Hornby APT (2020 tooling)

[RedgateModels]

8 minutes ago, Ducking Giraffe said:

 

Oh dear, I do hope its not this one that I've just sold for 16 quid missing smoke deflector, no tender no motor....

 

Ha ha, no this one was pretty perfect apart from the missing gear, oh and a lug off one plastic crosshead. I have spares 😁

[Ducking Giraffe]

In the end I CBA to put a motor in my non powered NDM so got a couple of Mk2s (heavy, very nice runner, magnetic couplings compatible with westhill ones)  from Germany Modellbahn union:

Vat deducted price above. No vat charged this end by customs. Cost £156 with postage, so end cost each £78.

 

Anyone want a mint Hornby mk1 NDM hardly used?😉

 

 

[BrakeCoach]

Got the 2020 APT 5-car set from Hattons pre-owned for almost half the RRP. I had it running on a club layout with permission.

 

Might as well extend the rake into around 9 cars, but the question is, should I install magnetic couplings for these...
I don't mind using the existing couplings as they don't seem to be that fragile, but connectivity with other rolling stock (perhaps a RTC Mk1 test coach, barrier coach, etc...) is also an advantage the magnetic couplings have.

 

I also heard that the magnetic couplings put some strain into the couplings for the 2020 model, but I am not sure if that claim is true or not.

[JSpencer]

2 hours ago, BrakeCoach said:

Got the 2020 APT 5-car set from Hattons pre-owned for almost half the RRP. I had it running on a club layout with permission.

 

Might as well extend the rake into around 9 cars, but the question is, should I install magnetic couplings for these...
I don't mind using the existing couplings as they don't seem to be that fragile, but connectivity with other rolling stock (perhaps a RTC Mk1 test coach, barrier coach, etc...) is also an advantage the magnetic couplings have.

 

I also heard that the magnetic couplings put some strain into the couplings for the 2020 model, but I am not sure if that claim is true or not.

 

One thing I did on the supplied couplings was to make sure that UP was on the front end and DOWN was on the back end of the concerned coaches. So that when coupling up, I save time trying to figure out which is supposed to be on top or underneath.

Mind you I have 3 NDMs (I brought a spare powered one to replace the dummy one when running a full 14 car set) plus the Mk4ish test coach. 

[Ducking Giraffe]

Yes I think I saw that one on Hatton's second hand section at about £250  but with some problems running. It is an absolute snip and hopefully the poor running should be an easy fix but then I thought well how many APTs do I really need?  So well done you've got a bargain there.

 

If you want an ndm to swap over I've got a mk1 version that works really well on eBay at the moment about 75 quid! 

 

Personally I'd go for magnetic couplings,  I think they're the best things since sliced bread,  I can't believe we haven't all changed over to them years ago. Also don't forget since the train is powered from the middle you'll never really going to put that much strain on the coach couplings. 

[zoomer1979]

I managed to get a good price on a new Mk2 NDM from Mick at Durham Trains. You can maybe see the problem I have since I have a 14-car Mk1 set with just one motorised NDM. Plus I had already bought the sound chips for the vehicles. So first problem is the change in couplings. Easy enough to change one magnet to an older coupling and put the magnets between the two NDMs.

Next, I have an 8pin sound decoder and a very narrow 21pin socket, not so easy. It's particularly annoying since changing to a 21 pin brings no additional functionality for the model, no lights or other features for the NDM. So the change in socket is a complete waste and an inconvenience to those who already had decoders. Hornby of coarse have form with this.

I'm just going to wire the decoder in direct as it would need to go inside the body regardless to allow tilting to be unobstructed.

A frustrating model strikes again!

Neil.

Edited October 14, 2023 by zoomer1979

[WestRail642fan]

what is the bare minimum of spare parts from Hornby do i need to buy in order to get the non powered NDM from my 2020 7 car set to be powered.

[E100]

1 hour ago, WestRail642fan said:

what is the bare minimum of spare parts from Hornby do i need to buy in order to get the non powered NDM from my 2020 7 car set to be powered.

See my post on August 4th linking the video explaining the process.

[andyman7]

I had one of the original five-car sets (370 003/004) plus extension coach packs, bought at a good price on issue but subsequently eclipsed by the bargain basement sets that hit the market (although I did also bag the original extra motorised NDM at the time which became the one bit that sold straight out).

Anyhow, I thought OK, well that'll do me and then of course the sale prices extended to other sets. I succumbed to one of the first issue 7 coach sets for £384 from TMC. A local shop still had the 'red stripe' TRBS coaches so I bought those - and then thought ok, that'll do....

Now of course sale prices have extended to the 2nd releases, which of course swap the set numbers over between the 5 and 7 car sets - which means additional coaches for the second run 5 coach set actually match the numbers for the first run 7 coach set. The TRBS and TF ones omit the the red/yellow cantrail stripes but it makes no difference on the TS and TU sets, plus of course they don't have the intrusive capacitors so when those appeared in the Hattons sale at £42 a set well, I had to capitulate. Now I really must stop! Photo shows a second run TS next to the first run TRBS, the finishes match perfectly and of course with the articulated bogies the change to NDM couplings isn't relevant here, they're not a feature of the intermediate coaches.

Edited December 1, 2023 by andyman7

[AMac]

On 25/08/2023 at 21:07, letterspider said:

Does anyone know if Hornby are supplying the upgraded coach lighting strips as spares?

Someone probably has already answered this question, but just in case ...

 

I have just started emailing Hornby about providing owners of the first release with an upgrade kit. Not surprising the answer is no. I followed up and they confirmed that the 2023 version spares should theoretically fit the 2020/21 version spec but no parts were made as spares. 

 

The main thing I wanted to improve was the lighting PCB and stay alive capacitors. The other points I was interested were the increase in motor chasis weight (easily solved as mentioned elsewhere in this thread), the pantograph (probably not a big enough improvement to worry about?), and possibly the decoder sockets/PCB but wondering if this provides any more functionality (eg. Cab lights for the DTS's).

[GordonC]

7 hours ago, AMac said:

Someone probably has already answered this question, but just in case ...

 

I have just started emailing Hornby about providing owners of the first release with an upgrade kit. Not surprising the answer is no. I followed up and they confirmed that the 2023 version spares should theoretically fit the 2020/21 version spec but no parts were made as spares. 

 

The main thing I wanted to improve was the lighting PCB and stay alive capacitors. The other points I was interested were the increase in motor chasis weight (easily solved as mentioned elsewhere in this thread), the pantograph (probably not a big enough improvement to worry about?), and possibly the decoder sockets/PCB but wondering if this provides any more functionality (eg. Cab lights for the DTS's).

 

They totally should after the 2020 buyers have been totally fobbed off with a sub-standard product that should never have been released in the state it was. Paying out full price for that ended my interest in buying anything Hornby.

 

The only reason I kept mine and didn't return it at the time was that I didn't expect a future production run of APTs - I expected it to be a one-off run perhaps not to be seen again for decades if at all.

 

[E100]

I mean I would have hoped (but never believed) they ordered more light bars with the corrected capacitor so at the very least you could upgrade. It'll have to be a DIY solution for me. 

[Coryton]

Can someone tell me how the lighting normally works on the APT "trailer" coaches?

 

I've just bought the APT-U "Development vehicle" and the lighting comes on and off immediately when I turn the (DC) power to the track on and off.

 

It seems to have a rather large capacitor in and I thought that was to prevent flicker - but if that's the case I'd expect the lights to come on and off a bit more gradually.

 

The lighting also flickers when the coach moves, and sometimes goes off completely when it's stopped, coming on again randomly or if the coach is prodded, so something doesn't seem right. 

 

 

[GordonC]

6 hours ago, Coryton said:

Can someone tell me how the lighting normally works on the APT "trailer" coaches?

 

I've just bought the APT-U "Development vehicle" and the lighting comes on and off immediately when I turn the (DC) power to the track on and off.

 

It seems to have a rather large capacitor in and I thought that was to prevent flicker - but if that's the case I'd expect the lights to come on and off a bit more gradually.

 

The lighting also flickers when the coach moves, and sometimes goes off completely when it's stopped, coming on again randomly or if the coach is prodded, so something doesn't seem right. 

 

 

 

I would have thought the only purpose of the capacitor would have been to provide flicker free lights with an element of stay alive, but agree with you and either it's faulty or not wired up correctly because it just doesn't work as supplied

[APT Fan]

On 22/12/2023 at 10:04, GordonC said:

 

They totally should after the 2020 buyers have been totally fobbed off with a sub-standard product that should never have been released in the state it was. Paying out full price for that ended my interest in buying anything Hornby.

 

The only reason I kept mine and didn't return it at the time was that I didn't expect a future production run of APTs - I expected it to be a one-off run perhaps not to be seen again for decades if at all.

 

 

This! When considering a purchase I now think anything but Hornby, I feel like they treat customers and retailers with contempt. Luckily we have plenty of choice nowadays - they no longer offer much, if anything that is exclusive to them. Then there is the price, I was recently sent an 'offer' from one of the retailers for a Hornby A4 Pacific which was 'reduced' from £399 to £289 - I read the spec, its only DCC 'Ready'!! I mean what on earth are Hornby thinking about by not factory fitting DCC? The mere thought of fitting DCC myself to one of their locos fills me with dread, the provisioning is always inadequate and the user manuals filled with inaccuracies. Their engineering design indicates a lot of inexperience boarding on amateur, and the quality control is well publicised now and I'm repeat victim of it. I only have four Hornby's and have had numerous problems with them all. In comparison I recently purchased a Bachmann Class 37 SFX for £218 from the same retailer which I'm delighted with, I think I have five Bachmann's and have yet to be disappointed. I wanted a Class 08 last year and went straight for a Bachmann without even considering the Hornby equivalent, it'll be the same if I decide to go for a 9F.

[HExpressD]

9 hours ago, APT Fan said:

 

This! When considering a purchase I now think anything but Hornby, I feel like they treat customers and retailers with contempt. Luckily we have plenty of choice nowadays - they no longer offer much, if anything that is exclusive to them. Then there is the price, I was recently sent an 'offer' from one of the retailers for a Hornby A4 Pacific which was 'reduced' from £399 to £289 - I read the spec, its only DCC 'Ready'!! I mean what on earth are Hornby thinking about by not factory fitting DCC? The mere thought of fitting DCC myself to one of their locos fills me with dread, the provisioning is always inadequate and the user manuals filled with inaccuracies. Their engineering design indicates a lot of inexperience boarding on amateur, and the quality control is well publicised now and I'm repeat victim of it. I only have four Hornby's and have had numerous problems with them all. In comparison I recently purchased a Bachmann Class 37 SFX for £218 from the same retailer which I'm delighted with, I think I have five Bachmann's and have yet to be disappointed. I wanted a Class 08 last year and went straight for a Bachmann without even considering the Hornby equivalent, it'll be the same if I decide to go for a 9F.

Hornby don't have an A4 with an RRP of £399? Even the Dublo ones aren't that much

[AMac]

On 24/12/2023 at 02:41, Coryton said:

Can someone tell me how the lighting normally works on the APT "trailer" coaches?

 

I've just bought the APT-U "Development vehicle" and the lighting comes on and off immediately when I turn the (DC) power to the track on and off.

 

It seems to have a rather large capacitor in and I thought that was to prevent flicker - but if that's the case I'd expect the lights to come on and off a bit more gradually.

 

The lighting also flickers when the coach moves, and sometimes goes off completely when it's stopped, coming on again randomly or if the coach is prodded, so something doesn't seem right. 

 

 

It's a known fault - the big stay alive capacitors that Hornby installed in their APT trailer cars just don't work. I'm not sure why and haven't looked into it yet. The new trailer cars have much smaller capacitors hidden out of view and do work. It's good that Hornby have corrected the problem, but not great for those of us who have already bought the 2020/21 release versions.

 

Hornby have confirmed to me that while spare parts are available for the 2021 spec models, no spares were made the 2023 spec (as mentioned a bit earlier in this thread).  No point getting the 2021 spec spares for the lighting board as all the capacitors don't work.

 

I'll follow up with Hornby next week and see if there is any technical help they can provide and maybe even supply the capacitors that do work (I have to try!). It may be more than just the capacitor that is required - I'm very rusty with my electrical theory and just getting back into modelling but I suspect the lighting PCB will have other components such as resistors that will need to be changed or added.

[Coryton]

11 hours ago, AMac said:

It's a known fault - the big stay alive capacitors that Hornby installed in their APT trailer cars just don't work. I'm not sure why and haven't looked into it yet. The new trailer cars have much smaller capacitors hidden out of view and do work. It's good that Hornby have corrected the problem, but not great for those of us who have already bought the 2020/21 release versions.

 

Thanks - that's most useful to know.

 

Though it does seem a bit disappointing - if I can see a huge capacitor through a window I'd rather that it actually did something...

 

On the other hand I hadn't realised it had a custom test car interior. I'm a bit surprised that Hornby don't seem to mention that or show photographs.

 

The lights seem to be behaving better too. Maybe the contacts have self-cleaned themselves a bit now. Fingers crossed.

Edited January 1 by Coryton

[25kV]

1 hour ago, Coryton said:

 

On the other hand I hadn't realised it had a custom test car interior. I'm a bit surprised that Hornby don't seem to mention that or show photographs.

 

It's actually two different test car interiors bolted together!  Half the equipment racks are modelled after those fitted to 48206 (370001) in the early days of APT testing, and the other half on those fitted to 48204 when it was the APT-U development car.  Some rearranging (and addition of seating) is required to make it properly accurate.


(More in thread link below!)
 

[Coryton]

3 hours ago, 25kV said:

It's actually two different test car interiors bolted together!  Half the equipment racks are modelled after those fitted to 48206 (370001) in the early days of APT testing, and the other half on those fitted to 48204 when it was the APT-U development car.  Some rearranging (and addition of seating) is required to make it properly accurate.


(More in thread link below!)
 

 

Interesting.

 

Though it didn't really cross my mind that the interior might be accurate. Gettting it half right is more than I expected.

[AMac]

9 hours ago, 25kV said:

It's actually two different test car interiors bolted together!  Half the equipment racks are modelled after those fitted to 48206 (370001) in the early days of APT testing, and the other half on those fitted to 48204 when it was the APT-U development car.  Some rearranging (and addition of seating) is required to make it properly accurate.


(More in thread link below!)
 

Hi 25kV. I've been looking at your website - it's fantastic! Really good if you want to get a realistic or an actual formation. The only problem is, I might need to buy another set!

[25kV]

7 hours ago, AMac said:

Hi 25kV. I've been looking at your website - it's fantastic! Really good if you want to get a realistic or an actual formation. The only problem is, I might need to buy another set!

Thanks AMac!  :)   It was a labour of love madness, started when I got the idea to make a model of the unit I rode on in 1984.  I didn't have any vehicle numbers (aside from the driving cars and a recollection that one of the power cars was the named one) so set about trying to figure it out.  And once I was down the rabbit hole ... 

(You should definitely buy another set!  😉 )

[GordonC]

17 hours ago, 25kV said:

It's actually two different test car interiors bolted together!  Half the equipment racks are modelled after those fitted to 48206 (370001) in the early days of APT testing, and the other half on those fitted to 48204 when it was the APT-U development car.  Some rearranging (and addition of seating) is required to make it properly accurate.


(More in thread link below!)
 

 

Its when you see things like this that make it all the more baffling how shoddy they were in a few areas with the APT. It would surely have been easier and more accurate to only model the section of racks they needed and use a half-seated portion of tooling they already had, but they've gone to the effort of tooling up both to stick in the one coach. It really makes it look like the development budget was blown by a certain point and then just any old thing had to get chucked out.

 

[25kV]

32 minutes ago, GordonC said:

 

Its when you see things like this that make it all the more baffling how shoddy they were in a few areas with the APT. It would surely have been easier and more accurate to only model the section of racks they needed and use a half-seated portion of tooling they already had, but they've gone to the effort of tooling up both to stick in the one coach. It really makes it look like the development budget was blown by a certain point and then just any old thing had to get chucked out.

 

My suspicion is that when Hornby researched their development coach model, they encountered a very limited number of photos available online of P-train test car interiors and perhaps reasonably assumed that they were all part of the same vehicle.  I can certainly understand that someone tasked with figuring out the equipment layout (who wasn't obsessive about correlating photos with vehicle layout diagrams like I was!) would mistake seats visible in the background of some shots for an adjacent coach.

On the positive side, it means those of us mad enough to want to take a hacksaw to our tilting trains can make two generations of test car for the price of six! 

 

[ColinB]

On 23/12/2023 at 23:34, APT Fan said:

 

This! When considering a purchase I now think anything but Hornby, I feel like they treat customers and retailers with contempt. Luckily we have plenty of choice nowadays - they no longer offer much, if anything that is exclusive to them. Then there is the price, I was recently sent an 'offer' from one of the retailers for a Hornby A4 Pacific which was 'reduced' from £399 to £289 - I read the spec, its only DCC 'Ready'!! I mean what on earth are Hornby thinking about by not factory fitting DCC? The mere thought of fitting DCC myself to one of their locos fills me with dread, the provisioning is always inadequate and the user manuals filled with inaccuracies. Their engineering design indicates a lot of inexperience boarding on amateur, and the quality control is well publicised now and I'm repeat victim of it. I only have four Hornby's and have had numerous problems with them all. In comparison I recently purchased a Bachmann Class 37 SFX for £218 from the same retailer which I'm delighted with, I think I have five Bachmann's and have yet to be disappointed. I wanted a Class 08 last year and went straight for a Bachmann without even considering the Hornby equivalent, it'll be the same if I decide to go for a 9F.

Surprisingly the latest Hornby 9F is probably one of the best locos they made, all be it expensive. I bought the equivalent Bachmann 9F ( I got carried away with pre ordering) and it is nowhere near as good as the Hornby one. I assume the HD loco was probably a HD Flying Scotsman they were sold at a ridiculous price, hence the discount. The Bachmann 9F though does come with a decent sound decoder whereas the Hornby one has the HM7000 which is not as good as a Zimo or Loksound.