jivebunny

Yep, certainly a reasonable starting point for a ten-vehicle TGV. I'm not a huge fan of the Mehano ones but for the price it's hard to complain, and they pop up fairly frequently on eBay and the likes. Versatile too, since the trailer couplings can be easily adapted to run with the old Jouef ones. Not to be confused with the newer Hornby Jouef ones, which use the old Lima Collection tooling and a completely different articulation / coupling / support system... don't even try When Jouef released the Spanish AVE set in the mid-90s they produced intermediate trailers that were sold individually, but for some reason elected not to produce the R4 bar trailer (even though the tooling existed) and so it wasn't until I realised Mehano also made the AVE that I was able to complete my rake... They don't half take up a bit of space though... (the Mehano trailer is bottom-right, in a Jouef box so it can pass unnoticed) Alan

Ouch, not the cheapest of sets! It certainly looks stunning though, and a far cry from the old Jouef one... Can't imagine it'll cover much distance on l'heure bleue before having to brake

Townsend Thoresen of Herald of Free Enterprise infamy in the background there (although it doesn't seem to be the HOFE itself). Hadn't seen that name in a while... I do miss taking the hovercraft though. As a child in the 80s I was fascinated by these beautiful machines, a fascination which was then taken over by the Seacat and ultimately by the Channel Tunnel, much like Hoverspeed's market share... Steering the topic firmly back on course: I can't remember if this is analog or digital, but if it's the latter have you seen the new Roco Y8000? I have one on pre-order and it's due for release next week. Would be perfect for your layout: DCC sound, digital couplers (compatible with standard French loop couplings) and a powerful stay-alive... They're only releasing the DCC version for now though, and it'll set you back around 230-250€... https://www.roco.cc/fr/product/243671-0-0-0-0-0-0-002003-0/products.html Alan

I can't answer for the rest, but regarding the Eiffel Tower question a number of stations with fairly short lives were built on the Champ de Mars for the 1867, 1878 and 1900 Paris Expositions. The first lasted barely more than a year, the second one just shy of 20 years (meaning it was still around for the 1889 exposition and inauguration of the Eiffel Tower) and the one you're interested in was built in 1900 and demolished in the mid-30s (a small affair with a mere 20 lines and 2 turntables!) The first two stations were accessed via a connection at Grenelle-Ceinture (present-day Javel station on the RER C) and the third and final station had a connection at Henri-Martin, to the north of the site. Looking at the Champ de Mars today it's hard to believe it spent the best part of 60 years as a rail terminus... The 1877 station building is still standing, albeit having been moved to Asnières and now in a terrible state for a listed monument... Alan Edit: found a Wikipedia article in English

Going slightly off-topic here, but how about setting up a Paypal donation button for those who wish to show their support? Alan

From the OP's initial post it sounds like it's just going in reverse when set to forward and vice-versa. Very useful tool here from the 2mm Scale Association that you can use to not only calculate the correct value for CV29 according to the settings you need, but also to determine which settings are configured by first reading the value from the decoder, then entering it into the box and clicking the "BackCalc" button: http://www.2mm.org.uk/articles/cv29 calculator.htm Alan

Here's one which I've just stumbled upon in my archives. 28 years in the making for this one (1989-2017) Alan

From what I've gathered, converting the old Roco Y8000 borders on the impossible due to severe space constraints and the fact that it's a split chassis design. A few pictures here to give you an idea of what's involved. Pasting the URL into Google Translate will allow you to read it in (approximate) English. Roco's brand-new Y8000 is due for release in about six weeks and would save you the hassle (if not the cost...) of attempting this conversion. I've got one on pre-order, although the only version available for the moment is the digital sound version equipped with digitally-operated couplings, so it's not cheap https://www.roco.cc/en/product/243671-0-0-0-0-0-0-002003-0/products.html There's likely to be a non-sound version in the future though. Just make sure you don't order the AC (Marklin 3-rail) version... Funnily enough, following my replies further up, it just so happens I ordered a Piko BB 8500 last week alongside a rake of matching VB2N coaches (used on Parisian suburban lines). I fitted the loco with a Zimo decoder and lo and behold, "stop" and "light speed" were the only speed settings it was willing to run at! Upon investigation, I noticed that the default acceleration and deceleration rates were set to something like "2" on this decoder, which will mean the motor gets up to full speed very quickly indeed. It's possible you have a similar configuration on your ESU chip. Whilst reconfiguring my decoder I switched to "speed curve" mode, and also provisionally set the acceleration rate to 50 and deceleration to 30, which gave much more realistic operation. However as I changed both settings at the same time I can't say with absolutely certainty which one made the difference, although logic would suggest it's more to do with the acceleration / deceleration rate. I then dismantled the thing and re-wired the lights so that I could have independent control of the red markers, since by default it has simple directional lighting that doesn't allow you to switch off the rear lights when coupled to a train. A little photo just for good measure. Alan

My local club has a couple of Piko 66000s and they run fine, although I seem to remember the "shunt" function (F6) does the opposite of what it's supposed to and activates "rocket mode". Can't remember which chips they use though. They pre-date my arrival at the club and due to covid restrictions the building is out of bounds until further notice so I can't check, but it's no doubt just a badly-programmed chip. I've seen a few cases where someone's got a new loco, added it to DecoderPro and then written values without doing a "read all". Could be that your shop did something similar, or the chip wasn't entirely new and had already been messed about with. A CV reset might get more realistic running out of it, and failing that then I'm sure some adjustment of the Vstart, Vmid and Vhigh values will get it sorted (as well as a look at the F6 values). Alan

The Z2, when you can get hold of the version you want, is difficult to find below 300€ for the DC version, or 400€ for the DCC sound version. That's just the French market unfortunately, much less demand than in the UK so average prices are a fair bit higher (which is where the vicious circle begins to slowly kill off the hobby...). Hopefully the Jouef Loisirs line will make a difference to that. I can't imagine the UK market would be in very good shape if starting prices for locomotives were around £150 and £50 for coaches. I got mine from MiniPlanes which is a retailer near Nantes (don't be fooled by the name, they sell tons of trains too). The price is a few euros lower than Pierre Dominique but I'm not sure how much international postage comes in at. Also worth noting is that parcels are heavily delayed at airports at the moment, it may be best to wait a bit of you have a tendency to get nervous about such things! I had one parcel arrive from Italy which got to France in 24 hours but then spent 9 days stuck at Charles de Gaulle. Similar story with some kit I sent over to Spain, which got stuck in Madrid. Everything arrived in the end, but it does make you a bit twitchy to have 400€ worth of fragile kit stuck in the postal system and not going anywhere... Alan

Does staying up until 4:30am to place a winning bid on a U.S. listing for an obscure French driving trailer count as a form of eBay madness? In my defence: 1) I got it for about half the price they usually go for 2) It's, er, eye-catching... Alan https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/HO-Scale-Lima-309266LK-SNCF-French-Railways-2nd-Class-Coach-Passenger-82-74-010-/333635886352?_trksid=p2047675.l2557&ssPageName=STRK%3AMEBIDX%3AIT&nma=true&si=pPQydpCydwxoy2KXm9DIU0QV8yw%3D&orig_cvip=true&nordt=true&rt=nc

Hi all, Having recently purchased my first two sound-fitted locomotives from Roco and Piko, I decided to give Hornby's TTS a try by retrofitting my LNER J36 with the TTS decoder and speaker kit. Obviously as a budget solution the quality of the audio files, the speaker and the decoder are not quite up to the same standard as ESU and Zimo kit, to put it mildly, but even installation proved to be a major headache. It turns out the J36 TTS kit wasn't particularly designed with the J36 in mind... I thought I'd share my experience for those thinking of doing the same, in case it can help. For those who don't want to read, "buy the TTS-fitted version" sums it up nicely: - After taking off the tender body and unscrewing the DCC connector plate and weight, you find out there's nowhere near enough room for the speaker as supplied in the box. - Following a bit of headscratching, you realise the speaker can be removed from its cylindrical plastic housing, but the instructions make no mention of that possibility. - Having figured this out, you remove the speaker from the housing and pop it into the enclosure with the wires sticking out of one side, then screw the weight back on... - You then notice the weight's forcing the speaker down, which in turn pushes down on the chassis and bends it downwards... - After loosening the screws to remedy this, you screw the connecter plate back onto the weight - This is when you realise that the wires from the tender pickup PCB (that sits below the speaker and weight) to the connecter plate (above them) have only a millimetre of play in them... - So you remove the speaker to run the wires up to the connecter plate in different ways until you can screw it back on without snapping / stretching the wires - Once that's done, you realise the metal back of the speaker is shorting out on the metal weight and causing your command station to cut out - So off you go to get the sellotape / electrical tape / insulation of some sort and stick it over the back of the speaker (after removing everything you've just screwed back together) - Once that's done, you check the decoder is responding and sit back, happy that all is now well in the world. - You now wrap the decoder in suitable insulation, as is good practice. - You think you're being smart by wrapping up the excess wire with the decoder, then realise the bundle is way too thick to put the tender body back on - So you start again, this time wrapping only the decoder and not the wires. - You then spend half an hour trying to reposition the decoder and wires until they allow you to put the body back on properly, snapping and losing a lamp iron in the process. - Finally you decide to make do with a tender body that's more or less snug on the chassis but not quite, with a nice gap all the way along both sides. - You then turn the sound volume down to 1 or 2 because it's too loud, and disable half of the six or seven whistle sounds (personal preference) - And activate DC running which is disabled by default (already covered here I believe) On second thoughts, I'm not surprised Hornby didn't want to write instructions beyond "plug it into the socket". I can't say this has made me particularly enthusiastic about retrofitting TTS to my other locomotives... Still, it's a lovely little machine (photographed before its "operation") Alan

I must say it's a shame Rails don't provide tracking numbers on international orders. I placed an order this morning and although it's already been shipped, I'll have no way of knowing if I'll get it early next week, late next week or sometime the week after, whereas with a tracking number I'd have some idea where it's up to. The parcels have tracking numbers on them and they no doubt know this number before even sticking the label on, so it seems a bit odd to keep customers guessing as to which week their parcel will arrive. I'm sure it would require no more than a quick barcode scan for the information to be displayed next to the order on the website. It's strange how a delayed parcel is less annoying when you know it's delayed than when it simply doesn't turn up the week you expected it... Hopefully they read the forum from time to time Alan

I'm so glad to see a Merseyrail version annouced just weeks after I bought the Tyne & Wear PTE version to pass off as a Merseyrail unit

£20 for a broken wire is pushing it a bit, IMO.

Granted the Jouef Z2 was a great model at the time, but up against today's models it looks (and sounds...) fairly crude IMO, particularly the gaping holes where the light clusters should be. It's a lot of work to get it up to a decent standard, a bit like trying to make Hornby's 1980s HST power car look like the current model. Photo from eBay:

I see this as a very good move from Hornby, hopefully the sales will justify more models of this sort. For the past 10 or 15 years the French market has been very restrictive in terms of pricing, and it's basically been a case of spending upwards of £200 on a locomotive or seeking out 20-year old second hand models. In fairness these can very decent value for money if you're either using DC or handy with a soldering iron, in particular "Lima Collection" stock and the old Jouef "Modéliste" range, but we're in desperate need of a "Hornby Railroad" type range for beginners and the younger generation who seem to be pretty much excluded from the hobby. I attend a model railway club that has 30-odd members, and at nearly 35 years of age I'm the youngest member, even though we're just outside a decent-sized city in Western France (400,000+ inhabitants in the metropolitain area). Over the past few weeks I've bought myself a two-car Piko Z9500 EMU and a Roco CC72000. Granted they're digital sound models with interior lighting etc, which is becoming the norm here, but the EMU set me back the equivalent of £340 and the 72000 weighed in at about £250, both after discount! The DC, non-sound version of the EMU is listed at £270 and the 72000 at £185. When you consider a Corail coach (basically a French Mk3a) costs about £60, it soon mounts up and it's no surprise young people aren't interested. Let's hope prices come down a bit with Hornby's initiative. Alan The 72000 is still in the post, but here's a smartphone shot of the Z9500 which is very, very nice (just as well, considering the price)

Good grief, I hope the fireman's in shape because that's a hell of a step up from the tender

Thanks for the comments on the TGV, glad you like it! I have five sets in different liveries and that's the third one I've completed, now to finish off the TGV Sud-Est (orange livery) and Thalys PBA (maroon livery). Then I need to build myself a very long cabinet to display them in when not in use. Most of the sets are "only" 2.3m long but the TGV Atlantique sets have an extra two trailers, giving them a scale length of just over 2.75m (240m at 1:87 scale)...

Well, this has to be the most reluctant purchase I've ever made, and I'm certainly guilty of encouraging eBay madness here: approx £90 BIN for a long-out-of-production and very-hard-to-find postal TGV trailer which had a RRP of about £25 at the time... The damn thing only has four wheels! Back in 1996 Lima released a new high-spec series of H0 TGV sets in various liveries under the "Lima Collection" brand (which some may remember from the 1990s UK OO market). I've had the basic 4-car train pack and five additional trailers laying around away for years, but the last trailer I needed to form a 2+8 set has been eluding me for quite some time... These stopped being produced around 2000/2001 when Lima was bought out by Hornby and Hornby-Jouef eventually decided to re-release the postal TGV a few years ago, but annoyingly the colours on the new models don't match the original (or the prototype) and the yellow is almost lime green. So the second-hand market is your only choice if you want additional trailers for the Lima version... Hence my brain thinking "you must be having a laugh", quickly followed by "surely it would be unreasonable of me" and then the all-too-familiar "oops". Still, at least my set is complete now and I can sleep soundly. Alan (Photo taken when the set was still missing three trailers)

Isolation-induced nostalgia forced me to dig out my old APT set, among other things trains. For a model that's 40 years old it's actually not half bad and I find it holds up relatively well against its more modern counterparts (although I can't imagine it'll hold up too well against the new APT ) Alan

It's imaginative, I'll give it that. Ivor the Engine's long lost cousin, perhaps?

Well, not sure what to make of this (or what on earth happened to it). Still, at least the price is reasonable. https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Tri-ang-Hornby-R-52-0-6-0-Tank-Locomotive-Black-Spares-and-Repairs/402058859164?_trkparms=aid%3D777001%26algo%3DDISCO.FEED%26ao%3D1%26asc%3D20160801204525%26meid%3D2760c3bc2e4b4d60aa7e06349f484e24%26pid%3D100651%26rk%3D1%26rkt%3D1%26mehot%3Dnone%26itm%3D402058859164%26pmt%3D0%26noa%3D1%26pg%3D2380057%26algv%3DPersonalizedTopicsRefactor&_trksid=p2380057.c100651.m4497&_trkparms=pageci%3Aa494fd89-5e30-11ea-bea8-74dbd1804a75|parentrq%3Aa642ca971700ad397e37619bfff57b24|iid%3A1

Thanks for that, you put me on the right track. After a bit of digging it turns out it's a minor shortcoming of the DCC++ software on the Arduino, which always sends 128 steps and doesn't know how / when to send 28. Not a problem with modern decoders but, as you pointed out, a bit of an issue when using a decoder that's 24 years old... After a bit more digging I was able to find a patch for the relevant component in the software, pushed it to the Arduino and lo and behold, I was able to utter much the same words as Dr. Frankenstein (except regarding a decoder). Now I just need to fix the pickups I broke when removing a bogie for cleaning If anyone's in the same situation I can put together a little how-to on getting DCC++ to play ball with older decoders (not sure if it works with 14-step decoders though, I'll need to take a look at the code) Here's the link to the forum post I found: https://www.trainboard.com/highball/index.php?threads/updating-dcc-to-support-28-speed-steps.126153/#post-1100972 Alan

Hi all, Has anyone encountered problems with old Lenz decoders not taking orders from JMRI? (Specifically the LE130 from around 1996). I'm running DCC++ on an Arduino and can read and program it just fine via DecoderPro. The motor twitches happily away in the process but once it's on the main it doesn't respond to anything, be it throttle or lights. - Back on the programming track, I can still read and write CVs so I would assume that means the decoder isn't fried. - I've tried multiple resets and the address correctly reverts back to 3. - Tried disabling Back EMF, to no avail - If I swap it out for a DCCconcepts decoder then it works just fine, so that would seem to also simultaneously rule out wiring issues, a short circuit and a problem with my hardware setup. - I dug out another loco that was equipped with the same model of decoder and it behaves in the same way! I'm fairly convinced there's a limitation either with the decoder or JMRI that prevents them from talking. Any ideas on what it might be and how I can get around it? Thanks! Alan