Porfuera

1 hour ago, Porfuera said:

something in TT100 is going to be around 60% bigger than the same thing in TT:120

I freely admit I'm rubbish at sums and on reflection something in TT100 might be only 42% bigger by volume than the same thing in TT:120. Even so, 42% is still a fair difference.

I'm sure that someone better than me can get the right figure!

18 hours ago, Railpassion said:

After being enthusiastic about TT120 as a concept, and having had a TT continental layout for a time, yesterday I finally saw the Hornby range at Monk Bar Models in York. 

 

My first impression was that it's too small. It was quite a shock to see the scale close up, Flying Scotsman, the 08, and HST.  I was strangely disconcerted and underwhelmed, it simply did not work artistically. I never expected to say it, but I think that 3mm 100 is a much more satisfying size and scale. 

I saw the 3mm 100 diesels at the York Show and felt the were immediately attractive in shape and size. 

 

There is something psychological about scale, and it's no coincidence that 1:100 is architect's scale. 

I know you are just expressing a personal opinion, but you don't say whether the 3mm layout that you saw was running on 12mm or 14.2mm gauge track but if it was 12mm gauge then surely the rolling stock was over gauge which would contribute to its apparent bulk, giving the wrong impression when you look at something like TT:120 that has the correct gauge-to-scale ratio - just as it would when comparing British H0 to British 00.

And just as a model in TT:120 is almost twice the volume of the same model in 2mm scale, then something in TT100 is going to be around 60% bigger than the same thing in TT:120, so no surprise that TT:120 looks a fair bit smaller than TT100.

As for scale, that is just a ratio of the size of a model to the size of the real thing - I can't see how there is anything psychological about it apart from some people having a preference for bigger scales and others for smaller ones.

And surely there is nothing intrinsically special about architect's scale being 1:100 - it is simply easier to divide a measurement by 100 if you're making a model, which is nice for TT100 but it isn't an insurmountable problem in other scales.

My four BG Mk3 coaches arrived yesterday - I had to delay the DPD delivery by 8 days because I was away on hols ☹️ but today I finally got the chance to play with them check them and test them.

I think they look great. I can't comment on the prototypical accuracy but then that doesn't bother me as long as they 'look right' from normal viewing distances.

The running qualities are excellent in both directions - i.e. both when pulling and pushing - although so far I have only tried a loop of track so no points to date. But I'm relieved that I don't have the wheel binding issues reported earlier.

The only initial 'problems' were a couple unplanned separations between coaches. Inspection with a magnifying headset (those couplings are so tiny!) showed that, once the couplings were correctly aligned, sometimes both metal hooks remained raised rather than dropping down and locking onto the opposing coupling. A light touch with a screwdriver dropped the hooks into position. A bit of running in might fix this but I'll probably fit magnetic couplings when I get around to it. I might wait and see what the proposed Hornby ones look like before I decide which ones to buy.

I'm very happy and I'm looking forward to the Class 50s and the Mk2F coaches!

EDIT: apologies for the phone-camera blurry photo!

On 19/04/2024 at 11:03, Hobby said:

Hornby in interview with Peachy and MacTrains about the range, the issues, plans for the future and lots of background. Very interesting and explains why we can't have everything tomorrow!

I watched it last night and I quite enjoyed it. I thought they were pretty open about the issues that were discussed. That is good because if anyone is suffering from any of the running problems mentioned then it could point a way to a potential fix. For me, I think I may need to take a look at the insides of the axle boxes of my 12T tank wagons - but I think that's about the only problem I've had so far. Touch wood! Also good to know that issues are being investigated and addressed when they are discovered.

The exchanges about the design/development/production schedules were also interesting and also that they're not sticking rigidly to the original plan - as we've seen with the J50. My take on it was that they're keeping an eye on whether steam or modern image is selling better and they may further adjust the release schedule to suit.

I wasn't sure what to read into Martyn Weaver's body language at times, though - he occasionally seemed a bit fidgety - I'm sure that should mean something! 😆

On 12/04/2024 at 14:12, Porfuera said:

A couple of hours ago I received four emails saying that my four BG Mk3 pre-orders have arrived. My credit card has been debited as well.

True to form for Hornby's logistics company (CCL ?), despite all four emails arriving within about an hour of each other last Friday, I've just noticed that three of my Mk3 carriages are showing as 'Dispatched' with a date of today (the 15th), but the Buffet is still showing as 'Processing'.

I guess I should have known better than to expect all four to arrive in the same package... or at least, on the same day.

47 minutes ago, MartinRS said:

When I looked at the Hornby site a few days ago I saw a large photo of a couple of J50s 'on shed' which lacked front couplings. The locos looked aesthetically pleasing, but was not what I wanted. (https://web.archive.org/web/20240415125113/https://uk.Hornby.com/hornbytt120) 

That image is probably a couple of 00 scale locos because Hornby didn't even have a complete TT:120 loco available to show on the Q&A - IIRC all they had was a couple of recently-received test mouldings that they hadn't even had time to assemble.

I don't know for sure but I suspect that the front coupling on the 00 is optional/removable (at least, I think I've seen this on other 00 models) and that's possibly why they didn't put it on the photoshopped images they're using for the TT:120 models.

1 hour ago, andrewshimmin said:

I haven't ordered my carriages yet as I was waiting for my pending Hornby points to be useable. It says 21 days after delivery, which would have been Thursday, but they're still showing as pending. Anyone else had that problem? I've emailed Hornby Customer Services but no response as yet.

I noticed that as well - my HST arrived on 22nd March but the points don't appear to have been credited yet. Hopefully we're on the cusp so fingers crossed for next week, although I'm fortunate in that all my pre-orders are already in so I don't have anything I want to buy (at the current time 🤔) therefore I can afford to wait in any case. I might be waiting on the Class 37 before I spend mine! I must resist the J50...!

2 hours ago, PeterStiles said:

It may be worth proactively contacting Hornby customer support and asking if you've been charged four sets of P&P :)

I was originally charged p&p on each one - each carriage was a separate order (in spite of ordering all four at the same time) and as there was only one of each carriage then each order was under £50 and so each one attracted p&p (I hope that makes sense!)

I'll be contacting Hornby about the p&p after the carriages arrive. I didn't think it worth doing beforehand because I think you only get the p&p back on ones that arrive on the same day. So if (for example) all four were to arrive on different days then from what I've read I don't think they'd refund any p&p in that instance.

A couple of hours ago I received four emails saying that my four BG Mk3 pre-orders have arrived. My credit card has been debited as well.

12 hours ago, spamcan61 said:

Agreed, out of idle curiosity just looked at the IP address assignment on my home router and they're all over the shop within the 192.168.1.x subnet.

Mine are quite tidy - I have 10 devices between 192.168.0.10 and 192.168.0.27

2 hours ago, Kaput said:

No real risk other than things randomly not working correctly.

 

Unless you have pretty much hundreds of devices connected to your home network at once, I wouldn't give it a second thought.

 

For what its worth, the router that came with my Z21 has never left the box. The Z21 gets plugged into my network by ethernet whenever I'm using it. I could change the IP settings but there physically isn't enough networkable devices in the house to make the router get to the stage of trying to assign .111 to anything...

Thanks for that reply - that sounds like a practical and sensible approach.

I've just switched on every device in the house I can think of (except the Z21, which is boxed up atm) and a quick check of my hub shows that there are 10 devices connected so I don't think I'm going to worry about it for the time being.

18 minutes ago, DaveArkley said:

You can set up a reservation in your home router's DHCP rules, you'd need to find the mac address of your Z21 and add using that. If that isn't crystal clear then I suggest you don't do it, too easy to get wrong if you aren't familiar.

 

Cheers

Dave

That doesn't mean anything to me - I think you are answering a question that I didn't ask.

I was told that there is 'risk' involved in connecting an Ethernet cable from my wifi hub directly into my Z21. I asked what that risk was and what could happen - I'm pretty sure that doesn't answer that question.

14 minutes ago, Nigelcliffe said:

The Z21 out of the box has a static IP address.   If you don't know the dynamic address range of your router and add a device with a static address,  then you risk two things with the same address.  

 

Your system works by good luck.  That luck could run out.

So what could happen? What is the risk?

I don't deny that what I have done works by good luck - my home network hub's IP address was correct for the Z21 - I said as much above. If it hadn't been then the IP address of the tp_link router would presumably not have changed itself and I would've had a working Z21 with internet connectivity on that network.

But it didn't work due to the IP address clash between the hub and the tp_link router, which is what makes it work the way I've configured it.

21 hours ago, Nigelcliffe said:

Trouble with all the above....   

The reason Roco ship the Z21 with a configured router is the scope for folks to make a dogs-breakfast of their home networking.  Half a bit of knowledge about networking is usually the way to get into a mess  (been there, in 1986, got the tee-shirts).  

 

It should be possible to configure the second router so it takes its DHCP allocations from the "primary" router, and thus everything is on the appropriate number range.   Or, if everything in the house (other than the Z21) was on a dynamic address, then just change the house router so it doesn't clash with the supplied Roco unit. 

I think you've missed the point of my post, which was that I have not changed anything, anywhere, (so zero risk of making a dog's breakfast of either the home network or the Z21) yet I have ended up with a Z21 that is accessible from my home wifi network (rather than having to use the Z21_xxxx network of the supplied tp_link router) and therefore I can control trains via the Z21 app and still access the internet without even having to change my devices to a different network.

In fact, simply trying to connect an internet link to Roco's supplied configuration of the Z21 and tp_link router left me with a Z21 that didn't even work, so presumably if I wanted to get that configuration working I would have had to make some changes somewhere. That's something I might investigate later but just out of curiosity because I'm more than happy with what I have now.

IP addresses are as much a mystery to me as the next person, despite having worked in the IT industry for about 35 years (I did software - i.e. programming, fault-finding and analysis - other people handled the networking) and I was simply hoping that if others were able to follow my post then they might also be able to end up with a Z21 connected to their home network with internet connectivity and without the risk of irrevocably changing something that would result in the Z21 not working. Achieving that does depend on their home hub/router having the same IP address (range?) as the tp_link router's 192.168.0.1 but if they're trying to have internet connectivity while using the Z21 and they haven't achieved that any other way then it might be worth a try.

Surely it is just a question of plugging their internet connection directly into the back of the Z21 and if it works, it works? And if it doesn't work then nothing is lost - isn't that correct?

Just to resurrect this topic... Apologies if many people already know this, but I'm hoping it might be useful to someone and save them a bit of time.

I was recently trying to connect my Z21's tp-link router to my home wifi hub so that I could have internet access while using the Z21. Initially I used an Ethernet cable end-to-end for simplicity and for testing.

I noticed that whenever I plugged the Ethernet cable from the hub into the tp-link router's WAN port (blue on my router), the Z21 stopped working. A bit of investigation showed that the LAN IP address on the tp-link router was changing from 192.168.0.1 to 192.168.1.1 and consequently the tp-link router was no longer able to communicate with the Z21, which is expecting 192.168.0.1

A bit more investigation showed that my home wifi hub's IP address was also 192.168.0.1 - presumably this was causing a clash of IP addresses and the tp-link router was obligingly changing from 192.168.0.1 to 192.168.1.1 in order to avoid the clash, but resulting in it no longer being able to communicate with the Z21.

Given that my home wifi was already using the IP that was expected by the Z21, I decided to remove the tp-link router entirely and simply plug the Ethernet cable from the home wifi hub directly into the Z21 - and everything worked!

The advantage of this is that I no longer need to connect my devices to the tp-link router's network (Z21_4245) - I can just leave the devices connected to my home wifi network and I can control the Z21 with the app and still have internet access on my devices. Possibly this won't work for everyone - it guess depends on the IP address of your home wifi being 192.168.0.1 to begin with, but that should be easy to check.

Back to @PaulM381's original post about how to get the wifi connection to the Z21. I removed my Ethernet cable and instead of using powerline adaptors I had a wifi extender that had been given to me (the actual model is a tp-link RE330 but I assume that other - and better - ones are available) - see pictures below to give an idea. This is configured with the same network name and password as my home wifi, it is plugged in next to the Z21 and as you can see it has an an Ethernet port which is then connected directly into the Z21's Ethernet port. It may not work for everyone (possibly it will depend on home wifi signal strength at the place where your layout is located) but for me it works in place of my original 10 metre Ethernet cable strung across the lounge and into the dining room(!) and as I mentioned above I can now control my Z21 without changing networks and still have access to the internet on my devices.

I hope that all makes sense and that I have the terminology, IP addresses and everything else correct - and that I'm not teaching everyone how to suck eggs.

2 hours ago, Porfuera said:

I'm having a bit of a problem with one of my HM7000 locos - I think I need to uninstall and reinstall the app on my tablet.

 

Is there anything I need to do first? For example do I need to Unassign my existing locos or even Unlink & Delete them? I don't want to reinstall the app and find that the new install tells me that my locos are linked or assigned to some other app and then won't allow me connect to them.

 

And is there any stored data that I should delete as well?

I've been looking through the guides and I think I've found the answer, at least to the first part:

"Please note that you are advised to Unlink and Delete any HM7000 decoders from HM | DCC prior to deleting the app from your phone or tablet. If it is not possible to do this, you may be required to Reset your HM7000 decoder prior to linking it to the new install of the HM | DCC app.

- It is advised to use the Export Device Reset Codes from the Settings ‘ ‘ screen prior to uninstalling the HM | DCC app.

- If this is not possible, 1-use Reset Codes can be requested from HM.customercare@Hornby.com if required."

I'm having a bit of a problem with one of my HM7000 locos - I think I need to uninstall and reinstall the app on my tablet.

Is there anything I need to do first? For example do I need to Unassign my existing locos or even Unlink & Delete them? I don't want to reinstall the app and find that the new install tells me that my locos are linked or assigned to some other app and then won't allow me connect to them.

And is there any stored data that I should delete as well?

Cheers, Neil.

Cross-post from the main Hornby TT:120 thread, but the BG and GWR Mk3 coaches are showing as in stock.

Did anyone get any further in finding the reason for the dragging wheels on the Exec Mk3s? Was it tight axle points in the bogie frames or something else like the wheel flanges rubbing on the underside of the coach or somewhere, which has been seen before and which also seems to be happening with the some of the new BR 50-foot brakes?

I haven't seen it reported anywhere else so I'm hoping it is an assembly issue rather than a design problem.

I don't know if this has already been mentioned but the BG and GWR Mk3s are showing as being in stock

Another couple of things that appear to have been dropped from the catalogue are the BG Mk2e coaches and the GBRf liveried Class 50, although all these are still in the shop but with dates of Spring next year.

And they're going to bring out a 'Y' point - that's something I'd like to see from Peco.

A new Train Terminal is out, although from a quick scan it looks to be everything in the announcement. There are four pictures of the 37 to zoom in on.

https://uk.Hornby.com/community/hornbytt120-club/members-area/blog-and-news/time-more-tt

You may need to log in.

No sign of the Club magazine yet - the publication date is April but no actual date given.

On 02/04/2024 at 22:09, Ighten said:

Only issue now though this seems to have effected some of the auto functions like brake squeal.

There is an auto-calibrate function available for use with different makes/motors to the current Hornby profiles - I don't know whether that would help?

42 minutes ago, 1andrew1 said:

If Hornby does retain Oxford Rail, would it make sense to direct that brand to focus its efforts on TT120 as well? Maybe it could play to its strength in wagons?

I seem to remember someone saying that the Hornby TT:120 12T tanks might have some connection with Oxford - a quick google shows the Fisons, Mobil and Carless ones in 00 from Oxford with the same running numbers as the TT:120 ones, plus the two new ones announced this week.

Also, wasn't there an announcement of a Class 66 from Gaugemaster at one point? IIRC there wasn't even CAD for that and it was withdrawn even quicker than Heljan's 31.

I also don't subscribe to the theory that Heljan were 'forced out' of TT:120 - they simply took a business decision to pull out. Heljan couldn't be sure whether they would've got their 31 to market before Hornby given that Hornby has been developing their TT:120 range for years as had already been said. Heljan don't have any magic solutions when it comes to getting developments to market - I keep saying I've been waiting for their Class 02 since September 2020. OK the Class 02 is a new loco for them whereas a 31 would use existing research and maybe some of the existing CAD but they'd still need at least a couple of years if not more to do the rest of the work that comes after that.

43 minutes ago, PaulRhB said:

Yep and in OO you can usually model something using other manufacturers stock or the secondhand market. As Hornby went it alone, and got defensive when Heljan announced a 31 making them decide it wasn’t worth the hassle, you don’t have options which makes the release of matching stock more important. 

If I can run complete sets of only a few trains that at least sustains interest but currently I can’t run two East Coast sets seen together unless I buy two exec HST’s. A quick win would have been to release the BG HST set with a different number to tempt us to buy that too to get more stock ;) 

But then which era should they have concentrated on? Everyone has their own idea - you seem to want to run BG or Exec HSTs, many on the TT:120 thread are keen on grouping-era steam while others here are talking about modern container wagons. Hornby can't do all that in a year, something would have to go - even alternate numbers must take up production slots that would be used for something different. Look how far away the green 08 still is - 18 months later than the original ones.

Currently there is a bit of something for everybody (although in some cases only a very little) but with the promise of more to come later. Maybe that's not the best solution but then I don't think Hornby are concerned about 'modellers', they want train set sales to establish interest in the scale and the rest comes later.

And I wouldn't say that Hornby chose to go it alone - Heljan and Gaugemaster could have continued but they chose not to. No-one knows how far advanced they were with their projects. I'm sure Hornby like having the field to themselves but there isn't anything stopping someone else from joining in. Hornby haven't announced a Type 2 yet so surely someone could start work on one of those? But other manufacturers are probably waiting to see how it goes before committing to anything at all - even something 'small' like a wagon never mind a loco.

11 hours ago, Taigatrommel said:

There's not anything I'm aware of in terms of container wagons that ran in the UK.

Doesn't the 'ff' of the Arnold-now-Hornby Sffgmss container wagons at least indicate that those were capable of running in the UK?