with a class 66). I think the last time a looked at one it was a relatively small value so it won't do much to the DCC motor drive signal. I must admit when I converted mine I put the decoder in the loco and connected it to the tender by adding a 4 way lead. If your loco chassis is the same as mine you will see there are slots for the sword type pickups, so you can make the loco chassis pick up on both sets of wheels which makes running much better.

The question wasn't about how to redesign my railway, I am quite capable of doing that. The question was had anyone else noticed that Hornby had slightly reduced the mounting boss's height for the front bogies. I suppose you have to have both of them to notice. As to the fettling, have you looked at the front bogie setup on a W1, my first instinct was to bend the front bogie mounting, except on W1 it is part of the chassis, unlike an A4, Duchess and numerous other locos I could mention. I must admit on a a £240 loco I don't expect to have to do it anyway, yes on one of my locos built from spares or a second hand one from EBay which incidentally was how I noticed it was wrong, as did Sam in his video.

OK SteveM6 I think you are missing the point. On every other loco I own, the front bogie at its farthest point with the spring compressed its wheels are lower than the front driving wheel, nothing to do with the length of the loco. The W1 is only slightly longer than an A4 and A4s only do this if you get the spring tension wrong. Hornby obviously realised they made a mistake as I am sure they have fixed it on the rebuilt one. I just wanted to know if anyone else has noticed a difference. Yes my one runs round my flat track, it only causes issues at slow speed on points.

I do wonder if they realised their mistake with the front bogie, but it was too late to change it. With the rebuilt one being a month later it gave them time to change it. There definitely is a difference on the original when the from bogie is at its limit with the spring totally compressed the front bogie wheels are level or slightly lower that the front driving wheel, on the rebuilt one it is higher than the front driving wheel, as it should be.

I have both the original Hush Hush and the rebuilt one. I couldn't understand why the travel on the rebuilt one was much better, so I put them together and studied the front mounting. It looks like on the rebuilt one they have reduced the height of the mounting on the chassis, it looks like about 1 to 2 mm difference. Has anyone else done the same check. It also explains why the rebuilt one runs so much better.

I put the TTS P2 into my original one and then found it was only really applicable to the rebuilt one. YouChoos do one but I have yet to find out if it is for the original one or the rebuilt one. As there is probably nobody around to tell you what it actually sounded like I suppose the only important bit is the whistle.

Sam pointed out that issue with the class 66 in one of his reviews, as you say that is a design issue. I buy lots of secondhand locos off EBay and some have minor faults and you wonder if they have had these since new and perhaps that is why the Seller is selling them. The thing that really annoys me about Hornby, is that they don't sell spares of the parts that fall off, the amount of locos you see with missing buffers and the sprung loaded ones are difficult to source. Then there are are the bits on the body. I understand stocking spare parts is expensive but as I say they could just stock the ones they know are going to fall off.

I must admit virtually all the new models I have bought off Hornby have been OK. I bought R3633 off of a Retailer and the reversing rod was in the box. I did get it awfully cheap at least £50 off, so I just glued it back. It may be that is why it was cheap. I had a KIng loco when the motor popped out of its mounting when I first ran it, again I fixed it as it was the last one the Retailer had in stock. Just recently I have been fixing the previous version Duchess chassis and noticed that the replacement motor holders were made with the motor mounting hole too small, I just couldn't understand why the motor didn't sit right. Again I filed the bracket to suit, I could blame it on the previous management but the chassis on the latest release is still the same, plus they use "black tack" to help to hold the motor in. Trouble is I read all the posts and coming from an engineering background I can see why Hornby have so many issues. They are just over optimistic with their designs, so when you get "tolerance stack up" with parts you get issues. I must admit Hornby don't seem to have got the idea of separately fitted parts, they seem to think just a dab of glue will work, which generally allows the part to just fall off in the box. Bachmann seem to design them in, so the glue is not so important although they definitely don't seem to be able to get a decent drawbar design (the one on my class 812 just broke, it was too thin).

That 10% ties in with the failure rate that the Chinese accept. The Chinese accept that 10% is an acceptable failure rate most British and US industries would be horrified at that, where I worked that is far too high. On small production runs that could be the difference between profit and loss and remember the poor person that gets the bad one generally gets put off buying another one. As to the Hush Hush the issue I have with mine is the design of the front bogie, when it is at its maximum travel it is only just level with the front driving wheel which means it might even cause issue on straight and level track. Mine worked ok until I ran the loco at slow speed, fortunately on the rebuilt versions it is not an issue. Then we have the front steps, it didn't take a "Rocket Scientist" to figure that they would be vulnerable to accidents standing so proud of the model, perhaps a better material might have helped. Finally Hornby needed this to be a success, most people have all the old models, so they need to produce some different ones every year to maintain the rarity factor to justify their high prices.

@DarkRedCape unfortunately that is what you get when you "outsource" your packing. The firm that does the packing doesn't have the time to work out how to pack them differently, plus they probably get paid on orders they ship and the computer system is not configured to allow them to put more than one in a box. If it was your business you wouldn't want to waste that much packing. The P & P just about covers the cost of the physical shipping, admittedly they will get it cheaper than I do when I ship a loco, but even so bubblewrap and boxes do cost money.

It is interesting measuring the resistance of the motors, I do it when I convert a loco to DCC and I always find it to be too low. Even on modern Hornby locos I have measured about 12 ohms which seems incredible low. Unless you can measure it across the actual armature without going through the brushes, the "stall test" is the only way. Be careful though if you stall it too long you could damage the motor. As you are measuring 11.4 ohms, that says roughly your stall current should be about 1 amp, but in practice it is about 800 milliamps. I measured it on a lot of my ringfield motors. If you are going to add DCC I would recommend using a standard Zimo decoder, I have no financial interest in Zimo, but I tried loads of different decoders when I converted mine and these didn't blow up and worked really well.

Yes it should do. Before I went DCC I used to run my Wrenn locos around my track ( I changed to DCC but the track is the same). I am pretty sure the Hornby Dublo wheels are the same as Wrenn ones, I don't think Wrenn made them any thinner when they started to produce the old Hornby Dublo locos. If it was Triang ones you might have an issue. My layout is code 100 Peco track so probably pretty modern.

@Deem avoid spare part preorders with that well known firm. They are at the mercy of Hornby which means you may never get it, not the Retailers fault it is just if Hornby decide to make a new batch. I have had a 0-6-0 chassis bottom (the one where the bit of plastic breaks) for over a year. I only suggested them as if they have the part they are usually a lot cheaper.

I had several locos with this unit in. Hornby did a range of 4-4-0 locos with them in. I took all of mine out as I found it was distorting the body. There is a piece of tin foil that is supposed to stop this but on one of them it had fell out making the distortion worse, even on the ones where there was tin foil they had distorted a little. The popping I don't think is anything to worry about mine were always doing that when they worked properly. I damaged one of mine when I knocked the element with the end of the syringe trying to fill it. They do come up on EBay sometimes or you could try rewinding it. I did fit one of them to an old Duchess, driving it with a DCC function (I used a Zimo decoder) and it did work really well although you still got all the mess and filling was an issue.

Have you tried Lendons, they are usually sustainably cheaper than anyone else.

191 employees is still a lot to pay, I get the opinion the smaller manufactures have nowhere near that. Ok, it is not like where I used to work but they still need paying. Then there is all the equipment, computers, sophisticated 3d printers and all the rest. £100 a loco profit if it is that, will still mean a reasonable amount of sales to support that. Admittedly you have all the other makes, but last I heard Hornby were up to their eyeballs in debt so you need to service that as well.

Of course there will always be customers, the trouble is, will there be enough to justify running a huge design team that Hornby has?

I suspect that with that one they used another decoder in the loco unless they moved the decoder to the loco and left the four wires for the tender pickups. As it is a special they could have done anything.

@VESPA but if as someone suggested that there is another 10% price rise in August/September this year that would make it £293.14. I know it is desirable but would people pay that much? There will always be some but is there enough to justify making it. I watched a Sam's video review of the Rails/Bachmann class 812 loco. He criticised the price at nearly £200 but considering it was a special version implemented by Rails with a very small production run, I could see some justification for the price but Hornby are charging that for loco designs that are nearly 20 years old.

I agree Bulleidboy. I also think we won't be seeing this very soon either.

You are missing the point Bulliedboy if the decoder is in the tender how can it control the firebox glow, lights and steam unit in the loco, if there are only the usual amount of wires between loco and tender. So ok, you but the decoder in the loco then you can control these things. Issue is there probably isn't enough room for a 21 pin DCC setup, that is why Bachmann and Dapol have moved to the next 18 format, its footprint is smaller. So I don't know and nobody has answered that question.