ColinB

If there is another 10% hike later this year I seriously think Hornby should be wondering about its future. The retail market is not a bottomless pit, although some people on this site seem to think it is, a continental product is streets ahead of a Hornby product so a comparison on prices is not really fair. I bought a brand new Hornby Rebuilt Royal Scot last week, the reversing rod was in the box and the smoke box cover fell out. Read most of the posts on this forum, a lot about very old trains so not that many people are buying them new. Hornby needs to be shifting relatively large numbers to pay for its organisation, if it keeps increasing its prices there will be no market.

There is a ton of unanswered questions on this topic when I read the catalogue it inferred that you didn't need DCC. There is also the issue of the new 21 pin DCC socket in the tender but the smoke generator, firebox flicker and forward lights in the loco. There is no mention of changing the 4 way lead between loco and tender, so how do they control lights and the smoke generator from DCC. Currently firebox flicker on the Princess is two diodes feeding an led off the rail supply, no DCC control.

I have bought locos off Jadlam at quite reasonable prices, then something happened to them last year about the time the Hornby Dublo Duchess of Atholl arrived. There was talk of one member getting their order cancelled as per 96RAFs post, then the same loco going on sale with them for considerably more than its recommended retail. Since then they have been charging recommended retail and if the model is released and in demand prices above recommended retail. I don't know what happened to them. I stopped dealing with them after the Duchess of Atholl event. No retailer other than Hornby themselves will honour the preorder price, Hornby stopped them doing it. Derails did with my Rebuilt W1 but that was a "one off" and it is Derails, who are one of the nicest retailers I deal with. If it a new build of model and you think it will take Hornby over a tear to make it, sadly the best idea is to order it direct from Hornby, they do honour the price. I saved a fortune on my Hush Hush because I ordered it on their site over a year ago.

I have just been looking at a Lima I converted. Unlike the Hornby, it is really easy to put at extra pickup on the dummy bogie. The model shop hasn't put the wheels back in wrong on the dummy bogie by chance. If one of them had dirty wheels it is possible as the loco moves it finds a part which conducts and hey presto a short. So one is in the right way round but the other one is wrong. Sounds like a return to the model shop. I had exactly this sort of issue on a Hornby loco with tender pickups if you get the tender pickups wired opposite to the loco ones.

The function outputs of the TTS decoder when they are switched on basically put a ground on to what ever you have attached to it. So in the case of leds the positive goes to the common which is a voltage, via a resistor and the negative is switched to zero by the function. When the function is switched off, the connection to ground no longer exists so the led goes off.

If the loco gives sound then I doubt the H bridge has died, generally when the H bridge dies it takes virtually everything with it. To me it sounds like something wrong with the loco contacts. If the controller trips out that means at least you are shorting 1 amp of power or if you are using the Elite 4 amps, the decoder would generally blow up on that. What loco is this?

I get my LaisDCC decoders off CM3 models or Brian Wright via EBay. The supply does seem to fluctuate, I haven't seen the 8 pin direct fit one for ages. That one is exceptionally good for DMUs as no long length of wire to find room for. A bit too wide for a lot of steam locos unless it is in the tender. I haven't bought any for a while, so I haven't noticed that much.

Reading your post again, "stay alive" won't fix the short. Assuming you haven't blown up the decoder, which you can usually tell by the electrical burning smell, it is probably something simple like a pickup shorting against the body. I assume the model shop didn't use a socket, if they did it might be worth putting a DC blanking plate in to see if it runs on DC. It could be that your decoder could not handle the motor current, but if this happens you normally smell it burning, unless your decoder has decent overload protection. Is the loco on a straight or a bend when this happens. Did the model shop put in a socket?

I never seem to have an issue with any make of the decoders working, some of them though do cause issues with my Elite when trying to program them. I will add Hattons ones program perfectly with no issues.

I converted a lot of my earlier Hornby and Lima locos, so I know quite a lot about doing it. The reason the guy that converted them said that you might need "stay alive" is generally on these old locos if it is a loco with tender, the loco picks up one supply and the tender the other. Similarly with a diesel, one bogie picks up one side of the supply (ie) the power on one rail and the other bogie picks it up from the other side or other rail. So when you convert them it is a good idea to put in extra pickups so it picks up power from both sides of the track. A model shop is probably not going to do this because it would cost too much. Additionally old Hornby and Lima locos generally have rubber traction tyres so even if you add pickups to these wheels it doesn't make much difference as rubber is a brilliant insulator. So the model shop probably suggested "stay alive" as if the loco goes over a bad piece of track or insulated frogs on points it will lose power, stay alive might help. The other thing to consider is the decoder choice, these motors draw about 0.8 amps when the motors stall, so when I was fitting them I found the only decoders that seemed to work reliably were the Zimo ones. Hattons, DCC Concepts, Gaugemaster and Hornby ones I successfully managed to blow up. On paper, bar the Hornby one (0.5 maximum current), they should have all worked but if the loco stalled then I got the familiar burning smell and failure. So generally I used a Zimo decoder with the YouChoos "stay alive". As to whether it is worth spending the money, I did it with mine although I eventually sold most of them or upgraded the chassis, they will never go as well as a new one. In my case it was just the price of the parts, but if you are paying a model shop to do it, it might be worth selling them them and using the money towards a newer type. That is entirely your choice, some of the locos it is possible to put in a newer chassis, I eventually did this with most of mine surprisingly most tender driven Hornby bodies fit the newer chassis.

I know Vespa I am always saying the same, the "die hards" on a lot of Model Railway sites somehow think it is cute them having different part numbers. I was complaining about Hornby using at least two different sizes of valve gear/con rod screws, when somebody on a site complained it would ruin the detail. I mean I don't think the real locos have screws like that holding on their valve gear. The other thing I find amazing about Hornby spare parts is say a drawbar, sometimes it comes with screws sometimes it doesn't. Then there are chassis bottoms some come with pickups, some don't. I think the duchess tender bottom doesn't come with pickups but the Royal Scot does, they are exactly the same tender bottom on some models.

Hattons decoders work perfectly well with my Elite. I bought a pack of 5 because they were cheap. I did find that they had a tendency to get hot and kill themselves, but at the time I was modifying a lot of old locos, so there could have been lots of reasons. I then found Zimo decoders which seemed to be much more reliable and weren't much more expense.

@Ed I am always modifying locos and building them from bits. I treat it as a personal challenge to outwit Hornby in their quest to avoid supplying spare parts. All I do is figure out what the original loco was originally derived from, so A4s come from A3s and A1s so the models will do roughly the same. Well at least they carry roughly the same tenders. It is like the Duchess it has the same tender as the Royal Scot so the Hornby parts are the same. So I figured A4 has the same tender as an A1 Tornado, Hornby confuse things by say supplying a drawbar plus screw for a Tornado whereas for an A4 you might get the screw or not. Funny that response from Manny Montezdeoca, doesn't she realise on this site there is a spare parts section. Hornby need a big sort out before it is too late.

I found the right part it comes with a drawbar but you can bin that. You want X6339/1 it is a Tornado drawbar but comes with the right bolt. Do a google on it, Peters Spares have them but they charge £5.00 postage and packaging, there were a couple of other Sellers on EBay that do them with more sensible postage and packing prices. That is the tender end of the drawbar, if it is the loco end buy a X7215 drawbar, which is a Royal Scot drawbar which comes with the right bolt. Peters Spares doesn't have any, but I am sure other Suppliers do.

Part X9935 is the drawbar for a Schools loco that screw is completely wrong it probably has a M2 thread on it, instead of a coarse self tapping thread. I agree with you about the commonization of drawbar bolts it would save them money in the long run but just remember "it is all about the detail". It does not matter about the detail when a screw falls out and you can't get a replacement, so you can't run it anyway.

Edit still doesn't work, the post should read DCC decoder rather than controller. Mod note - did you try double clicking Edit in the context menu Colin.

Just because the loco is DCC fitted it should run on DC, the only ones that don't are the TTS fitted ones and that is because Hornby have disabled the DC option. A DCC fitted loco will take more throttle to make it move on DC but it should still work. The only thing you do have to be careful about is that you don't run a DCC fitted loco with an old DC controller as these don't filter the AC properly so the DCC controller decoder can be damaged by overvoltage. Surprisingly Sam in his videos said the Hornby one was rubbish, Jenny Kirk seemed to think it was ok. I know which one I believe, the one that doesn't get freebies off Hornby. Mod note - corrected per Colin’s post below.

Thinking about it as your Mallard is new, phone/email Hornby Customer Service explaining you have lost it. They will probably supply you with one, they did when I mailed them about a lost part from one of mine.

Peters Spares was the only spares supplier that did these, Hornby use M2 or M2.5 screws on all their other drawbars, but this is a stepped self tapping screw. The A4/Mallard tender doesn't have enough depth for a captive thread hence why they used this type. You could for the moment use a self tapping screw until he gets some more stock in. I have in the past used a self tapping screw and a valve gear distance piece to act as a spacer. I am always complaining about Hornby not selling specialist screws separately, I have recently given up. Don't what ever you do lose the stepped screw holding your front bogie to the bracket, they are impossible to get.

Surprising about DCC issues, I have a 16 foot by 8 foot layout with lots of different sections and I have no running issues with TTS decoders. The only issue I ever have is them dying, but I think that was more down to a cooling issue. I have an issue in that they are more susceptible to dirty track and stop and reset themselves. Interesting point though, on my brand new Rails class 812 with fitted sound, if the loco sees a bit of dirty track the LokSound sound decoder goes into DC runaway, it is also dependant on temperature as well. When I get round to it I will disable the DC setting and see if it fixes it.

I have had issues with TTS decoders blowing themselves up but not the issues like you are describing. I use Zimo decoders mostly but I do have a few locos fitted with Hornby decoders. I must admit the Hornby decoders are not as robust as the Zimo ones. You don't say what controller you are using for the DCC it may be that the controller is not programming them properly, that would cause issues.

@tvr after that disaster Hornby improved their act. I received the BR rebuilt W1 from Hornby and was very well packed, bubble wrap + the whole lot wrapped in foam rubber.. It came via DPD, so better delivery firm. The only issue was it got delivered at 7:08 in the morning and the post that tells you, was probably even earlier that morning before I got up (I had checked the night before).

I got two discount codes one for 12.5% and one for 10%. I used one for the black A3 as generally the max a retailer will offer is 10%, so I used the 12.5% one. I used the 10% for the LNER coronation coaches. Again I figured it would be the same discount as the retailer. Then of course if Hornby decide to add another 10% before Easter ( I doubt it as they have made more than enough enemies already), the price is fixed.

I don't know if you did but you should have changed the motor to a 5 pole one, if it had failed. I used the Pendolino one, it is a lot cheaper that the standard Tornedo motor and better. You need to remove the twin brass worm drives and replace them with the worm drive and flywheel from your old loco, but it runs much better. It sounds like the motor died and took the sound unit with it. One thing I have noticed is that the Hornby motors have an internal wire spring inside to keep the motor magnets away from the rotor. On two of my new motors this had fell out jamming the motor. Easy to fix if you know it has happened, you can tell by the shaft not rotating smoothly.

That is why I said Hornby were a bit naive, taking on Rapido, yes Hornby could bleed them dry but a big film studio, forget it. Surely Hornby realised a 20% rise in 6 months could cause issues, having said that I just got a mail from TCS to say their products were going up 20%. I had to think twice as to who TCS were then I realise they were the firm that makes the really small DCC decoder. The TCS decoder was expensive before the rise, so no big issue for me.