Hornby Brighton Belle issue

[ovbulleid]

Evening All

 

I fitted a gaugemaster 4-function 8-pin chip to my Hornby 5-Bel, and now the lights don’t work! Instructions say F1 brings them on but not on my controller. Does anyone have any ideas?

[SRman]

Interesting: DougN has his uncle's BB at present with exactly the same problem. The lights all work on DC with the blanking plug in place, but not when the decoder is in. We have both looked at it and as yet, have no solution.

[Baldy]

Reverse the decoder around. The wiring on the some of the Brighton Belles is incorrect. Reversing the decoder should fix it.

[RAF96]

Directional lights are usually on F0 but maybe GM chips are different.

Rob

[Stevelewis]

Evening All

 

I fitted a gaugemaster 4-function 8-pin chip to my Hornby 5-Bel, and now the lights don’t work! Instructions say F1 brings them on but not on my controller. Does anyone have any ideas?

 

Have  you  tried  other  F numbers  from  0  to   9 ?  I had  a  couple  of  the  1st  batch  which used  f5  for  the  lights  whilst  other one  from  the 1st  batch  worked on f1,  all using  Gaugemaster  decoders

 

Also  worth  mentioning  that  the  soldered  joints  on  the  cables to power  bogie  are  quite  fragile, if  for  any reason  you remove the power bogie from  the  main chassis,  be careful not to let  the  heavy power bogie drop down

[SRman]

Reverse the decoder around. The wiring on the some of the Brighton Belles is incorrect. Reversing the decoder should fix it.

 

That had no effect on our problem unit - we tried that as the first port of call.

 

We also tried other function key presses.

[SRman]

Directional lights are usually on F0 but maybe GM chips are different.

Rob

 

I'm not sure which unit ovbulleid has (he doesn't  specify), but Doug's uncle's unit is the umber/cream unit, which only has interior lighting, but no headcode lighting (i.e. no directional lights).

 

My own two units have no problems with the lighting working correctly in both the 1960 unit, and the 1969 blue/grey unit.

[ovbulleid]

I'm not sure which unit ovbulleid has (he doesn't specify), but Doug's uncle's unit is the umber/cream unit, which only has interior lighting, but no headcode lighting (i.e. no directional lights).

 

My own two units have no problems with the lighting working correctly in both the 1960 unit, and the 1969 blue/grey unit.

It’s the 1934 umber and cream version, I tried reversing the chip and had no luck at all

[RAF96]

With the blanking plate in the power for the lights comes from the rails. The plate bridges pickup, motor brush and light at each end, so going one way the light connection is positive and going the other way it is negative and vice-versa the other end.

 

The decoder uses the blue wire as a positive and switches the white, yellow, green and purple wires to complete the circuit.

You need to check the socket to see which of the four inner pins of the eight are connected and this will lead you to which decoder function is used for your lights, thence to which F button controls that function output.

 

The standard NMRA NEM652 8-pin colour connections are widely published, just google and view images for 8-pin decoder.

Rob

[tender]

It’s the 1934 umber and cream version, I tried reversing the chip and had no luck at all

 

I had the same problem with my 1934 version. Cured it by moving the white wire of the 8 pin decoder plug from pin 3 to pin 6.

[ovbulleid]

I had the same problem with my 1934 version. Cured it by moving the white wire of the 8 pin decoder plug from pin 3 to pin 6.

Made my first attempt at fiddling around with DCC sockets, and it worked immediately. Many thanks for the tip