sparaxis

I would offer that the problem is poor design. Given the space constraints it is sometimes a trick to get it right. I have many locomotives from Roco, Brawa, Fleischmann and others where it works just fine. Many (most) of the manufacturers of British outline seem to have a slapdash approach to NEM coupler pockets and kinematic mechanisms. The kinematic mechanism is intended to operate INDEPENDENTLY of any bogies etc. In my experience, the earlier generations of European models with bogie driven mechanisms are the only ones that give problems. Designed to the specification, everything from short and long wheelbase four wheelers to rigid frame locos and tenders work fine. Perhaps it is because no-one offers a true close coupling for the British market. Kinematic mechanisms are designed to work with rigid couplings, which a tension lock is most assuredly not.

Those of us of a certain age will remember the introduction of the RG4 in the late 1970s. They were anything but cheap. My DJH class 5 that I built with the 1616 version in the early 1980s still runs like a dream. "Cheap" coreless motors are a relatively recent phenomenon. While conventional motors have progressed from the old open framed types like the X04, coreless motors still have the following advantages: Higher efficiency, lack of magnetic locking/cogging, higher power density. The superior low speed control goes without saying (given a high quality gear train), and the power density allows tiny models that would not have been possible before. Undersized motors of any sort are a recipe for tears. I have an old heavy diecast Liliput 2-6-0 tank loco that had a cheapy open frame Mabuchi motor like that fitted to the Dapol/Hornby pug. The poor thing could barely pull itself around the layout. Replacing it with the open frame motor used in smaller Fleischmann HO locos cured that problem. A.N.Other's Bo-Bo was fitted with a ridiculously small motor. It would have been just as sad with a small N-scale "conventional" motor. It runs very nicely, light engine, at speeds of up to about 40 mph!

M.B. Klein is still a great place to buy stuff and is apparently one of the larger US mail order retailers. If you live in the area you can arrange to pick up your order in person. At some level, this doesn't really surprise me as the owner of the business died in mid-2020. See the attached obituary from the Baltimore Sun. I was there shortly before they went online only, and when chatting to one of the employees they told me that they had far more stock than they could ever hope to display in the store. I had been looking for some common items and they had to go and get it "from the back". By that stage online orders were already more than 90% of their business. MB_Klein.pdf

I buy the #156 in bulk packs, "scale size" they are a little neater than the #146. But they work great considering that a loose coupled train should be about 3mm between buffers when in tension.

Strangely enough, the major European manufacturers (including the Hornby subsidiaries) have got close coupling mechanisms well sorted out. Many steam locos have effective loco-tender mechanisms too. Coupler pockets of both types are to specification, including the little swallowtail NEM 363 that is intended to be mounted on a kinematic mechanism. The standard UK implementation where the NEM 363 is mounted at a non-standard location and a bendy NEM 362 is mounted in it is just bizarre. As for wagon size being a "problem", some of the Trix 19th century wagons are tiny (eg Trix 24099). Ironically, Bachmann in their Liliput brand makes a very nice close coupling, which is basically a mini-tension lock with guiding horns to make it "rigid" (Liliput L939105) . How do I know this? With well over a 1000 pieces of rolling stock, there are very few that have problems, and those are typically where the designer has deviated from proven practice. As far as UK outline is concerned, within passenger rakes, I use a variety of European couplings, depending on what works best in the circumstances. For goods wagons, I have given up and I remove the NEM mounts and install long-shank Kadees as the NEM mount ones are both ugly and expensive.

A little melodramatic perhaps...but it's not going to stop me from getting the siphon I have on order. (I'll see if I can retrofit a Fleischmann 6574) Goods wagons get the NEM pockets removed and replaced with body mounted Kadees. It helps of course that loose coupled wagons had up to 9 inches between buffers! Fran, Accurascale does a MUCH better job at doing things right than some of the "established" players in the market. I have always marveled at the qualitative difference between the "British" and "Continental" models from a nameless manufacturer.

Sigh... Another fail for the British Model Industry. A stunningly beautiful model without kinematic close coupling. Bogie mounted couplings are so 1980s. I realize that fitting a body mounted NEM 362 in kinematic mount might be a challenge, but that is why the NEM 363 exists. For example, Roco used the 363 in their Bavarian bogie coaches that also have the bogies very close to the end of the coach and where a NEM 362 wouldn't fit.

Although the valve gear is not fully functional, in the real world on a layout it is probably not a big deal. (I can think of a few recent models with bright red inside valve gear that NEVER moves.) For example, many models have their Walschaerts valve gear in mid gear, so the valve rod barely moves if at all. The fascinating thing with Stephenson valve gear, or Allan in the case of the T3, is the way the rods move, with respect to each other. But, and this is a big but, the motion of the gear is probably exaggerated compared to the amount of travel on the prototype. I have a Tillig narrow gauge loco where the rods and link are a single piece and they look ok when on the layout as the travel is limited. It won't stop me considering a Bellerophon. What probably will is that I have way too many small industrials already.

Difficult, but not impossible. the Fleischmann T3 had this in 1985, and again in 2011 with the "Berg", the Trix/Marklin King Ludwig in 1993 and Trix/Marklin T3 in the early 2000s

A lot of Hornby's newer locos have small motors with very powerful rare earth magnets. They may not be coreless, but with respect to characteristics are more like coreless motors than the old open frame dinosaurs that some of us grew up with. (It takes quite some tweaking of "default" decoder characteristics to get them to perform at their best, which is very good!) Alan

I got an email a couple of weeks back say that due to unanticipated demand, my pack would be delayed.

Oh dear...I went ahead and ordered 4 of the six wheelers, that I wasn't going to order because I ordered LMS, MR, SECR and LNER ones. Well, I guess they will look a lot prettier behind the Dean Single than those tatty old shorty clearstories. The livery application is just so good..it was impossible to resist.

It isn't only a UK problem. Popular ESU decoders are out of stock at many suppliers in the USA and Germany. German magazines have had editorials about the challenges that manufacturers are having with supply chain issues. Several manufacturers ESU included have had to redesign products over the last couple of years due to component supply issues. (As an aside, I work for a company that manufactures railway electronics. The lead times for some components is more than a year.)

Funnily enough, I've never had a problem with Roco-Line: (400 locos, more than 1000 pieces of rolling stock) What I have had a problem with is Hornby's very casual approach to wheel profiles. Unlike almost everyone else that uses profiles that more-or-less approximate NMRA or NEM recommendations with nice tapered and rounded flange...Hornby's often has super sharp flanges that manage to climb over any irregularity on the track. To the point that I even had some with a reverse taper. Any issues I have had have always been "bad wheels/bad back to back"

Agreed to both points. For me it is really about the convenience of opening the loco, removing the blanking plug and popping in the decoder, as opposed to struggling where to put the decoder, fighting with a mess of wires, and taking several tries in getting the loco body back on again without crushing something. After all there is no cost saving these days in buying an 8 pin decoder against any other configuration in the same range.

My experience with many Hornby locos is that they may well have a 8-pin socket, but they also have no logical place for the decoder to go, or limitations on what decoders will actually fit. (I think the 8F was a prime example, but many tender locos with the socket in the loco are the same.) And then there is the question of are the wires too long (the usual case) or too short. It ends up being really messy. I usually remove the socket and hard wire, giving me the space to use almost any modern decoder. But that defeats the purpose of a socket. And while the direct plug decoders are great in that they define the decoder location, you are correct in that changing for example from a socket as mentioned above to a more modern configuration mandates redesign and re-tooling. I suspect we will not see Hornby re-tooling just to fit a better socket. The commercial gains will be small. Think of Bachmann's chassis updates...they stopped doing them for a reason. Think of Roco, they were one of the first to adopt the Plux series of sockets, but they still are re-issuing locos with 8-pin sockets, with only some of their higher volume models getting new PCBs.

I think that this is one of the "Easy Upgrades" in the sense is it a PCB upgrade, with no other changes required. The older class 40 already had a 21 pin MTC, so it was a case of changing the PCB to a PLUX22. So the space is the same, no changes required to the locomotive body shell or chassis. Making a new PCB (a fairly routine activity) is certainly much less expensive than having to change major tooling to make space that currently does not exist.

I can understand a manufacturer not wanting to update an existing model from 8-pin to something else, especially as in the case of some Hornby locos that would require tooling modifications to the chassis if nothing else. However many Hornby tender locos HAD 21 pin sockets in the days when Hornby was using ESU sound decoders. I think the issue is more about designing NEW tooling but still persisting with 8-pin. It really makes no sense at all.

Coreless motors are high efficiency, compact and without cogging. Why wouldn't you want to use them if the price is right? Most of the elderly "feedback" controllers out there were designed to deal with beasts like X04s or plastic fantastic pancake motors. There are some very good iron cored motors out there, but many of them will choke on a 40 year old controller as well. (Case in point, some of the motors in Rivarossi steam locos.) Running at 12V, a modern rare-earth magnet iron cored motor may have a back emf of 10V for example, compared with 6-7V of an X04. If the controller circuitry is expecting 6-7V and gets 10V, things can get very weird.

The biggest advantage Of MTC-21, Plux-22 or Next-18 is that they have a predefined installation space. Open the loco. Remove the dummy plug. Install the decoder. Close the body. There are lots of "DCC ready" Hornby locos with 8-pin sockets with no clear space or location for the decoder. I have lots of locos where the only way to install a decoder was to remove the 8 pin socket and hard wire. Hornby should follow their OWN EXAMPLE (Rivarossi, Jouef etc) and use Next-18 and MTC-21. Personally I prefer Plux...but whatever. Contrary to the statement earlier in this thread, the sound and silent versions of Next-18 are compatible by specification. The sound version is larger, and has loudspeaker outputs where the silent version allows for 2 additional functions. The specification is clear the Next-18 hardware must be designed in such a way they the sound and silent versions can be swopped without hardware damage. The difference between the NEM/RCN/current NMRA versions of the MTC-21 and the "Marklin" and older NMRA version is that the standard has AUX 3 and AUX 4 at logic level whereas the other version has these amplified. Many modern decoders actually allow these outputs to be configured either way using appropriate CVs. So yes, Hornby needs to get their act together. As far as I am aware they are the only manufacturer bringing out new models (new tooling) with 8-pin interfaces.

When I started modeling in the 1970s they were my choice. Much neater than those horrible Triang couplings. I also had a lot of Dublo, so that helped. You saw a lot of layouts using them in the magazines of the time, and then they faded away. Now I use Kadee couplers instead.

At least Peco generally keeps stuff in the catalog for years. Just think what a mess it would be if they followed the model that everyone else seems to have gone for. "You didn't pre-order your left hand medium radius turnouts when they were announced last year? Sorry, sold out." Or even worse. "I know you pre-ordered but we were short supplied and they are sold out at the factory and we don't know if they will ever do a re-run." Put's on old curmugeon hat... my first Peco turnouts had plastic locking springs, not the nice metal ones they use today. Bought "second hand" (Remember when we said that, not "Pre-owned") in the mid 1970's. If I still had them, I could replace them on the layout with modern small radius ones and they would fit. Or simplex couplings....Does anyone still use them. (Or does Peco have a 50 year old box hiding somewhere in their storeroom?)

I use both. I like the Railcom plus feature of ESU, and I have a lokprogrammer so I tend to stick with them. The Zimo locos I have were factory installs, using Zimo for retrofits, I would need to get their programmer. Motor control with ESU is fine, auto tune usually can adjust even for really oddball motors. If it doesn't work correctly, it is useful to check if there are any other electronic components in the motor circuit, such as chokes, capacitors and what have you. It is important that the loco is in good working order as well.

My position exactly, unless I can buy a pre-installed Zimo or ESU, I'd rather fit my own Zimo or ESU. Firstly, they work very well, and secondly it makes my life easier to have commonality of CVs etc. My experience with second (or third tier) decoders has not filled me with joy.

A lot of highly respected European brands have used "square" bearings with no evident problems. Roco and Trix certainly, and I think some of the few Fleischmann locos with keeper plates did so as well. Nice brass or bronze bearings are great, but with plastic gears that split and "throw away" motors with no available replacements, I suspect that they will be the least problem facing the longevity of locos. An oddity is that Roco used/uses PLASTIC bearing sleeves on some locos, and these run in metal frames.