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Any fix to Hornby Class 87 lighting?


m1a2lt
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The Hornby Class 87 has been out for a while and one of its worst oversights (in my opinion) is the inability to turn off the marker and headlight when pushing. My layout is a 1994 station at the end of the wires, so all trains either get a loco change or push back to London. The lights are very distracting when pushing.

 

At this point, has anyone figured out any fixes? I got it I can disable one end of the push-pulls but if I do loco changes, that won't work.

 

Thanks in advance.

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It would take quite a bit of work.

Hornby's insistence on using an 8 pin decoder is a large part of the problem. This provides the 2 connections for pickup, 2 for motor & currently 3 for bi-directional lighting. Independent lighting would require 2 more, which makes 9.

Most decoders are 4 function, but the last of these is on a loose wire, so it would be a manual fitting if you wanted to add this to the board.

There is very little room inside the 87 & most wiring modifications use more space than the factory fitted board.

 

The bad news is the 91 will also only have an 8 pin socket. If that has a working pan, this will use the function 3 & the final pin.

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On 15/08/2020 at 15:58, m1a2lt said:

The Hornby Class 87 has been out for a while and one of its worst oversights (in my opinion) is the inability to turn off the marker and headlight when pushing. My layout is a 1994 station at the end of the wires, so all trains either get a loco change or push back to London. The lights are very distracting when pushing.

 

At this point, has anyone figured out any fixes? I got it I can disable one end of the push-pulls but if I do loco changes, that won't work.

 

Thanks in advance.

 

Not sure I understand? Is the loco pushing a train, so you want the head lights off and the tail lights on? Is it a four function decoder? If so, I think its doable. 

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23 minutes ago, APT Fan said:

 

Not sure I understand? Is the loco pushing a train, so you want the head lights off and the tail lights on? Is it a four function decoder? If so, I think its doable. 

Not without a major rewire of the internal circuit board 

 

Andi

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On 16/08/2020 at 05:16, Pete the Elaner said:

It would take quite a bit of work.

Hornby's insistence on using an 8 pin decoder is a large part of the problem. This provides the 2 connections for pickup, 2 for motor & currently 3 for bi-directional lighting. Independent lighting would require 2 more, which makes 9.

Most decoders are 4 function, but the last of these is on a loose wire, so it would be a manual fitting if you wanted to add this to the board.

There is very little room inside the 87 & most wiring modifications use more space than the factory fitted board.

 

The bad news is the 91 will also only have an 8 pin socket. If that has a working pan, this will use the function 3 & the final pin.

 

I get why Hornby is going full Nazi (is it still acceptable in Europe to say this?) on the 8 pin but why? I get it supports their system but this sounds like a military contract where it takes so long to develop the technology to meet specifications that it is obsolete when it hits the production line. Why? Living in the US, British train production is really sad. Sorry, I'm venting....

 

Guess the 87s will be doing push-pull to London and I'll be disabling the lights on one end. Hopefully the Heljan 86s allow light control so I can use 86s and 90s on my 47 change-outs...

Edited by m1a2lt
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Having just spent all evening sorting the lighting on a Hornby 56 I wish they would wire their locos common positive like everyone else. My normal method on Hornby stuff is to remove all the LEDs from the cab-front boards are replace with similar but placed the other way round, and then build a new PCB from stripboard to take the decoder. On the 87 I wired the LEDs such that I had separate control of the quartz headlight from the markers.

 

As for this 56 though, I couldn't get the cab-front board out of the cab so had to build a polarity inverting circuitboard to take the decoder. All so unnecessary just to get control of the tail lights... If only the LEDs could be wired like every other maker! Grrrrr

 

Andi 

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