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Hornby APT (2020 tooling)


PaulRhB
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For those of you with retailer orders, I'm pleased to say our delivery of coaches and NDM's has been booked in for Wednesday so we know they are shipping to retailers this week! Look out for them arriving on the shelves of your local model shop soon! :D

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X11547 is a standard Hornby lighting board.

its stuck onto the roof of several previously issued Mk1, mk2, mk3’s.

 

I think the higher roofs on those, and positioning by a toilet make it less noticeable on those earlier coaches. It has been criticised previously as being not in sync to compartments, and lighting the BSK in the past, but it is a generic fitting.

 

I was hoping they would go down the magic wand route for these, and use a cr2032 like with the generics… concealing that battery in the floor of the coach would be much easier. I have a rake of Coronation coaches earlier this year and the duchess cannot pull them due to pickup drag, similar too with the last Brighton Belle release… so I hope the APT can pull these, though being non-steam and a big metal weight inside i’m assuming it can.

 

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31 minutes ago, adb968008 said:

X11547 is a standard Hornby lighting board.

its stuck onto the roof of several previously issued Mk1, mk2, mk3’s.

 

I think the higher roofs on those, and positioning by a toilet make it less noticeable on those earlier coaches. It has been criticised previously as being not in sync to compartments, and lighting the BSK in the past, but it is a generic fitting.

 

I was hoping they would go down the magic wand route for these, and use a cr2032 like with the generics… concealing that battery in the floor of the coach would be much easier. I have a rake of Coronation coaches earlier this year and the duchess cannot pull them due to pickup drag, similar too with the last Brighton Belle release… so I hope the APT can pull these, though being non-steam and a big metal weight inside i’m assuming it can.

 

I’ve bought a NDM coach so my 7 car set will have two power cars for 14. That should do it! 

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6 minutes ago, miles73128 said:

I’ve bought a NDM coach so my 7 car set will have two power cars for 14. That should do it! 

 

Same here. My only slight concern links to the discussion in the EFE 1983 stock thread where a sound and non-sound decoder are not quite playing together. I am sure it is nothing that cannot be overcome, but may just take some tweaking and trial and error.

 

Roy

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On 16/10/2021 at 18:28, PaulRhB said:

Bit daft but easy enough to add an inch of wire and pop it in the toilet hopefully. :lol:

One thing I have now noted is that the vestibules / toilets are open to the gangway end, possibly making the relocation of the capacitor somewhat harder.


Roy

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3 minutes ago, St. Simon said:

 

I think that this comment is at best harsh and at worst down right insulting to the designer and doesn't need to be said. 

 

I accept it isn't the best of designs and it might need changing. However, to imply that it is purely down to the apparent stupidity of the designer is an incredibly simplistic view of the situation. We don't know the requirements or restrictions the designer was working to, so it could be that it is simply the only option due to restrictions imposed by someone / something. I'm not saying that it is the case, I'm saying that we don't know the full story to pass full judgement.

 

The fact is, designers don't get it right all the time, but that doesn't mean they are stupid. I've had my signalling designs criticised on this forum without knowing the full extent of the restrictions etc. that was I working under, so it is quite hurtful to people to read comments like the above.

 

Simon

 

Agree . You dont know what constraints the designer is working to . It maybe he had no choice but to incorporate the standard fit as ADB968008 has pointed out .

 

It does strike me as a marked contrast though . In the TV program they are concerned about a flag on number plate facing wrong way and the edges of buffer beams being black instead of red, such attention to detail implied, and yet here we have a dirty great capacitor quite visible through windows . I believe the APT is to feature in a coming program . Maybe we will get answer then (won't hold my breath though!)

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I believe at the time preordering, Hornby hadn't actually advertised that the model came with interior lighting. Therefore, although it's not the finest example of interior lighting, for most of us it represents an additional feature that we didn't know we were getting. So maybe a bit of a first world problem...

 

Anyone got any pics of the NDM vehicle?

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57 minutes ago, Roy Langridge said:

One thing I have now noted is that the vestibules / toilets are open to the gangway end, possibly making the relocation of the capacitor somewhat harder.


Roy

Hidden in the vestibule they would be virtually invisible with the set together but I can’t try that out as I can’t get the clips apart down the body sides. I’ve tried squeezing the top, as the instructions show the clips as part of the top moulding, and pulling and then squeezing the bottom and they won’t budge. The four screws come out easily but I’m getting nowhere with the clips. 
 

You can see the end of the light board and plenty of room in here for the cap, but I can’t try it as I can’t get it apart! :lol:

8CF42EEF-7E23-4AF4-B751-2808CCC7A14B.jpeg.4a029ad56b36f8545d709aa83d155640.jpeg

 

E325F308-288B-43BC-A31D-A3EBDFB92CF7.jpeg.c502fa664dfd1aa40ad44b1f0fd2c6a8.jpeg

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1 hour ago, WestRail642fan said:

im really tempted to buy the NDM and use it for parts for the dummy NDM that comes with the 7 coach pack

I am planning to try and swap the bodies between the unpowered NDM and the powered NDM. The then non-powered 49004 will probably find its way to ebay. 
 

Roy

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11 hours ago, Pete the Elaner said:

 

Was it just the 1 run or was this something which was resolved after its initial period in service? I was initially surprised that this effect was not observed in the APT-E, but maybe this was because it was usually occupied by technical staff who had acclimatised to the effect?

 

I agree that judging the APT by an effect which was resolved before its re-introduction into service is lazy reporting. Once the stories are out there, it is difficult to convince the general public that they are inaccurate & it was a shame to throw away so much ground-breaking hard work because of such reports.

Some things don't change & we still see bad media today, like the reports still claiming that "HS2 is a hugely expensive project just to cut 10 minutes off the journey time from London to Birmingham". Anyone with the smallest understanding of Britain's railways knows this is inaccurate, but much of the country believes it because they don't know any better & they are unwilling to listen to why you cannot just throw 4 more trains per hour on an already overcrowded railway line.

 

There were only technical staff on APT-E, very few non-techies had the chance to ride aboard it, and we were more concerned with getting the darn thing to work properly for more than five minutes than to check the differences between our eyes and our ears! As no-one had done it before such an effect hadn't been observed and once we had got it working reasonably our fine tuning was designed to minimise all lateral acceleration, as per the original specification, so E-Train always ran with a fully compensated system, and P-Train inherited that philosophy. Until the P-Trains ran not enough people had been subjected to tilting trains so that a wider view of the effect couldn't be evaluated till then.

 

P-Train was dogged by the media reports of that initial run from the very start, and later runs failing because of the appalling weather that winter didn't help one bit. And of course the media got their teeth into that as well. :(

 

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19 hours ago, lyneux said:

First pair of coaches arrived today. They look very nice indeed. I’m not too worried about the capacitors… an easily solvable problem using the ‘m’ word and much easier to correct than a shape problem (if it bothers you).

 

I couldn’t wait to place them on track so here they are on one of Whatley’s fiddle yard boards. I couldn’t think of a more fitting way to support them than by using vehicles from the original 1980s set. They are just sitting in place on the shared bogies in the photos.

 

Still a big surprise to me that Hornby released the coaches before the sets. Hopefully not too long to wait now though…

 

Guy

77EC95E5-C598-4344-AE4C-80356745AC6A.jpeg

7377A79D-9C9B-4D28-987D-2DB0092C2092.jpeg

 

16 hours ago, PaulRhB said:

Hidden in the vestibule they would be virtually invisible with the set together but I can’t try that out as I can’t get the clips apart down the body sides. I’ve tried squeezing the top, as the instructions show the clips as part of the top moulding, and pulling and then squeezing the bottom and they won’t budge. The four screws come out easily but I’m getting nowhere with the clips. 
 

You can see the end of the light board and plenty of room in here for the cap, but I can’t try it as I can’t get it apart! :lol:

8CF42EEF-7E23-4AF4-B751-2808CCC7A14B.jpeg.4a029ad56b36f8545d709aa83d155640.jpeg

 

E325F308-288B-43BC-A31D-A3EBDFB92CF7.jpeg.c502fa664dfd1aa40ad44b1f0fd2c6a8.jpeg

 

Just by going on the colours apparents in these photos, there is a difference in the wheelsets in each shared bogie.  One appears to be much shinier than the other.  I'm assuming the shiny one is the pickup for the lighting,

 

Can anybody comment on what the difference acutally is, and what causes the difference in appearance?

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38 minutes ago, DavidBird said:

 

 

Just by going on the colours apparents in these photos, there is a difference in the wheelsets in each shared bogie.  One appears to be much shinier than the other.  I'm assuming the shiny one is the pickup for the lighting,

 

Can anybody comment on what the difference acutally is, and what causes the difference in appearance?

 

Bottom photo in this post shows pickups on all four wheels and other photos tend to suggest that the wheels are all the same so maybe a trick of the light?

 

https://www.rmweb.co.uk/community/index.php?/topic/150509-Hornby-apt-2020/&do=findComment&comment=4608791


Roy

Edited by Roy Langridge
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3 hours ago, DavidBird said:

 

 

Just by going on the colours apparents in these photos, there is a difference in the wheelsets in each shared bogie.  One appears to be much shinier than the other.  I'm assuming the shiny one is the pickup for the lighting,

 

Can anybody comment on what the difference acutally is, and what causes the difference in appearance?

As Roy guessed the wheels are identical, it’s just reflections. 

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23 hours ago, adb968008 said:

 

I was hoping they would go down the magic wand route for these, and use a cr2032 like with the generics… concealing that battery in the floor of the coach would be much easier. I have a rake of Coronation coaches earlier this year and the duchess cannot pull them due to pickup drag, similar too with the last Brighton Belle release… so I hope the APT can pull these, though being non-steam and a big metal weight inside i’m assuming it can.

 

 

I also have  the full Coronation Scot set & although there was some pickup drag, it did not seem to be the biggest issue.

A little investigation revealed that the kitchen cars caused significantly more drag than the other coaches. These have different (shorter) bogies to the others & it appeared that the bogies were dragging on the wheels, so I suspect the casting is slightly out. I did take a file to them but I think I was a bit too careful with it so will have another go at some point. My short term solution was to line the loco with lead (there is plenty of space inside) but I have wondered if this may wear out the mech more quickly?

 

I also have all 8 extension coaches for the APT but have not spent any time in the layout room to see how good/bad the drag is. They will need to be very free flowing for 1 power car to whizz a 14 coach set around the layout.

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9 hours ago, PaulRhB said:

18 on a 14 car set. 

 

The APT is one of those trains that just doesn’t look right when you look at the figures:

 

5 car- 8 bogies

7 car - 12* bogies (4 more for 2 additional cars)

14 car - 18 (6 more more double the number of cars).


Roy

 

*As sold by Hornby. 11 without the APT-U and a standard coach inserted.

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6 hours ago, PaulRhB said:

18 on a 14 car set. 

 

Of course, and that's the number I got the first time I worked it out :lol:

 

Either way the point is whilst the weight is there, the resistance of pickups may be less than what would normally be expected of s 14 car train.

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22 hours ago, PaulRhB said:

As Roy guessed the wheels are identical, it’s just reflections. 

 

Thanks, nice to know.

That's what I first thought, but when the effect appeared on 3 different photos, all taken at different angles, I began to wonder.

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Anybody managed to separate the body and chassis on any of these? I have been looking at the instructions for removing the NDM body and there are six clips between body and chassis. I don't see any obvious way in which to insert anything into the gap to ease them apart.

 

Roy

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