A3 Hornby 21pin actually 8pin

[Dan-361598]

Hello,

I’ve been excited on the arrival of my new 21 pin A3 Harvester from Hornby. It has arrived and I also duly ordered a D&H 21 pin sound decoder because I wanted some features the hm 7000 21 pin decoders don’t offer; namely adjusting chuff sounds.

Ive just removed the tender from the loco and am about to install my D&H 21pin sound decoder and to my surprise the pin socket in the loco is an 8 pin socket, despite the box clearly saying the loco is dcc ready for 21 pin decoder. Am I missing something obvious? Or is this an advertising blunder by Hornby? Or am I missing something entirely?

Ive also preordered other 21 pin locos coming and hoping they won’t surprise me and be 8 pin as well.

Can anyone assist? I’ve added photos in case I’ve missed something obvious.

Thanks in advanced.

[P-Henny]

Same issue reported before in a recent thread. Appears to be a Hornby documentation error. Hornby documentation errors are far too common both currently and historically.

[96RAF]

It is possible to better match chuffs on HM7K decoders by way of adjusting the complex speed curve, fiddly but folk have reported good results.

One would like to think that 8-pin module could be swapped for a similar 21-pin module.

[Going Spare]

This is a known problem which has been reported a number of times - see the "A3 2573 Harvester R30216" thread in the General Discussion section of the forum. Contact Customer Services to see what help they may be able to offer.

[Dan-361598]

Thank you for the speedy replies. I obviously missed these threads.

I ended up hard wiring the decoder to the loco and it’s working. It’s a lovely loco. Great detail and I quite like the new tender connector Hornby are using. Just a shame my assumption that the set up of this loco was going to be a quick plug and play process was wrong. A bit of a bad mark for a £250 loco where major elements of the kit a promoted incorrectly.

I’ve already pre-ordered the lner p2 Lord President 21 pin and already bought a 21 pin sound decoder for it. The website still says it’s a 21pin decoder for the P2. I’m hoping Hornby have learnt from their mistake, and that I can be confident in assuming their future products reflect the key specs as documented and advertised.

Thanks again for the replies.

Cheers,

Dan

[ColinB]

You can actually buy the 21 pin DCC circuit board Peters Spares has two. The connections to the tender are exactly the same as the new 8 pin PCB. £18.00 seems a bit expensive but you can sometimes pick them up second hand. It is a pity Hornby don't sell as parts for a reasonable price but there again that is Hornby.

[Moccasin]

I’ve suggested a couple of times before that the website product listings need a thorough check as there are far too many errors and inconsistencies, but the product box being incorrectly labelled is even worse. Am assuming it wasn’t a manufacturing mistake!

[Going Spare]

I can't speak with any authority but I believe it was a change to specification made unilaterally by the China factory with Hornby UK probably unaware until queried by customers.

[Moccasin]

I can't speak with any authority but I believe it was a change to specification made unilaterally by the China factory with Hornby UK probably unaware until queried by customers.

 

 

That makes sense but just shows the problems inherent in remote manufacturing. I know there are significant benefits in manufacturing in China but having a lack of control over output seems a key risk.

[96RAF]

Hornby has confirmed it was an error at factory level and that although they have changed the product page to reflect the 8-pin decoder there is nothing they can do about the packaging that is already on the streets.

Anyone who feels they were misled into buying the wrong decoder could of course ask Hornby Customer Services nicely if they would be prepared to do a straight swap 21 for 8.

[Pendragon Sailing]

I would hope it wouldn’t be just a straight swap….the 21 Pin decoder is more expensive than the 8 Pin !

[Andy-374475]

Just brought Mallard, it's the other way round, advertised as 8pin, opened the tender 21pin 🤬, had already ordered the chip from Roads and Rails......

[Splatz]

Hornby are not checking their website details diligently. R30268 85th anniversary Mallard details originally mentioned it had 21 pin and 8 pin in two different places of the Tech Spec section. Whilst waiting for this loco, I pointed this out to them, and they eventually corrected website to just say it has 21 pin.

Sadly who ever did this did not change the TXS decoder code in the Hornby Decoder Compatibility Primary field, as you can see here (e.g. HM7000-8TXS is actually the 8 pin TXS code not the 21 pin TXS code):

You couldn't make this stuff up.

No matter how many people point these problems out to them, they still cannot get the details correct. Maybe they should pay me for proof-reading their website details.

When I ordered Harvester it had the same problem of conflicting website details where it showed 8 pin and 21 pin in Tech Spec section (and I eventually received an 8 pin version despite the box end showing 21 pin).

Even the loco instruction sheets for other 2023 locos I purchases show both 8-pin and 21 pin decoder fitting diagrams in the section on how to fit the decoder. So this tells me they definitely know the factory is sending incorrect tender pin configurations. However, displaying incorrect details on your website (like the above incorrect TXS code) is pretty much unforgivable.