Izzy

With the diesel class 31 decoder - I don't know about the other diesel types - you can change the notch level increments via cv's and details of the cv's and default settings are given. I assume they are set in relation to the gearing ratio a loco has and thus it's speed at any given setting. I understand you cannot alter the steam decoder chuff rates, which i guess mean they don't have a similar option. Izzy

Would I be right in thinking, based on what Nigel has written, that due to the way it operates, the NCE programming track option isn't really the totally safe option that using a program track infers? That locos can have their decoders fried simply by being placed on it if there is short circuit in the wrong place? The Gaugemaster/MRC Prodigy system has separate program outputs. Be careful though. In the early days of not knowing anything much about DCC, and being the idiot I am, I thought I could join both outputs together to the track, and only that which I chose would be 'Live'. Wrong! So within a short time of getting it........ it went back to be repaired, having blown the program track outputs. Oh dear. Credit to Gaugemaster for doing this under warranty without the slightest quibble. It only took a few days, but thinking at the time it would be much longer that's how I ended up with a sprog II as an alternative. Probably the single best thing I could have done as regards DCC as it makes programming decoders so much easier to my mind. Izzy

I have run a sprog II v2.7 on a Macbook pro with Mavericks since 2014 without any problems. Izzy

Could I direct you to my post here #28 http://www.rmweb.co.uk/community/index.php?/topic/125527-ECoS-and-latest-tts-decoders/page-2&do=findComment&comment=2849246 It sounds (ouch!) very similar to the problems I have experienced playing around with a class 31 chip in a Bachmann 24 - one of the early 8-pin versions. Izzy

It might be an extra bit of mis-direction to enhance all the fun and games - but the silhouette appears to show that the loco has salter valves on the dome. Although I always think of this as a mainly Midland trait others did have them in the early years, but it might narrow the potential field a bit. Izzy

I would agree with all you say about the TTS decoders not being as good as others such as Zimo etc but when you consider their price it is probably not surprising. It is only in recent times that the Zimo MX600 and MX622N have been sold at lower prices while most others still carry a hefty premium, one that I have reluctantly paid for the superior motor control. This applies equally to the CT's I mainly use in 2mm. Having now played about/experimented with using the class 31 TTS diesel decoders in a number of differing locos it is quite surprising how varied the motor control is, ranging from quite good/acceptable to unbeliveable and no good at all. In a Heljan class 15 it's almost as good as a Zimo. This also applies to a Bachmann 08 fitted with a Mashima 1833 ( the original motor failed after just 3 months and I had the 1833 spare). However, it can't control a Bachmann class 24 at all, whatever I try in respect of motor control settings. One minute it's fairly smooth, then it's jerking all over the place, just like a human having a seizure/fit. Turing off DC running - just in case it was getting conflicting signals - makes no difference. So I 'piggybacked' it, treating the TTS like a function only decoder, adding it to the MX600 normally controlling the loco. No problems at all, works fine, so... if a TTS class 24 ever appears I know what to do. At £20 for the MX600 and £36 for the TTS decoder it would still be quite a bit cheaper than the cost of a normal sound decoder. It might also be an answer to anyone with a Bachmann 40, 37 or 20 who wants to fit a TTS decoder and hits the same motor control issues. Just need the space inside the bodies for the two decoders as well as the speakers.............although if lighting is fitted past F0 for simple on/off and uses other funtction keys then conflicts could arise. It's all good fun I keep telling myself......... Izzy

The TTS decoders I have work fine in both directions on my Gaugemaster/MRC PA2 system and program without issue using POM - I never hook up the PA2 program outlets - but as others state can only be seen and programmed using my Sprog/JMRI in one direction, the other way around all that happens is that error messages are generated. I believe that the reasons why this may be happening has been mentioned in a post somewhere and due to the differing ways particular systems communicate with decoders, the signals that are used. I think that perhaps I am just lucky I have a system that works with them, but frankly it shouldn't just be down to luck and I hope it gets resolved one way or another. Izzy

Hornby Railroad class 31 Body Details As I mentioned in an earlier post the body is a simple one piece moulding just fitted with glazing and plastic handrails. The quality of the detail is quite high with a good degree of finesse in many areas, but moulded or plastic handrails always look well, moulded and plastic, so these were prime candidates for removal and replacement with wire ones. I also felt the glazing fell down a bit with the cab windows - the inset bits looking like they have shrunk in the openings - so decided to make replacements. These were cut and filed up from flat off-cuts of acrylic sheet saved from the clear packaging which many products are bought in these days. I now have a range of thicknesses and colours to choose from - some are clear while others have a slight bluish tint. These were glued into place by running a very small amount of Plastic weld glue around the edges applied with a fine brush. None of this was particularly quick to do, for example there are 9 windows for each cab, all different sizes, as well as 3 down each side, 24 in total, so all of this was slow and time-consuming work. They are far from perfect as I am sure are clear from the photos but I feel worth the effort in the long run. But first, the roof fan. It is possible to get replacement etches for the fan and from what I have seen they look nice and detailed, but as this detail doesn't really seem to show much past close inspection I decided to stick with what was there after trying a bit of painting to bring out the fan detail present in the moulding. Firstly I gave it all a coat of bufferbeam red, and then when fully dry, a dry brush coat of matt black. This seemed to give enough of a 3D effect to suit my needs. Perhaps I am easily satisfied, but if fell in with my low cost needs. I then cut off all the roof handrail mouldings, drilled a few 0.3mm holes, and fitted 0.33mm brass wire replacements bent up with some small snipe nose pliers. Say it quickly and it doesn't seem so bad...... there's 27 of them..........a bit of MEK-PAK fixed them in place. It's surprising how noticeable they are at many angles, so worth the time taken in the end. Removing the plastic cab handrails - I cut them off with a scalpel - revealed that they were glued into biggish holes in the body, around 0.7mm. So my basic idea to just bend up some fine N/S wire to shape and poke them in the holes vacated by the plastic ones became a non-starter, handrails that thick being no better than the plastic ones in terms of looks. So I plugged the holes with short lengths of Albion Alloy's 0.8mmOD/0.4mmID brass tubing and then soldered some fine N/S wire into them after bending to the required shapes. Because I had to make the tube lengths a bit longer than the thickness of the sides - the handrail locations are recessed into the body sides and the moulding only 0.5mm thick here, I had to file clearance slots in the chassis so the body would slide down into place over it, the tubes being about 1.0mm long, the shortest length that I found would glue into the holes and stay put and thus stick out a bit on the inside. As the boiler hatch access recessed steps/rungs were shallow and moulded I cut them out, put a 10thou strip at the rear, and fitted hard brass wire rungs. These were pushed into the opening and secured with a wash of MEK. The top rung on the roof I managed to open out with a scalpel by removing the plastic behind. All looks a bit crude in this shot, but better once painted. Apart from the bufferbeam cowlings it is perhaps the lack of much/any front details that stands out with this loco, given that it represents one of those fitted with headcode discs. Once again what is present is moulded on, so it all came off, to be replaced with wire handrails, lamp irons, and metal headcode discs, all homebrew efforts. I also made up some wipers, again from wire, a mix of 0.33mm for the blades and 0.45mm for the arms. Not very refined, etched ones would be far better, but cheap! The lamp irons used some small N/S strip bent to shape with a cross arm from the 045mm wire soldered in, the idea being that these could be fitted/glued into drilled holes, past experiences showing that lamp irons just surface glued on tend to come off. The headcode discs are from thin shim brass sheet. Again etched ones are produced and most probably markedly superior, but where's the fun in that...........and they are slightly better I think than the moulded plastic ones that come with most RTR locos these days. I was going to say that was pretty much the job finished, but the shots of the cabs have reminded me of a couple of other bits. Firstly the bars along the engine room windows. These are N/S wire soldered up and glued in place with more MEK. And this shot also highlights another quite important addition, the cab interiors. These were made up out of plasticard to fit between the chassis insides but fixed with D/S tape to the body. This allows for removal if needed. I found I had to reduce the height of the front of the chassis to allow them to sit down into it. Plastic strips were fixed to the body to locate the cabs. There is a gap between the cab interiors and the body sides into which the chassis sides slide. I did not wish to trim the chassis side down too much in case this weakened the chassis moulding and caused the bufferbeams etc to sag. A couple of Bachmann engine crew were used after some orthopaedic surgery to get them to fit the space. I do think that is all now. This is another shot of the loco on All Saints East. Like most of the other stock I have built for it, a bit of weathering needs doing sometime. Nothing too much, just some gentle in-service wear and tear. Anyway, I hope this helps give others ideas about what can be done with this loco, probably better than I have managed, although I am quite pleased with the end result. Just thought I would add another shot, this one showing the overhead warning flashes. Wasn't really sure if they were fitted during the period of the livery, before yellow warning panels started to appear, but found a couple that showed they were. Izzy

Hornby Railroad class 31 The bufferbeams Perhaps one of the biggest letdowns with this particular model is that the cowlings surrounding the bufferbeams until their later lives are not part of the moulding. How to make and fit some took me a while to work out. At first I thought of making the sides and centre as separate sections joined together but test pieces just wouldn't work together because of the curves and angles involved. Eventually I managed to generate a composite shape in Photoshop from the loco drawing and cut this out of 10thou plasticard four times over. Each shape was bent in the corners and then they were sandwiched as pairs to give a basically correct shape in a decent thickness of material. As the centre portion dips in the middle leaving a gap to the bottom of the beams another 10thou layer was glued behind. Although far from perfect and not totally correct they look reasonably okay, especially with a coat of paint to hide the worst of the imperfections. Regarding paint and touching up the added bits I have to say I was very lucky here in that I found an old tin of Humbrol enamel railway colour - HR104 - good as the day I first bought it, (far longer ago than I could begin to remember), and probably as close a match for the base colour as I could get. I did consider changing the buffers, Hornby sprung ones from the full fat 31 are available as spares, and I may well still do so at some stage in the future, but left it at thinning the face of the plastic buffers with needle files, not being quite sure how I would replace them easily and without causing damage, and just adding a scrap of plastic on the tops of the housing. All the hose's were made out of various thickness of hard brass wire, 0.33/0.45/0.7 etc, some wound with fine florists wire others just with blobs of solder on the ends (very crude), and Smiths screw couplings complete the line-up. These aren't perhaps quite as fine and scale looking as others, but suit my now less than perfect eyesight as does the rest of the detail. Izzy

Hornby Railroad TTS class 31 Chassis modifications Having got the loco running on the layout and enjoying playing with the sound I sorted out what needed doing with it to bring it up to the general detail level of my other rolling stock, for it has to be accepted that railroad stuff is basic in nature. As such the loco is just one moulding fitted with three separate glazing units clipped/glued into place, with some plastic cab handrails and buffers. Nothing else, so there is quite a bit that needs/can be done according to taste. Looking at the list I made, headcode discs, bufferbeam cowling & hoses, separate metal handrails, flush glazing of the windows etc it became clear that in order to fit cab interiors, another item on the list, a re-jigging of the chassis to move the decoder, 8-pin socket and speaker would be needed. I therefore tackled first what chassis changes were required for moving things around along with a couple of other alterations. These were adding the bufferbeam cowlings and narrowing the fuel tanks a bit, which are too wide. There are it appears three basic discrepancies with the loco compared to the drawing I have. The body is 3mm short, the bogie wheelbases are 54mm instead of 56mm - probably done so Lima could use the same motor unit in both the class 37 and 31 and keep production costs down - and the fuel tanks are too wide, 32mm instead of 30. I believe these aspects were corrected on what I have seen referred to as the Hornby 'full fat' 31 produced in recent years. While nothing can be done about the first two and luckily they don't stand out as being wrong, narrowing the fuel tanks so they sit under the body a bit more can because as luck would have it the smaller metal weights in the lower part of the fuel tanks don't reach right to the inside edges. It's just 1mm a side, but I have found that often bits like this can make a big difference looks wise as part of an overall detail improvement, and this was one aspect that didn't look quite right when I was making comparison of the model with prototype photos. I did have to strip down the chassis to do this, remove everything by un-screwing and un-soldering where necessary, but this would be needed to re-jig it anyway and helped with other work to the bogies as well. This is how it looks now. Both the 8-pin socket and speaker screw into place. I cut off the posts for the socket screws and moved them as close to the central metal weights as I could, then made new posts out of stacked squares of plasticard for the speaker. This is the net result. And with the decoder re-fitted, tucked down in front of the weights. I cut the sleeve protection about and remade it as a bag with electrical tape so all the wires come out one way. The white plastic square above the pivot plug is a new addition to stop the bogie moving back and forth, the plug being a loose fit in its hole. With the bogies away from the chassis I made a few alterations to them. The cut-outs were filed in the middle tops, the brake rods opened out at the sandboxes, and wire fitted for the sandpipes. I also made up and added the bogie fitted guard irons from scrap nickel-silver etch bent and soldered to shape. These I pinned as well as gluing them to the bogies to ensure they didn't come adrift. The pockets for the NEM couplings had of course been removed at this stage, not being needed. One result of removing the NEM coupling moulding from the bogies was that the un-powered one could rotate completely around. I didn't realise this at first until I put the chassis on the track to check something and kept getting shorts! It took a while to discover the problem and then work out a simple solution to stop it happening. This uses a 10ba bolt in the bogie which sits in a slot made in the floor of the chassis, allowing a degree of rotation but preventing the bogie turning right around. Izzy

Hi Serron, Many thanks for the explanation, it was checking the Romfords with it that got me puzzled, how it could be achieved with such a jig when it would set a pair of wheels at less than 90degrees. As you say, doesn't matter when assembling identical sets by hand. regards, Izzy

I've now started the thread on altering this loco a bit for anyone interested; http://www.rmweb.co.uk/community/index.php?/topic/124592-some-rtr-rolling-stock-for-all-saints-east/ Izzy

Hornby Railroad TTS class 31 modifications Recently I bought one of these locos to see what sound was like on a small home layout of the shunting plank type. With an original style body using headcode discs finished in the plain green livery and sold at a bargain price for a sound fitted loco it seemed too good to resist. I thought a few posts on how I changed it a bit here and there might be of help and use to anyone else wanting to do similar things, the basic idea being as usual to do this at minimal cost. The model is fairly accurate being based around the exLima mouldings - there are some issues - but cannot represent the original 20 locos as built because the engine room doors have the grills fitted to later batches which were retro-fitted when they were re-engined. So for an early as-built version a number from the later batch ones also without headcode boxes needs to be chosen of which D5551 is one. Unfortunately the TTS sound doesn't match up to the body for those that will know the difference (which I wouldn't), being of the later EE engines rather than the original Mirrlees and needing the exhaust ports at 90 degrees to those on the model. Since the loco livery represents a Mirrlees engined class 30 I have chosen to leave them alone. I started by stripping the loco down and converting it to P4 as until this proved possible any other work wouldn't be undertaken. One aspect not mentioned so far is that compared to earlier models of class 31's this is quite accurate in respect of the bogie wheel arrangement, with the middle carry wheels being smaller than the outer ones, 12.5mm & 14.5mm respectively. Some past models have either had all the wheels the same size, or with some motor bogies no real carry wheels at all, just representations cast onto the bogie side frames. Although this is an exLima loco in general respects to both the body and chassis mouldings, the newer design of Hornby Railroad motor bogie is now used instead of the older Lima pancake type, with the metal weights fitted into the fuel tank area of the plastic chassis to provide some weight to the model and aid traction. Two of the power bogie driving wheels - one on each axle - are also fitted with traction tyres. Electrical pickup is to all wheels on both bogies, powered and non-powered, even those with traction tyres. Both bogies plug into the chassis and pivot on these plugs. They cannot be removed completely without un-soldering the wires to the pickups and motor. However, the wheels can be taken out by removing the keeper plate on the non-driven bogie, and the combined side-frames/keeper plate on the motor one. Both clip into place but neither remove particularly easily, the motor one having clips on the insides which are difficult to access, and the non-driven one moulded wedges on the inside ends which make it a very tight fit. I nearly gave up in despair at one stage trying to remove it and trimmed these wedges back with a scalpel for easier fitting and removal in future times. My first thoughts were to simply replace the wheels with standard P4 coach and wagon types of 3'7" and 3'1" size. However, I then discovered that the wheels use 2.5mm diameter axles rather than the normal 2mm, with one wheel being all-metal, the other having a centre plastic insulating bush, so it was a case of machining the wheels to suit P4 track as I normally do, using the little lathe I have, and bearing in mind the use of traction tyres. It did proved possible, but with one slight problem. The Hornby wheels have narrow but very deep flanges - about 1.1mm - and I reduced this to the standard 0.5mm depth I use. However, I had not allowed for the traction tyres, which tend to sit above the tread level in order to grip the rail. In practice this meant that at times the loco derailed, the wheels being lifted above the flange depth. Oh dear. The traction tyres were thus ditched and rings of flat brass made which sat into the tyre grove. These were subsequently soldered into the wheel, the treads cleaned up, and all is now okay. Replacement wheels without traction tyres for the non-driven bogie are available as spares and getting a set and replacing the traction tyre wheels, these being the same as the powered ones save for the lack of gears, may be an option for anyone wanting to rid themselves of the traction tyre wheels whatever gauge they use. You will see from the two shots of the wheels back in the non-powered bogie that there is nothing fancy about the construction, the axles just running in the plastic mouldings, no bearings etc. The PB current collectors bend easily to press on the wheel backs and pick up power and it all works fine. This applies to the powered bogie as well. The motor is very powerful but with the rather low 16-1 gearing slow speed performance isn't perhaps all it could be, especially for a shunting plank, but you can't always have everything can you ? Having got it running on the layout the fun could begin...... Izzy

All I would add to Jol's reccomendations if I may is to check the crankpins are true in the wheels. I believe those fitted screw into the Romfords, and keeping them at 90 degrees to the wheel is important. I have found it is all to easy to knock them so they become eccentric. I have often wondered if a quartering jig would be of benefit to me, but can't work out how you make allowance/adjustment for the thickness of the particular crankpins being used so have never made one. Izzy

I recently got the Expo tools AB602 airbrush set simply for the compressor, to use with my Iwata Neo, but also found the dual action brush supplied to be almost as good as the Neo. Nice and quiet to use as well. Cost £100 from a local dealer. Izzy

I'm hoping the TTS 08 that's arriving soon might get released as a standalone decoder......would be significant demand I think....... Izzy

It might be of help if you could say which chassis you are constructing as someone may have experience/knowledge of problems or issues with it. I guess from the shots that it is an outside cylinder OO gauge 2-6-0 of some kind, 43xx perhaps? Anyway, the position you show the binding to occur immediately suggests to me that it is an issue to do with quartering/discrepancy between the various parts, rods/crankpins etc and is not basically because the chassis is compensated. It might be an issue associated with it, but not the root cause. The only real way of solving problems such as this is in my experience is to return to the start and check all parts to ensure they match. The crankpin throw on the wheels is the same - they appear to be Romfords so I would expect them to, but you never know, and they appear slightly different. Is this because they are insulated/non-insulated? Are the crank throws the same? Are all the wheels seated on the square ended axles at 90 degress and run fairly true. Do the rods match the wheelbase? Slop of the rods on the crankpins will not normally be an issue, you have to have a lot before it can become problematic - just look at how much many RTR locos have, BUT, a small mis-match between the coupling rod and crankpin/wheel centres will be. Just making the rods a loose fit won't cure this either. Are the axle bearings square and true in the chassis ( I presume that is what is fitted) i.e. the bore is actually in the middle? I've had them where they weren't. If this is the case turnng them a quarter can sometimes make the difference. Izzy

It's probably the common problem of the PB fingers on the circuit board that carry the power to the motor not making proper contact with the motor tags. Having had this happen myself with several of the newer Farish diesels I now mostly hard wire the connection between the motor tags and circuit board. Izzy

Hornby have them available on their website for direct ordering now along with the steam ones, they are all on the same page. Hattons have just sent an e-mail to say that they have been advised that they will receive supplies on the 4th Sept (I have some pre-ordered). Izzy

Yes. To show it's well worth getting if you like doing things like that. Cost was zero apart from the wire, plasticard etc although as you might expect there was a fair bit of time and effort involved. Izzy

Just about finished now, a couple of small details to sort, speedo cables etc, followed by a bit of weathering, the bogies and lower bits seemed to take on a brownish tinge even if the rest was reasonably clean from the colour shots I have seen. Worth getting I think. Sounds quite good to..........slippery slope etc......... Izzy

I am just wondering if there is a conflict here between what the function keys control? I am sure someone more familiar with this will comment but it might be that with the 36-557 functions that were used to control the lights with the MX644D are used for sound effects. Certainly with my Heljan W&M railbus which has a 36-557 F0 controls the lights as normal with F1 the interior ones. With the first sound chip I am playing with - a Hornby TTS one - apart from on/off via F0 any other lighting needs hooking up via aux function 3 (F25) as function No's F1-24 are used for the sound. Izzy

Sound can be turned on/off as required. Usually it's via the F1 function key. If you don't want the sound fitted then removing the decoder and speaker would be possible I would have thought, either replacing it with a blanking plug for DC or a plain decoder - assuming the sound decoder is a plug-in type and not hardwired, still possible but just a bit more work. Izzy

When I first went digital, end of last century (always wanted to write that!), I used a Acer also with a scsi interface. I did manage to find a SCSI to usb adapter in later times, an Adaptec usb2xchange, but when the Acer failed I tried going back to an old technique used to copy negs and slides, photographing them. Although the Acer had batch scanning it was still a slow process, but using a standard digital camera makes it very quick. Handy when you have many thousands of images to copy/scan. In the past this was mainly done using dedicated equipment made for the task and some is still around, but I made my own copy stand from mount board lit using a small lightbox as the light source. To copy 35mm stock you do really need a macro lens with 1:1 magnification. They also mainly have a flat field and accounts for why they were often called 'copy' lenses in past times. I used a 100mm macro with my old Pentax 35mm, but with my current Canon 600D the 60mm macro gives the same result since it is a smaller sensor format. The results are actually mainly better than I got from scanning whatever software I used, Vuescan etc. This is mainly because scanning copies the stock material where as photography copies the image not the base stock it's on, a subtle difference. Negs images do of course need reversing, but quite easy to do in such as photoshop as is adjusting any colour issues in levels. Izzy

Yes, it's funny to discover that despite being shorter, the Lima bogies are set at the correct distance apart but with the wheelbase being wrong at 54mm rather than 56mm. I presume this was because they originally used the same motor bogie as the 37 for which it is correct. Does mean however that you can't easily mix & match between the exLima and Hornby versions. Izzy