Porfuera

If I understand your question correctly then the answer is that setting the decoders to the same DCC address doesn't work with Bluetooth because Bluetooth uses the HM7000-xxxx address, which is unique to each decoder and can't be changed - see @RAF96's post here. And this post suggests that consists are not currently available in the Bluetooth app but will be added later. Apologies if I've misunderstood, especially as I've not used the app yet because I'm waiting for the Android version.

Hi Jeff - is this the sort of thing you were after? From left to right: Tillig (129.5mm), Peco small radius (135mm), Hornby (166mm), Peco medium radius (180mm). Tillig points are the same rail code and geometry as Hornby (15 degrees) but they have no locking springs: https://www.tillig.com/eng/Produkte/produktinfo-83323.html and https://www.tillig.com/eng/Produkte/produktinfo-83324.html Cheers, Neil.

Hi Keith - no problem and I hope these are what you are looking for. They seem pretty parallel to me - I don't know whether the second photo on the cutting mat helps with that. On the cutting mat photo, the top small radius point (the R/H) didn't quite seem to be parallel (maybe it was just my eyes!) but I guess fettling the ends of the diverging rails with a file on one of the points is all that would be needed. To give an idea of the separation, the parallel lines on the cutting mat are 1 inch / 25mm apart. I guess it might have been a better idea to use the metric side - a lack of planning ahead... Cheers, Neil.

Following Peco's recent announcement of their small radius points, I ordered some and they arrived this morning. Here are couple of photos comparing them to the medium radius points. I must get on and build that small shunting plank - I have no excuses now! Cheers, Neil.

Was that direct from Peco? Although I can't find them on Peco's website. The only place that I can find is Antics but they don't give a price, just for preorder.

That's looking good - and very useful info as I've just ordered the goods shed kit.

I just tried placing a pre-order for some wagons and it looks like this process has changed since the last time I placed a wagon pre-order (on 15th Feb, I think). Previously, when I was ordering individual wagons, as long my pre-order total after the club discount was applied (i.e. the amount I was actually going to pay) came to £50 or more then postage was free for every item. It didn't even matter if the wagons were scheduled for release at different times, the postage on each individual item was free. Now it seems that no matter how many different wagons you group together in a pre-order, £3.95 postage is applied to each wagon. Postage is only free if you buy multiple copies of the same wagon and the total for that order comes to more than £50 - but any other wagon orders of less than £50 in that same basket will still have postage applied. For example, a while ago I pre-ordered one of each TTA and the postage was free. If I try that now then £3.95 postage appears to be applied to each TTA, so effectively a total of £11.85 postage for three wagons. So I guess if you pre-order ten different wagons you'll be charged a total of £39.50 postage. Obviously you don't pay until each one is despatched. Presumably you would try to claim back the postage if two or more arrive on the same day (as happened to me on Saturday and again on Wednesday) but I don't know whether you would be able to do that if they all arrived on different days. For example, last Saturday I received two wagons in one box and then on Wednesday I received the remaining two wagons in two boxes - even though, as we know, all the wagons were released at the same time and my credit card was charged four times on the same day (once for each wagon). Would that count as one delivery or two or three? I guess Hornby have noticed that they're losing money by not sending everything in one box so they're making sure they get their postage up front. But unless something has changed with their logistics then I assume that wagons will still be sent out piecemeal as they are at the moment rather than all together to a single address. The only small positive seems to be that (as far as I can see) the way that the free postage is calculated now appears to be slightly lower. It now seems to depend upon the order amount before the discount is applied being over £50 (i.e. the amount you'd pay if you weren't in the TT:120 Club) rather than what you're actually charged after the discount has been applied. So if you order more than £50 of the same wagon but then the discount is applied and you end up paying less than £50 then you still appear to get free postage. So I guess the boundary for free postage is now effectively 15% lower. Cheers, Neil.

The "TT6015 21T Mineral Wagon, B314633 - Era 5" is now available for pre-orders. In the first issue of the TT:120 Club magazine, three variants were listed, as follows: TT6015 21-ton mineral wagon Era 5 TT6016 21-ton mineral wagon Era 4 TT6017 21-ton mineral wagon Era 6 It seems that it is only the first of these that can be pre-ordered since the other two variants are still not in the shop as far as I can see. Therefore I assume those will be released later rather than all being released together as suggested in the magazine. Cheers, Neil.

I believe the start delay question was answered slightly further back up the thread by @RAF96 and the answer was that yes, this can be done. I don't remember reading anything so far about the horn.

My last two wagon purchases arrived this morning (a third 12T Tank and a brake van) - lovely models but they arrived in two separate parcels at the same time. And obviously I'm not the first person to have this happen. This means in total I've received four wagons in three parcels with free postage on all of them as far as I can see from my credit card statement. They were all pre-orders so it is not like Hornby (or possibly the external company that handles their shipping - CCL Logistics?) didn't have advanced warning of what they were going to be sending me. Plus the packing boxes all seem to be much larger than they need to be for what is inside them and extra padding is required to stop the contents from bouncing around. I'm by no means an expert in this area but surely sending orders out in this way is inefficient (both in terms of packaging materials and postage) and must eat into Hornby's profits? All I can think of is that they have done the sums and for some reason it works out cheaper for them to do it this way than it would do if they co-ordinated the individual orders with the deliveries and sent each delivery out in a single parcel. This is not a whinge - I'm happy as long as my orders turn up in one piece - I'm just a little confused by the business model...

But I was talking about a quick layout setup on a tabletop and then put away after - they would need to be electrically connected to operate, which would be a lot of work just for that. Or can they be operated manually once in place? Either way for a temporary layout it would be an expensive option to Hornby or Peco points as IIRC the motors are somewhere around £15-£20 each (I haven't checked).

Surely there are always going to be manufacturing compromises with RTP track in order to keep costs down. You could say the same thing about Hornby's points and crossings with their big lumps of brown plastic in the middle. Similarly people have to compromise on space to achieve what they want - for example, Hornby's curves are impossibly tight for most real-world situations. Not everyone is lucky enough to have an entire garage or loft space to have sweeping curves and reasonable-length stations with full-length trains running through the landscape. Most people are stuck with a small board in a spare room if they're lucky and have to compromise somewhere.

The small one is and exactly matches the Hornby points for length and crossing angle. The larger one has the same crossing angle but is 208mm long. I put a couple of posts on the Hornby thread because a question about double slips was asked there - apologies to anyone that has already seen them. The only problem with the Tillig trackwork is that they don't have springs to hold the switch rails in place so are difficult to use on temporary tabletop layouts.

I had no problem with mine - I fitted a Next18 decoder to my TT:120 Blink Bonny about a week ago. I did a short video (which I posted on the Hornby TT:120 thread yesterday) with a few random sounds if anyone is interested - including 'Fireman's breakfast', which I couldn't resist trying. I use a Z21 without any problems. Obviously this is the default sound profile supplied with the chip which can't be changed until the app is released. A couple of posts previous to this one I also posted a very short video of it running.

310mm is Hornby's second radius so should be OK for larger locos but as you mentioned it might make the coaches lurch a bit. Tillig make a longer one: https://www.tillig.com/eng/Produkte/produktinfo-83391.html Hornby's points are 631mm so this is larger than those while maintaining the same 15 degree angle but it might require some extensive rejigging of the plan because of the extra length. It appears to be electrofrog which the small one currently isn't. I think the large one looks better, too - the small one has a lot of rail squeezed into a small space, which looks crowded and a bit toy-like.

Tillig do one: https://www.tillig.com/eng/Produkte/produktinfo-83300.html Here is the geometry - 166mm and 15 degrees - no locking springs, though::

Hi Nathan - I have at last found a rolling road that was suitable and I've put together a video of my Blink Bonny. It is 4 minutes 42 seconds long so don't feel obliged to watch it all if you get bored! There are a few random whistles, steam sounds, squeals and so on, plus the "Fireman's Breakfast". Please note that the sound profile is the (generic?) one supplied with the HM7000-N18TXS chip and is not the sound profile specific to the A1/A3. Also the microphone was only about 20cm from the model so that might make it sound a little more impressive than it does at normal viewing distance and I guess the sound quality may also be better depending on the quality and size of your speakers. Cheers, Neil.

There was also a question asked on the Hornby Bluetooth Decoders thread as to whether it is possible to have the two sound decoders out of sync so that they don't make the same sound at the same time - the answer seems to be that you can set a start lag. The question was asked here and the answer (that you can set a start lag) here.

Given the choice I think I'm happier to see the small-radius points - I was doubtful that these were coming out any time soon and I'm very happy I was wrong on that one. I might be mistaken but IIRC it took Peco years to get their O Gauge set track points to market after they announced them so I'm really pleased to see these points being released so quickly after their initial launch of TT:120. Also I guess track items make more sense for Peco rather than UK outline rolling stock due to the potentially bigger sales market outside the UK. That said, it will be good to see another manufacturer of UK outline rolling stock join in. It's also good to see that Peco are looking really serious about TT:120 rather than getting cold feet and just leaving it as it is with only a few items in the range. And on that basis I'm confident they'll be bringing out the wagons pretty soon, especially with their recent splurge of advertising. Fingers crossed! Cheers, Neil.

I'm not sure whether this has been posted already but I've just received an email from Rails giving some new products in Peco's TT:120 range... two new buildings, a long crossing and the (long-awaited) small radius points. Rails' Peco TT:120 range is here (other stockists are available).

I didn't realise how tiny they are until I coupled them up to the loco and the carriages - they almost look like they're the wrong scale. Here's a short video of them behind Blink Bonny. I put them between the tender and the coaches to give the couplings a bit of a test. Apologies in advance for the camera work! I'll see if I can clear off the dining room table and get something better. That should also get me some brownie points from the Domestic Authority!

These two little lovelies have just turned up, courtesy of DPD. Not really my preferred era but I'm not complaining. I've not yet had the chance to run them - I'll be having a go at that shortly. I'm still awaiting the third 12T tank (Fisons) and a BR Toad E brake van - not sure why they couldn't send them all together even if it meant another couple of days wait but they do have form for doing this. I don't appear to have been charged postage even though the price of these two is less than the £50 minimum for free postage. In fact, my credit card seems to have been charged four separate times (i.e. once for each wagon/order) rather than a single time for all four. Finally the packaging is similar to Farish's but much bigger - it dwarfs them and they look a bit lost in the packaging when you first see them. I'm sure a larger wagon would fit in the same box so maybe Hornby are just trying to cut down on the number of different sizes of boxes that they need to have. Cheers, Neil.

Or a lot of wagons for sale for grossly inflated prices on a certain auction site

I'm not sure what is going on with the Hornby website but I've just noticed that all three of the 12T tanks wagons and the two Toad brake vans are now showing as out-of-stock on their respective individual shop pages - they aren't even available for pre-order, just for stock alert. However this is on the individual item pages - if you go to the 'Rolling Stock' section of the shop and filter this using the 'Show only in stock items?' slider then they still come up as being in stock. It is only when you go to the individual pages for each item that they then show as being out-of-stock. Maybe this should be taken with a pinch of salt though because the 12T Mobil tank went out of stock very early this morning only to reappear as in stock a bit later and now it is out-of-stock again. Maybe they found a few more hiding on a pallet somewhere. I received notification emails for my three 12T tank wagons yesterday but nothing yet for my Toad E brake van - fingers crossed for later today. And a quick recheck before posting this is showing the NE Toad B back in stock but all the others still out-of-stock... as I said, maybe take this with a pinch of salt knowing that their website isn't always 100% accurate and maybe it is having trouble keeping up with what is going on.

My Next18 sound decoder arrived wrapped in almost a square metre of bubblewrap and that was rattling around in a box that was almost the size of a shoebox. A bit over the top - the decoder has its own box anyway so I think a jiffy bag would have done the job for that one. I dread to think how much bubblewrap and cardboard they used on your order by shipping the items separately. And I've just been notified that three TT:120 wagons are about to be sent to me - three separate emails with three separate order numbers - I wonder if that will be three separate parcels...