Pete the Elaner

As buyers, we are spoiled by many sellers who absorb postage costs. So when people charge this back to sellers, they seem to get annoyed about it.

E-communications often cause friction. I know of couple of extreme examples in the Elan community. One buyer (who is now a close friend of mine) lives in W Yorkshire & went to see a car in Kent which was advertised as being a very tidy example. W Yorks to Kent is about an 8 hour round trip. He got there to find a complete wreck. When my fiend turned his nose up, the seller complained about his time being wasted. About 15 minutes for him to get the car out of the garage for the buyer to take a look at. The buyer had just driven for 4 hours & was facing the same return journey! Another one (this time a well known & respected dealer) put a car up for sale. He stated quite clearly that the photos did not do it justice: he could not get the photos to show up all the cosmetic faults; lacquer peel etc. but he described it as cosmetically scruffy & anyone expecting something which looked neat & tidy would be disappointed. I was surprised by the next bit...a post from someone who went to see it, moaning about the cosmetic faults & how he expected a good example but got there to see one which had scruffy paintwork. He went on to describe it exactly the way the dealer described it in the first place.

Seen it but I had not thought of confirming with CV8. Useful to know though.

I could quite possibly improve it with some adjustments & thank you for the link, but this is not really the point. The decoder simply does not work as it should. It does not respond properly to CV3 which is a fault it shares with my other Bachmann decoders. I bought it for someone who wants to try DCC & has acquired an old Lenz which has no display so will not have the ability to adjust CVs. Many modellers try DCC by purchasing or borrowing older, used equipment & a couple of factory fitted locos. A loco which runs poorly out of the box due to a rubbish decoder is a bad example for anyone new to DCC.

Yes, you are quite right. It was the R8215. It only worked 1 way on my NCE & was factory fitted in a Stanier tank quite some time after the R8249 had replaced it. It gave me the impression that manufacturers were willing to use old stocks of inferior decoders to sell as "DCC fitted" models & I have avoided them like the plague since... Until this S/H purchase which has re-inforced my belief.

I have just bought an older Bachmann loco marked by a factory label as DCC fitted. JMRI read the decoder as an ESU LokPilot, but did not seem to be sure about exactly which type. I have read that Bachmann used to fit ESUs so this seems to confirm it was an ESU re-badged to Bachmann. Running is noisy & jerky. I factory reset the decoder & read in all CV settings. CV3 was set to 8 & CV4 set to 6. As with other Bachmann chips I had seen, acceleration was just about non-existant no matter what I set CV3 to. Max value for this seemed to be 64 (I understand ESU do not use the same acceleration values as all other brands). Even at this value, it did not bother with getting there gradually. Deceleration seemed to be ok though. This is the 3rd of 3 "Bachmann" chips I have had which seem to ignore CV3. This has to be one of the worst decoders I have used (second only to a Hornby R8245) & has has confirmed my usual principle of steering clear from factory-fitted decoders if possible.

Nice to see you & the layout yesterday. I think the above comment is a bit hard on Dave. He was running your layout every time I passed it & I only saw you once. I think he earned a few free cuppas!

That's a very good accident! I felt that getting the tunnel portals just right was key for my layout. I went to the length of buying a laser cutter to do this, which has furthered my eye for tunnel mouths & bridge arches. You have done a really good job with this.

That looks really good. I can see you've correctly mis-aligned each row of bricks with the adjacent row. How have you achieved this?

Window seats are a problem because many of them are not lined up with windows at all. You would think they could get direction & window/aisle right though. This is why many reserved seats seem to be free; those who have reserved them sit elsewhere making a mockery of the whole system. I frequently travel from MK to Euston in the early morning. Most seats are reserved, many of which are empty. I often sit in a reserved seat but rarely get asked to move.

I heard they were ZImo, so maybe they have changed yet again recently? That's the problem; they tend to change without notice so by buying Bachmann, you don't really know what you are getting. Both my Bachmann decoders are relatively old now. 1 is 21-pin & the other is 8 pin but both ignore CV3. For me, this makes them completely useless as a loco decoder. They seem to be ok controlling lighting in my DVTs though. They have put me off from buying Bachmann decoders for good.

I think you're going to have some fun with this. Adjusting these & seeing the results was what made DCC the right choice for me. There is no right or wrong about how you set these 2 variables up. It is a matter of personal preference.

Have patience. I could not get it to work first time either. I have no idea what I did wrong, but they seem to work ok now. Consist is actually a real railway term, not an NCE one, although I never heard it until I started to use DCC either. There are 2 types of consist: standard & advanced. Standard is done on the system. You create an address which sends out the same command to the 2 members. Advanced is more flexible. You effectively give the members a 2nd address which they all respond to.. Hornby R8249 & TTS do not support advanced consisting. I do not use the function regularly but I think I addressed the leading loco of my consist & they all move. Some functions are still individually controlled like lights & horn sounds. I think you can turn the sound itself on/off (engine startup) individually but once on, they should be synchronised with each other. Take your time & try to enjoy the learning experience.

You really need to start by identifying the decoders. They all have manufacturer & version ids. Some manufacturers do not use their version ids very usefully though. I am not sure if the Bachmann EZ controller is capable of reading decoders in order to find this out.

It is not actually NCE who call them a consist. On the real railway, any train made up of individual vehicles is called a consist. For some reason, modellers have never used the term before. What type of consist are you using? Standard or advanced? Standard is managed by your PowerCab. You define an address & the system sends a command individually to each loco. Advanced adds a second address to the decoders. They should both respond to this address but it seems to be a little more complicated than that. The system knows about the consist so you can make them move by addressing one of the individual locos. Some sounds are activated from both & some from the leading one. Example: This is from memory so may not be 100% accurate but will hopefully be good enough to get you started. I want to run Black 5s 5000 & 5020 together. Their addresses are 5000 & 5020. When creating an advanced consist, I give it the address of 120. In order to drive them, I just communicate with 1 (usually the 'leading' one, which is the first defined in the consist). So they should both respond to 1240. I think both respond to turning on their sounds individually but once running, they respond together. Playing the horn only plays on the loco you are talking to. Hornby standard chips do not support advanced consisting. TTS chips are effectively standard Hornby chips with added sound, so these do not support advanced consisting either.

It looks like each new post generates an entry in this list. Very much a feature, possibly not switchable & not to everyone's liking. It does highlight the most popular threads, which you (& I) may appreciate with time.

That's very thin. I would expect it to break cleanly once you have scored it once or twice with a scalpel. Don't worry about not having a laser cutter. I would expect it would warp acrylic that thin. Mine does.

The staff member I spoke to at MR Scotland confirmed this. The standard of models is ever increasing. I hope this sets a new standard. As Richard pointed out, the downside of this is that the more switchable functions there are, the more decoders will need to provide. This is ok with a sound decoder but non-sound ones typically have only 4 function outputs.

I am particularly disappointed about the HEA. The HAA looks pretty good but I only ever saw these run in bulk loads of 20+ hoppers, which in O gauge terms is huge. HEAs on the other hand regularly turned up in smaller numbers making them much more suitable for a small yard. For this reason, I would expect these to sell better.

That is a very good point. Justifications for choices can be helpful Bachmann decoders: I have 2. I understand they re-badge others so I don't really know the origin of what I have. I do know that both (1 8-pin, 1 21-pin) ignore CV3, even though I can confirm it is set correctly. I steer clear of these now. The old Hornby chips (R8045???) were not fully NMRA compliant. I had one factory-fitted & it would only work in 1 direction with my NCE. Hornby discontinued these years ago but it has tarnished the reputation of their decoders. R8245. I have had no issues with these. They do everything they are supposed to but lack a few features which I find useful. No advanced consisting & minimal motor adjustment. These were only £8 each when I bought them but now they have doubled, there are much better value alternatives. Sapphire: More features than R8249 including a shuttle mode which can be quite fun. I have one & the locos lights turn off after about a minute. I have no idea why. Factory resetting the decoder did not rectify this. I believe you can get other decoders with shuttle functions if this is what you need. Zimo: MX600 cost just a little more than Hornby's R8249 but I feel these are much better value. Good motor control out of the box & very tweakable. Support advanced consisting too. DCC Concepts Zen: My first runaway (after a short was cleared) which was cured by disabling DC running. No other issues but didn't look as good as mi Zimos. TCS: I have 2 of these in Hornby class 86s. These ran well on DC but struggled to move at all with these decoders. I have not tried any other TCS decoders but my ZImo MX600-fitted Margate Princess performs a lot better.

Heathcote Electronics do a 4 aspect signal driver with detector. When several are used together, they communicate with each other so as the 1 clears from red to yellow, the previous clears to double yellow etc. I have seen this demonstrated at an exhibition. I believe these are sold as ready-made instead of kits. If you like electronic kits then MERG have some products which will achieve this.

I used 8 points all fitted with PL-13s on a layout a few years ago. 2 of these failed at a show. I felt a 25% failure rate was disappointing. I have never tried a PL-15.

I have not looked a the compatibility options of JMRI but I would expect it to work with Digitrax. It is free so you have nothing to lose by trying it out. The beauty of it is that you do not need to remember any CV's. DecoderPro shows everything in plain English.

1. Either that or just try it. Disabling DC can sometimes cure a problem like the loco shooting off at full speed after a short circuit has been cleared. Some people disable it as a routine, but others do not. 2. What colour are your Gaugemaster controllers? Black ones have feedback. Decoders do not like these. The cream-coloured ones are ok. I have occasionally seen red Gaugemaster controllers but I have no idea what this range is for. I think the combi is a cream one isn't it? DCC locos on DC have a slightly higher start voltage on than those without, but some claim they actually run better than non-fitted locos. I can't vouch for this because I can't remember the last time I ran one of my locos on DC.

Forgetting Hornby's TTS for reasons which would take a bit of explaining, then about £130 including the speaker. If you are running longer trains in O, then you may need the higher current decoders which are more expensive.