Ouroborus

Whilst i agree with the above about speed of delivery, here's another story about MRD. I bought a 31 tts decoder from RAILS last year and struggled to get it to work. MRD is the closest model railway shop to me. I gave them a ring and told them my problem, including that i hadn't bought it from them. "Bring it in" was his reply, so i made the trip over the bridge and through the housing estate where we spent the best part of half an hour determining what the problem was with it. Turned out that it was actually my Lenz system that didn't like it. His suggestion was the loan of a Gaugemaster Decoder Doctor to sort it out. I didn't take him up on that because after spending so long with me, i felt it rude to just borrow the kit, so i bought it instead. Its actually been a very worthwhile purchase. I did buy a load of other stuff as well, but how's that for service? Its a cracking shop - stuffed to the gills with tasty things!

Fastest finger wins!

Blend the images in lightroom. Bracket your camera so you take 3 or 5 images, under and overexposed and then blend them using PS or LR. It should give you nicely exposed foreground and sky

Sorry! I'll let you know what its like! . First for me to grab a bargain. Bure Valley have some nice DCC fitted Motorised tampers for £52 and there were still some left when i picked one up!

£88 at Model Railways Direct. But i think i may have had the last one......

Perhaps i have this wrong, but from what i read in the instructions, there were two motor profiles, switchable on CV150. With CV150 at 0 (default), CV 151 and 152 controlled the motor and were set to 8. With CV 150 at 1, the other motor profile is used, controllable on CV's 153 and 154. I think!

Brave man! I think this is the first account of TTS in a Heljan that i have read. The motor output on the chip is protected, so in theory, keeping the lights off should stop it going pop

I found that CV151 and 152 which both should have been 8 were not right out of the box. The Lenz 100 would not reliably reprogram them. However, the gaugemaster loco doctor that i now have programs them a treat

This made me chuckle - i had the same thing. I typed in "Class 37" and my search returned something like 400 hits. So I typed in "Bachmann class 37 colas" and it went up to 1000. Nevermind. Worse things happen. I agree on the customer service - second to none. SO easy to deal with! Cheers guys.

@sawyermodels - thanks for this. Nice video - the noise is very subtle, though the dentist's drill towards the end, less so. Being nosey, how well are the tts locos and chips selling?

Looking at the Olivias page, the speaker supplied with the chip is a round one. The previous Hornby 08 sound (not tts, £136 in 2010) had a rectangular speaker at the front facing inwards and was 21pin. Anybody know what the inside of these looks like and where Hornby have put that speaker?

Have you got a link for Olivias chip? Thanks. EDIT - found it!

Absolutely. And even though I've wanted an APT and a grey blue pullman for years and fortunate enough to have a job which means i can comfortably afford them, i don't consider £1000 to be "worth the price" of a toy train. I'm out.

The speaker is too big. You'll need to change it. The tts speaker supplied for the 67 and the 31 fit nicely, but for the 37,47 and 60, you'll need to downsize

His 20x40x8 is a good fit, though you'll likely need to take out the roof fans and depending on the age of the loco, a bit of grinding as well

I had two fail and sent back to hattons. That was out of eight. Comes with a massive speaker that won't fit into a Bachmann 47. With a working decoder and a decent speaker, sounds are fine to my ear. A tad on the noisy side maybe

My tuppenth. I think that one of best that Bachmann produced was their 158. Time has long since caught up with it, but I can remember it being released in ?1998 and it being simply streets ahead of Hornby and Lima offerings. I still think that it holds it own pretty well

I don't think anyone is 'carping on' in the sense that they are dissatisfied with tts (well, maybe some are), but more in the sense that Hornby seem a little inconsistent with how they supply them. It would seem that the tts chips are indeed bespoke for each tts loco that Hornby supply and basing your choice on your experience with a previous chip may be unwise. As i have found, a 37 has a speaker enclosure, the 47 does not. Furthermore, if you browse hattons, rails etc, you'll see images for the chips and speakers and yet what you actually end up with may be quite different. It not a big deal, just a niggly frustration that could have been better ironed out.

To be quite honest, I don't know. It seemed very similar to Cura although perhaps a bit more refined in how it printed - greater control over the first layers. Looking under the bonnet with it, i can see that there does seem to be some ability to use it to update firmware through an import/export feature. I'll have a look at Slic3r (thanks for the headsup) since simplify3d does allow you to try for 2 weeks and claim a refund if you're not happy with it.

It was the interior for an APT coach that i was doing. Too big to fit into one print, so split into two. The first was a mess, but the second one is going well. It seems to be an issue with the slicing that plagued the first attempt. For the life of me i can't see what the difference between Cura and Simplify3d was, other than £100.

Interested to know how people are getting on with the aldi printer. I had some disastrous attempts to begin with. Despite all the levelling in the world, the print quality was poor - not sticking to the table, stringy, poorly filled in. I ended up using Simplify3d rather than the bundled Cura and the change was instant. Clean fast prints with none of the stringiness that plagued the earlier versions. Anyone else had this?

Horses for courses. Purists with a handful of locos will justify the larger expenses - equipping three or four locos is no big deal. You perhaps see things in a different way if you 30 or 40 to sound equip. An analogy was made earlier about a rolls royce. I think that's spot on. I could afford to buy a rolls royce if i wished. I'd have to sell some other things first, like my house, but i could still do it. I choose not to though because the Toyota Yaris i have does the job i want it to and the money i save by not having a rolls royce i can spend on other things. I appreciate that the roller may be better finished, i'd get a nicer cup of coffee in the showroom etc, but when it comes to parting with my cash, i'd rather spend it on other things. Same with tts. It does the job i want it to. The train goes brum brum when it passes and i can make it go nee-naw. Thats about enough for me. The money i save through not buying a higher end chip finances other things for my railway or other things in life generally. When things in toy train world were a lot cheaper, my attitude may have been softer, but with the price hikes, i'm becoming more discerning on how i spend my money. Moving on, i stand to be corrected, but as far as i know, all of the current and planned tts chips are for locos that have already had a RTR tts loco 'attached' to them. The 20,40 and HST are to be released this year. I wonder if Hornby have any plans to release a tts chip for locos yet to be tts rtr, for instance their 101 or 121? Now that might scatter the pigeons!

What size speaker is that Richard? Looks the perfect drop in replacement

If they were intended for a Hornby class 47, whether it was Hornby or ex lima, i can't see a reason why not to supply an oblong speaker - they have the biggest volume available in which to fit a speaker, lacking the chassis blocks of Bachmann, vitrains, Heljan

If you the read instructions to the tts decoders, its quite clear that Hornby are aware they will be fitted into other locos. As referenced above, there is a little bit of 'on your head be it', but they do give some guidance. As for the shapes, the Hornby class 47 chassis has a 'well' in it into which drops the speaker (without enclosure), so that is perhaps why the newly released speaker is supplied as so. The Hornby 67 chassis has an oblong recess into which the speaker (with enclosure) drops in, though you'll need to cut the wires to the speaker from the chip to thread it through. Dunno about tts 31 and 37 chassis' - i haven't got one. The 31 speaker is oblong as supplied and some issues about cv control over slow speeds (the cv settings 150,151,152 were not as stated). The class 37 speaker is round as supplied. All said and done, i remain pleased with them and its allowing 8 pin chips to be cascaded onto other units like my Bachmann 158's for wiring up lights in trailer cars where i always though purchasing another decoder and wiring it in was something i couldn't be bothered with. I must try and post up a video of a tts 37 vs a swd 37