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I am surprised to see you have several of these still in stock. However my impression of the UK market is that modelers tend to prefer to visit their local hobby shop and pick out the model they are interested in instead of buying direct. However given my positive experience with your service and shipping I would encourage anyone considering purchasing a Manor to take a look at what you have in stock and also get the word out to their friends that these are still available—Larry

I did several videos on using the Aegis system and various aspects of installing it in the fascia of a layout and installing a programming track. The production units are now in shipment from China to the UK and DCCconcepts plans to begin shipping pre-orders this coming week. The video series start with:

The Manor has a 3 pole skew wound motor with a flywheel. You can use BEMF with coreless motors, just never place a coreless motored loco without a decoder on a DCC powered track as the high frequency of the DCC power can overheat the motor.

With a modern top of the line transistorized controller with feedback I think you should be able to get better DC slow speed control. My most recent is a 20 year old MRC unit and with that the loco was OK but still tended to start with a lurch at about 1.7VDC. However it is as smooth as silk with DCC. The combination of the keep alive and back EMF control gives nice slow speed control without any stuttering or jerkiness.

After 4 1/2 months of operating my Manors I have finally posted a video with my observations. In spite of the clickbait title I love the Manor and after receiving my first, I went back and ordered a second. These really are some of the best steam locos in my collection. Here’s a link to the video.

Mine arrived dry so you might check the gears and axles. Apparently some got missed at the factory.

You’re not alone, the chimney on my Anthony Manor fell off too when I removed it from the box. That was a good thing as it allowed me to see that the copper top is actually a turned metal insert and not an appliqué. A few dabs of gel CA and the chimney was back in place in no time. The water fill hatch also almost came off but another dab of CA took care of it too.

Assuming what Juergen told me is correct about the LokPilot, then by simply turning button F6 off the stay alive should shut down and by turning button F6 on again the stay alive should work. At least that’s the way mine now works using a Tsunami2 but I have to use button F27. As I said I have not tested this as I do not have a LokPilot decoder. The ESU USA guys have for several years been telling us to turn the stay alive off when programming the decoder to prevent damage.

While it might seem bonkers, it is one of the realities of using the LokSound decoders and PowerPack stay alives. These require 3 connections—2 for the power connection and a third to control it. I think Lenz and DCCconcepts also use similar 3 wire stay alives. Accurascale could have designed the circuit board without the PowerPack and just included solder contacts on the circuit board and that way users could install either the 2 or 3 wire stay alive devices depending on the type of decoder to be used. But then users would complain because they would have to install their own devices and decoders. This is one reason why I write about model railroading instead of selling any of the stuff! As someone pointed out the stay alive may be redundant in these models anyway as they may be heavy enough and have enough power pickups to compensate. John at YouChoos has told me that the Zimo decoder he has used seems to work so it likely has a function on pin 13 that is on by default so check with him and see what he says. And as I related Juergen at ESU told me the LokPilot can control pin 13 using F6 but I don’t have one to test. That should cover about 95% of users and as English poet John Lydgate once said “You can please some of the people all of the time, you can please all of the people some of the time, but you can't please all of the people all of the time”—Larry

I found the answer as to how to turn the factory installed PowerPack stay alive on and off when using decoders other than the factory installed LokSound one. This gets a bit technical so hopefully it will be useful for you. Basically it comes down to knowing that pin 13 on the Next18 decoder socket/plug of the Accurascale circuit board is what is used to control the PowerPack. By default under the NMRA standard this is identified as Aux4 which is a logic output. In the LokSound decoder pin 13 is automatically turned on and off when required so you don’t need to do anything. When using a different decoder all you need to do is find a way to turn pin 13 on to activate the PowerPack. In my case I was using a SoundTraxx Tsunami2 steam decoder. I contacted their tech support folks who were able to tell me that by pressing function button F27 I could do just that. And sure enough it works now. However I will need to turn it off and on manually when programming the decoder and at other times should the function get turned off, if for example the command station is shut down. LokSound USA have for several years recommended that the PowerPack be turned off during programming to prevent damage to decoders. But what about other brands of decoders. I asked ESU about the LokPilot 5 and was told function button F6 will turn it on and off. Unfortunately there is no comprehensive listing I could find of these settings. Consequently you will need to check with the tech support folks for your decoder. Also there may be decoders for which there is no function assigned to control pin 13. But you may be able to change the function settings and map it to a specific function button. The important thing to remember is pin 13 which is by the standard Aux4. Good luck with your specific brand of decoder—Larry

Thanks for clearing that up, although I had hopes I had missed something and this could be sorted without a major overhaul. OK, so tomorrow out comes the circuit board and in goes a bigger speaker and SoundTraxx UK steam decoder.

Apparently I am missing those. I have both a DCC fitted Cookham Manor and DCC ready Anthony Manor. With Cookham Manor I received the green booklet on the history of the locos, the instructions with the exploded diagrams and info on fitting the crew and details, and a sheet with a list of the DCC functions. Anthony Manor just had the 2 booklets, there was no yellow “warning” card with either and nothing on these pin configs or dip switches you refer to. Can you post a pdf or scan of what you are referring to? And yes, I just pulled everything out of both boxes to recheck.

What dip switch? The Next18 socket and pin arrangement is a standard and should be consistent between all Next18 configured decoders and sockets. If ESU/Accurascale have configured the socket differently for this decoder/installation then that is something they have not mentioned in the past! Can you clarify exactly what you mean?

Well, I give up on the stay alive. I have tested both Anthony Manor and Cookham Manor and the stay alive feature in both works with the LokSound decoder. However when I swap in a DCCconcepts Zen decoder or a Soundtraxx Tsunami2 the stay alive doesn’t work. I think I will gut the tender in one of them and hard wire a Soundtraxx UK steam decoder and put in a larger speaker enclosure for more sound. One thing I did find out is that the starting voltage is about 1.7VDC and with a DCC decoder you definitely can get both locos to creep a lot slower than with a DC controller. I imagine that if one had the time and patience to fiddle with the speed control CVs you might be able to go even slower but hard to say. One would hope that the Accurascale DCC expert or ESU tech would have optimized the speed control for the factory installed decoder—Larry

Sorry, I meant getting the stay alive on the PCB to work with a decoder other than the factory installed one.

I just heard from John at YouChoos and he says he has had no trouble getting the stay alive to work with his Zimo MS580 sound decoders. Has anyone here had any luck getting theirs to work with a decoder other than the factory equipped decoder? It definitely didn’t work with the DCCconcepts decoder I tried yesterday. I still have a SoundTraxx Tsunami2 Next18 sound decoder I can try tomorrow. As for the growl it was a little louder using the DCCconcepts decoder than the factory one but that is with 2 different locos. Maybe tomorrow I will pop out the factory decoder and replace it first with the DCCconcepts one and then the SoundTraxx and see the difference. I love a good mystery and this qualifies!

Not likely, as it does it on DC and DCC, even with no stay alive functionality. I tested Anthony (DCC ready) and it growls a lot in one direction at slow speed but is quiet in the other so I suspect the gearbox. Will it quiet down after some extended running? However I also have not completely discounted the motor and PWM interactions. Maybe some fiddling with the drive algorithm could quiet it more.

I am just testing my new Anthony Manor (arrived last night) and it does the same thing. Lift the tender off the rails and it slows down. So there seems to be some interaction with the circuit board. I plan to eventually gut the tender and hardwire a decoder which will bypass the circuit board entirely—it will be interesting to see how this changes. Right now I have given it a few test runs straight out of the box and it is in the midst of a 1 hour break-in run. I measured track voltage and it appears the loco begins to move at about 1.7-1.8VDC—will that change without the circuit board? Will it run slower? I also wonder how slow speed ops would change if the DC pickups are connected directly to the motor, bypassing the circuit board? Of course you would lose the firebox flicker effect but maybe that is part of this interaction—Larry

Just got an email from DHL that they have picked up Anthony Manor and it is on its way with delivery expected by 5 Oct. So I guess I will be busy next weekend giving it a breakin and installing a decoder, etc. I am excited to see just how slow it will run on various DC controllers before conversion to DCC—Larry

Well I now have a DHL tracking number for Anthony Manor, so lord willing and the rivers don’t rise it should be here by this time next week. However that just means that DHL has received the shipping info from Accurascale but not picked up the package yet, does DHL pickup in Birmingham on Saturdays and does anyone work at the Accurascale warehouse on weekends?

I sympathize with you. Those little handrails at the front corners are a real pain to reattach and the connector plug can be difficult to remove and reinstall. I have a DCC Concepts Next18 decoder which should be compatible with the ESU PowerPack and plan to give it a test when Anthony Manor arrives. I am beginning to wonder whether this board is so specifically designed for the LokSound decoder that the PowerPack may only work with it. But the socket is a standard wiring configuration so it should be compatible with any Next18 decoder.

Have you tried swapping the LokPilot decoder with the LokSound decoder in Erlestoke Manor? That would answer whether it is a circuit board failure or just something related to the LokPilot?

I have a video on my YouTube channel on speed matching DCC decoder equipped locos so they operate together at the same scale speeds. While I use a speedometer for this you can also match them by running them on the same track together and adjusting their relative speeds while running with programming on the main. Here is a link to that video.

Don’t know the ratio but it is designed to take advantage of the motor speed range and provide a scale top speed of the prototype locos themselves. The motor was originally a high quality one designed for use in some dental applications so is not a cheap one. It has 3 poles but is skew wound and that along with the flywheel provides smooth slow speeds without any cogging. While it does not seem capable of the extremely slow crawling speeds on which Sam likes to base his reviews, with DCC and the stay alive capacitors it starts at a prototype speed on step 1 and moves through points and frogs without any hesitation or variation in speed—Larry

A lot of interesting discussion today about the decoders and slow speed operation. So far I have not been able to test mine on DC as I don’t have a NEXT18 blanking plug. However I have ordered a DCC ready Anthony Manor and once it arrives will give it a break in and tests on various DC controllers. My suspicion is that a transistorized DC controller that provides PWM power at the track should offer performance similar to the PWM power delivered by a decoder. On the other hand DCC decoders also have feedback monitoring (BEMF) that can improve motor performance, something most DC controllers do not offer. Here in the US we typically operate HO/OO scale at about 14 volts DCC and I know some guys who use 12 volts to give proportionally slower speeds due to the fact that a decoder provides about 1-1.2 volts less to the motor than DCC track voltage. I use DCC Concepts Alpha Meters to monitor track voltage and amperage—Larry