Darius43

Currently on a train west of Hove station held at a red light due to a possible bridge strike ahead...

Looks like a logistics specialist may have hit something again...

Darius

On their web page it states:

"Our capability is based on long experience, forward thinking, continuous training and a policy of recruiting staff of the highest caliber".  [/size]

 

Time for more even more training and forward thinking perhaps?[/size]

Corporate speak - a substitute for professionalism, competence and basic intelligence. Perhaps if firms like this still called themselves road hauliers as opposed to logistics solutions specialists, their highly trained specialists wouldn’t hit things so often.

Darius

Not much use to us still on analogue though is it, and even if I was on DCC why should I have to fit a decoder to correct a design/manufacturing error?

If you were on DCC you wouldn’t get very much out of it without fitting a decoder.

Darius

My intention is to create a “representation” of a Class 124 DMU using the Trix model as the basis and odds and ends that I have to hand. I use the word “representation” knowing the the Trix model scales at 3.8mm to the foot rather than 4mm and the intermediate coaches are Mk1s rather than the correct DMU coaches. Hopefully this will result in an rtr Class 124 appearing soon...

I have shoehorned a Bachmann DMU motor into the MK1 brake coach, replaced the bogies with spare Bachmann DMU bogies and painted the interiors. The underfloor equipment has been replaced with details salvaged from spare Bachmann DMU chasses.

I replaced the driving coach buffers and added couplings and hoses from the spares box and bits of wire and plasticard.

Two coaches completed, four more to go...

Cheers

Darius

Drove up from Worthing on the Sunday with a car full of MR enthusiasts. Great show as usual, not overcrowded, easy to see layouts. My favourites were the N Gauge “Queen’s Park” themed layout, closely followed by “Shap” and “Old Blarney”. As far as I could ascertain everyone attending was well-washed and non-odorous.

One of our number was a first visitor to Warley and was seriously impressed. He will be returning next year

Cheers

Darius

“We are progressing positively with re-engineering a number of models that have been in the catalogue for a while and with the high profile of these items, the focus is in delivering fidelity to prototype that is not compromised by timescale”.

So it’s going to be a few more years before the re-tooled Class 158 appears then.

Corporatespeak strikes again.

Darius

More Oxford Carflat fun

Three done, three to go...

Cheers

Darius

Step 5: Trim the plastic “nut” to size, creating a tab that slots into a recess in the bogie coupling mount. This tab holds the plastic nut in place and stops it rotating when you attach the screw.

Step 6: Insert the trimmed Hornby tab in the bogie mounting, place the plasticard nut and screw attach the Kadee coupler. The Kadee is attached to the underside of the Hornby coupler tab and the plasticard nut goes on top. If you fix the Kadee to the top of the tab, the screw head will foul the coach buffer beam.

Step7: Because the Kadee is mounted lower than “standard” the metal uncoupling bar will foul points etc. so it is trimmed using a track cutter.

If the bogies are fitted with the larger, chunkier, tension lock coupling, the trimmed Hornby coupling tab does not have the large hole molded in it so a hole can be drilled in the tab and the Kadee screw fixed directly to it.

Because just the metal shanked Kadee is used, without the plastic mounting box, I used one of the bulk packs of couplers that Kadee produces as this is all that you get in these packs.

So there you have it: no more derailments and much better looking couplings.

Cheers

Darius

Fed up with my rake of HST coaches derailing when being pushed by the power car I decided to replace the chunky tension locks with Kadee couplers that work fine in either pull or push mode.

After some trial and error this is the method I used. It needs some work with a craft knife, some drilling, some small screws and some 1mm this plasticard sheet. No glue is required and the Hornby bogie coupling mount is used.

Step 1: pull the coupling shank free of the bogie mounting. This is the later less chunky tension lock coupling - modifying the older really chunky coupling is slightly easier - more on that later.

Step 2: cut the coupling bar away leaving the main shank.

Step 3: the Kadee will be screw fixed to the coupling shank using a spare button head screw. There is a hole melded in the shank but it is too large a diameter for the screw to bite into the plastic. Note the button head of the screw needs to be larger than the hole in the Kadee shank.

Step 4: For the screw to engage, a “nut” is required. This is made from 1mm plasticard by drilling holes of slightly smaller diameter than the screw in the main plastic sheet and “tapping” them with the screw before cutting them out. Doing this on the main sheet is easier than cutting the small plastic tab out and then trying to drill it.

Edited to make the pictures larger.

I suspect Kader’s priorities for what it manufactures at its plant(s) may have something to do with the sub-snail’s pace af Bachmann’s release schedule.

I recall comments on threads on other manufacturers’ products (which had sold out, e.g, Peckett) about the difficulties of getting production slots when you don’t have your own manufacturing capability. Looks like the latter is not all it is cracked up to be judging by the speed from announcement to arrival of non-Bachmann new items.

Darius

Very evocative photos vulcan697. I took this train from Moorgate to Ally Pally for the model railway show earlier this year. This is one station in dire need of refurbishment!!!

We have class 313s down here on the coastway services courtesy of the [not] wonderful Southern railway company - with no sign of replacement stock on the horizon.

Cheers

Darius

I would test the chip in another 8 pin loco chassis - that has not been modified - first.

Default address is 003. I have fitted 3 such chips and they were all fine. I have another 3 locos on top that came pre-fitted, that are fine too.

Your conversion text makes no mention of running back additional wires to the locos motor which would be required to get it to work. The two contacts on the drawbar only link all the loco and tender pickups together. Remember Hornby and Bachmann. rTR models with all the chip and speaker gibbins in the tender, use 4 wires between loco and tender, 2 are to join the pickups, 2 go to the motor to control it.

I did re-connect the loco before checking and tried the chip in another loco that I use for testing - no response to commands or programming enquiries in either alas. Thus is the Black 5 with a plug-in connection between the loco and tender.

Darius

After all that it turned out to be a duff chip - won’t respond to programming instructions. At least it wasn’t too expensive but I think that I will avoid Hornby chips in future - not worth the aggravation.

D

I have just been trying to fit a Hornby Black 5 Sound decoder into the (relatively) new Hornby Black 5.

I should state first that decoder fitting is apparently easier on locos produced more recently - at least the whole gubbins is in the tender, where there is some semblance of space for a chip and speaker plus wiring looms. In the old days there was usually an 8pin pug in the loco with no space for a decoder let alone a speaker - it was if the designer (numpty) assumed that the decoder existed in hyperspace.

Now there is space in the tender for the decoder and speaker, except:-

1. The feed wires from the tender wheel pickups enter the tender in the centre of the speaker enclosure so they foul the speaker and risk getting trapped between the speaker and the enclosure rim.

2. You have to untwine a load of fragile wires and feed them through the hole in the ballast weight.

3. The ballast weight is secured by three screws of different gauges (why make them all different)?

4. When you ultimately succeed in getting everything in place with no trapped wires, the speaker solder tabs ground against the metal weight when it is re-fixed in position. I thought I might have installed the speaker upside-down but it only fits this way up.

5. Because of the wires trapped beneath the speaker the ballast weight will not sit down properly and the tender body doesn’t fit back on properly - if you tighten the ballast weight screws too much the tender chassis bends and rocks on the wheels.

6. Discarding and replacing the weight isn’t an option as the tender body fixes back in place by clipping onto the ballast weight.

7. My proposed solution is to replace the Hornby round speaker with a smaller sugar cube speaker that doesn’t need to be trapped beneath the ballast weight.

Now this solution shouldn’t be necessary if the designer was competent.

As it is there is little evidence of said competence when it comes to decoder installation. You either have to unclip bodies with the very real risk of damage to fragile parts and disconnection of lighting connections or remove layers of components to get at the decoder plug point @ then figure out where to put the decoder etc. Then get the whole lot reassembled and hope everything still works.

Given that DCC is no longer a new thing why is decoder fitting still an afterthought with the designers? Why do they make the whole process like playing 3D chess? Why are they so incompetent in this area?

Why do model magazine reviews say stuff has been designed for decoder installation without ever trying to actually do it?

Rant over.

Darius

Weathered my recently arrived Oxford Rail Motorail Carflats today

Cheers

Darius

I received an email from Rails the other day that this was a Black 5 in plain BR liveries.

Cheers

Darius

I have replaced my home-made driveshaft with one from a Bachmann Class 47 and lowered the motor to straighten the transmission path.

All running smoothly and quietly - well a whole lot quieter than the Hornby bucket of bolts anyway.

Thanks to everyone for the helpful advice.

Cheers

Darius

Thanks Nigel - I will re-align the motor and drive train - this will need more surgery. My home made driveshaft is not very satusfactory so I have ordered some ready made ones.

Cheers

Darius

I decided to junk the awful Hornby motor bogie and shoehorn in a spare Bachmann motor and bogie

Plan is to attach a DCC harness to the new motor.

Cheers

Darius

By chance I have a spare Hornby Javelin motor that I had earmarked for an MTK GWR twin railcar kit. I have wired this motor up to an 8 pin harness and am running it in on a rolling road. It runs better than the motor in the loco but still sounds like a bag of spanners. I have lubricated the gear train and the axle bearings.

It needs running in so I wil, leave it for now.

Cheers

Darius

If you physically break the motor supply connections between PCB and motor terminals, and successfully perform a check that confirms that both terminals are then fully isolated from the rails, there will be no need for a second decoder. Cut the orange and grey wires near the plug, and connect these to the motor terminals. That takes the PCB out of circuit as far as motor supply is concerned, motor supply is from the decoder alone.

 

Of course if you find that both motor terminals are not isolated from the rails even with the connections from the PCB broken, then there's the trouble. The problem described isn't necessarily on the PCB.

 

Out of curiosity, why is making an address change on programme track problematic?

All of the decoders that I have tried work fine on another loco.

I suspect it is a poor quality Hornby motor - it sounds like a bucket of bolts. It's the same sort that they use on the ex Lima Class 87.

No idea what the CV programming issue is. CV2 is set to 1 when I checked it on the other loco.

Cheers

Darius

Were you able to successfully change the decoder address on programme track? (The safe test for a correct decoder installation.)

 

 

Reason for asking this is that what is described is typical for one of the pick ups still having a direct connection to a motor terminal. This will typically damage a decoder pretty swiftly, so try the programme track address change if you have not already done so.

 

 

If you have successfully made an address change to the installed decoder, then you may have a very low current draw motor in the model, and need to reduce CV2, (start volts) to a smaller value. Sometimes it is a matter of finding a decoder which has enough adjustment in CV2 to get a slow start: the Zimo and CTE brands are particularly good in this respect which I turn to when faced with a motor that starts on a breath of current. There are doubtless others, I cannot claim to have sampled every decoder brand going!

Making an address change is problematic and your second comment ref. the direct feed may be the issue at hand. It is all wired up to the pcb, which is where the problem may lie. I am thinking of wiring a separate decoder harness to the motor and using another decoder in the pcb to operate the lights. Not ideal but I have no idea what the pcb is doing with respect to the motor feeds.

Thanks to both for your help.

Cheers

Darius

Have had similar problem recently. On seeking advise from the decoder supplier he suggested this.Turn the Loco the other way round, see if it still does it.It did.This proved in my case that the decoder was faulty. Its replacement was fine.May not be your solution, just thought I would mention it.

It does this in both orientations, however, the decoder works fine in another loco.

Cheers

Darius