Hello all.

After a busy weekend of soldering, testing and praying to the porcelin god ( self inflicted), Its time for another update.

saturday started off very rocky and only got worse through out the day. We did however manage to pick up some spanking new decoders with stay alives from DCC concepts, and started to install them. 5 Locomotives needed decoders in them ( one really was a Hornby replacement job).

The first that we started with was an Stanier 8F. Relativley straight forward, as a socket is provided for the instilation. Surprisingly however, the wires are not colour coded, and the socket is missing the standard mark that identifies the orientation of the 8 pin plug. Not to worry, as the orientation is only important for the direction of running ( which can actually be programmed within the decoder ) however its also an easy case of rotating the plug 180 degrees to correct the direction of running.

Arguably the hardest part of the install ( and believe me it was not hard ) was placing the decoder and stay alive. Luckily, Hornby have created a recess up the front that is able to easly fit the stay alive in it. So once the decoder was taped on, and the stay alive placed up the front of the body, it was a simple task of relpacing the body. .... TADA .

It was a smooth running loco before on DC , the addition of the stay alive and a decoder has made it run even better.

Next in the firing line was a bullied light pacific ( spam can) " wilton". This and the 8F I was lucky to pick up for next to nothing at a hobby show ( because they were next to nothing I could validate them to the missus who was standing next to me. Surprisingly I have had a couple of people offer to take it off my hands. (Can some one tell me if "wilton" is special or something?, I picked it up because I liked the look of it and it was in my opinion well detailed and a nice looking model),

Anycase, After a bit of percerveirance, the body came off (It is tack glued at the front / the chasis paint was stuck to the inside ). Research from the internet showed that the chasis predates the 8 pin plug, So i was expecting black and blue wires like in the 8F, however I was pleased to find red and black wires through out. A simple 1 minute soldering job, and decoder was installed. The Bonus of spam can loco's is the amount of space inside the locomotive, and therefore instilation was a dawdle. Down the track we might look at a smoke unit and possibly a sound instilation ( have to work out where).

A J52 tank was next. Its the standard one that comes with the hormby dcc east coast pullman set. While not the most detailed little tank loco, it has become my practice and testing loco where i try new methods. Prior to the decoder instilation I had installed gold pick ups on the wheels ( a suggestion from richard at DCC concepts ) which has greatly improved their ability to recieve power from the track, and as gold never tarnashes, provides an opertunity for a self cleaning pickups and wheels. This worked out really well, So the next logical step was to upgrade the decoder to a better type. Decoder instilation was straight forward. I took out the old 4 pin decoder + 4 pin harness ( to be used later as I will explain) and set these aside. The mounting bracket was cut off using a dremel tool clone ( ozito, very popular amounst the members of my club ). The 8 pin socket was snipped of the end of the new decoder and the decoder was hard wired onto the loco. The hardest bit was finding a place for the stay alive to reside ( very valuable for small wheelbase tank locomotives ). In the end this got put into the small gap at the rear of coal bunk. Running is supurb now.

What did i do with the Hornby decoder you ask... ( Most would say take to it with a hammer) ... Well, I was given a Hornby goods set with the little blue diesel in it ( class 06 ). More due to sentimental value ( plus, I can let nephews ( and neices, gender equality ) etc run it when they come around ) I decided it would be nice to run with DCC.

Simple install, with the harness wired directly onto chasis. and then the decoder pluging into the harness through the 4 pin prong. What surprised me though was the running could be slowed down significantly ( for a railroad chaisis, with cheap motor) that slow enough speed could be obtained to use it as a shunter.

Also got bored and stuck a cheap plastic OO figure from Marc Mart on there painted in a blue coveralls with a red neckerchief )

That ended the run of easy instilations.... Then the nightmare started.

2 Locos left - A Hornby castle class done up as hogwarts express with the working head light

- A 4MT, the consitantly fried Hornby decoders