Clement Matchett

Actually, I think they are the supports for the outboard ends of the cylinder drain cocks. My engine has had ‘the snip’ and hasn’t derailed again so far!

I too have wondered about those..some sort of guard for the bogie wheels in the prototype? My William Whitelaw also derails sometimes on 3rd radius and is unusable on radius 2, though my Falcon and Silver King are fine. I will get my Xurons out…. Thanks TTilmm!

Call me thick if you like, Chris, but at first, I didn’t realise that the accel and decel figures work counter-intuitively. If they are set to max on the ‘settings’ screen, the locos crawl for ages!

All of this confirms what I had concluded some while ago…if you haven’t got gold standard Wi-Fi, you are going to need gold standard patience to get these files uploaded onto your decoder. I got up in the small hours one morning to load a loco, and it all fell into place as if it were coal from a coaling tower! In contrast, yesterday our broadband went down - it occasionally does, but is back now. Flying Scotsman stopped several times. Don’t ask me why.

I could be wrong here, because it was over 60 years ago, but I took a photograph of what I think is the up Queen of Scots Pullman service a few miles out of Edinburgh. I think that service was the only Pullman one. Note that there is no headboard, that the loco is a BR standard class ( I presume that the intended Pacific had failed), and that the first coach behind the tender is a brake.

Fill Yer Boots!

Ad Daedalus I take your point, but in one of my other worlds, keeping a harpsichord in playing order, the word is that graphite lubricant gets everywhere. I have never used it. There isn’t much of a market for weathered harpsichords!

Thanks, I’ll try that!

I have got a bit of experience now with the TT120 track, engines and rolling stock, and am not entirely happy. Of the eight Pullmans I have, only the three which came with the Scotsman set are what I would describe as free-rolling…the lit ones don’t roll well and on my layout, the engines struggle to get four of them moving. I also have the three Mk1 coaches from the Eastener set. They roll embarrassingly well, like the unlit Pullmans, and disappear to any minor low points in my 18mm baseboard if not watched! As for the tank wagons, I have six Carless and six Mobil and was hoping to get a longish tanker train working with one of my A3s, but they both struggle on R2 with a rake of six, though a bit less on R3. Have others had this issue, and if so, found a solution? Oil springs to mind, but which oil? Peter

Thanks RA, I have Falcon in addition to WW, and I notice that the clearance between the forward wheels of the front bogie of WW and what I take to be some species of safety guards attached to it, is infinitesimal on WW in comparison with that on Falcon. Even with a large magnifying glass, I can’t be sure that there is any clearance, though I haven’t noticed the front wheels binding. But it is obvious that the rear wheels lift completely off. I haven’t noticed any persistent derailing with my two A1/3s, though they are not perfect. And, the faster WW goes, the less the wheels lift! Weight transfer, perhaps? All sortable, I expect Peter

Like many others, I have received, later than those who pre-ordered, the William Whitelaw set, and I duly installed the HM7K decoder. No persistent problems with that. But the loco kept derailing on R3. I had read that I should remove some black tape which had been attached to the underside of the chassis, above the front bogie, unbeknown to Margate, and I duly did so. But the derailment continued. After some thought and a lot of dismantling, I decided that I had made matters worse by removing the tape, so I replaced it with a tiny rectangle of T-Rex tape (quite thick, but dinosaurs were!). I thought that since the front bogie was lifting on the curves, it would be a good thing to restrict its ability to do so by installing a bump stop. This evening WW did 20 circuits of my layout, but at that point, I turned it off, and poured a G&T. I may not have solved my problem, but I certainly haven’t made it worse. And I thought this:- Are Chinese people so dull or controlled, that they don’t want to to see the beautiful models that they make running round a track? And if they aren’t, and my Chinese acquaintances are spectacularly better than I am intellectually, and if they notice that there are teething problems with the design, why wouldn’t they try to improve it in a cost effective manner before shipping their product Felixstowe? Hence the Black Tape?

I have got four HM7k decoders which work fine using the Hornby 4 amp power supply. No burn outs or malfunctions of any kind. The only criticism I have is that establishment or re-establishment of the Bluetooth connection takes 10 seconds or so. But once established, it does what it says on the tin!

I know that this topic has been ventilated before, but this forum has become so big that a search for ‘Derailing’ produced 43 pages when I last carried it out. Nightmare! I have two A1/A3s and A4 Falcon which seem happy with my track laying skills, and A4 William Whitelaw which isn’t, and persistently derails. I have tried some of the suggestions here on the forum for solving what seems to be the major problem, namely that on radius 3 curves, the front bogie lifts off the track. Mainly on the rear axle of the bogie but sometimes on both. This morning I put both A4s on my baseboard with their bogies hanging over the edge, and that on Falcon was clearly lower than that on William W. So I took WW’s bogie out and slackened off the central screw. My understanding is that by turning this screw, the distance from the underside of the loco chassis to the top of the bogie can be varied - the tighter the screw, the higher the bogie, because the screw is in effect sprung against what should be a captive nut on the bogie’s underside. But in my loco, the nut is not captive, but is free. I am considering gluing it in to return it to captivity. Any comments?

I am pretty sure that most of the problems people are experiencing in loading sound profiles are due to Wi-Fi issues, as SteveM6 said. Despite being on an 80 mps loop here in rural Shropshire, I have had some problems loading up sound onto my new William Whitelaw. But I also have another A4, which does have sound. When I exported the sound profile (SD0380 from that and imported it into William Whitelaw, it worked first time. I assume that was a Bluetooth transfer, not a Wi-fi one?

Yes, Fishman, you must be right. The picture on Amazon looks the same as the three I already have and I have ordered one. Never mind! It is a good day to be foolish! Thanks, Guys

Hmm! Excuse my ignorance, I am basically a chemist, not an electronics or IT guy, but are the Next18 decoders which are available from retailers Bluetooth enabled? And if so, are they configured to accept the tailored profiles available from Hornby?

Having bought, on eBay, an Easterner set, largely because of my wish to back up my photo of William Whitelaw, posted here some weeks ago, with a model, I discover that the Next 18 HM7000 decoders are now out of stock! So I can’t run it without cannibalisation (if that is how you spell it!) And like straight track, with no information about when they might become available again.

Fair enough, Fishman. But it would be good if “cutting a little slack” were adopted by both Posters and Moderators. There is irritation on both sides, see my new post re N18 decoders. Peter

Ad Richard-347144 Yes! There are one or two, some amongst the mods, who genuinely try to help, but equally, there are some who are clearly tired of all this and are expressing themselves in exasperated tones. Clear off then! I am not an aficionado of social media, and don’t indulge, generally. I worked in Very Big Business years ago, and if a major launch had been done without adequate stock, then the brand managers and their superiors would have been delivering pizzas for the rest of their lives!

I don’t know about the hum…I use the 4 amp transformer, but noise like hum is, from what I have learned, more a function of the controller in use, rather than the loco. More, but not exclusively, responsible. Have you got to a position on your device where, if you can see all three function pages, you can press the yellow control icon far left? You may need to press the Resume Operational Control tab at the bottom of the page, and then ensure that the tab, top right, is in red saying Stop Layout. If it is green and says Resume Layout, I assume it thinks you have just engineered a train crash! Like you, apparently, I am learning, but it doesn’t sound as if your installation is faulty: I had very similar issues. Just trying to help…Fishmanoz and RAF96 are far more knowledgeable than I.

I don’t know. But I suspect that if the whole of the profile is not working, then nothing will work. I will be corrected, but my inclination would be to get up early and try loading SD036 again. That is what I did. If the Function pages are empty, I suspect that your download is incomplete.

“…twenty years time..” Not for me! ….and mind you don’t crash your Bentley, or not for you, either!

Excellent! It does! Unfortunately for Hornby, it drives you to Peco.

All three of my Gresleys are working well with their three respective sound profiles now, though I haven't really got enough track yet. Some of the baseboard looks like a layout and a bit, almost like a railway!