Jenny Emily

Possibly of slight embarrassment to Hornby is that I appear in a number of their videos citing the Atholl as the 2020 announcement I’m most looking forward to. And my pre order has been cancelled. I have contacted Hornby for clarification as to the reason, whether they made less than originally announced, or some other reason.

Just had the dreaded email: “The purpose for the email is in regards to your pre-order for the Hornby R3819 Centenary Edition Duchess of Atholl Locomotive. At the beginning of the year Hornby allocated a set amount of all Centenary products to all retailer including the R3819 Duchess of Atholl. The purpose for them allocating was so products were not oversold and retailers knew from the beginning how much stock they had to sell. Subsequently we opened up our order books and pre-sold to within our allocation of stock. Hornby however this week have contacted us and informed us that our allocation of the Duchess of Atholl will now be significantly reduced. This is totally out of our control and after many attempts to secure the original volume it appears this will not happen. This unfortunately means that we are unable to fulfil your pre-order and the order will be cancelled. We are extremely disappointed that we have do this. Rails this year will celebrate the 50th year of its family run business. It is down to loyal customers such as yourself placing their trust and orders with us that has placed us where we are today, so it really pains us when we let just one of our customers down. We honestly would love to supply and fulfil your order, however we cannot force Hornby to sell us the stock. We have tried to give you as much notice as possible in the hope you will be able to secure stock elsewhere, including Hornby’s direct website. We will continue to try and secure additional units and should this be successful you will be one of the first to know about it. Once again please accept our apologies for the disappointment and we hope it doesn’t affect ordering in the future with us. ”

Ouch! Was there any explanation given? i have one on order with Rails. I’ve just checked my account and nothing has changed as yet - still shows as ‘pending’.

My blue class 40 arrived. I’ve just finished filming it for a review, but I’m impressed with it’s smooth running. I’ve fitted it with a Hornby TTS class 40 chip. I’m impressed that the Hornby speaker fits perfectly under the fan and the sound is really good.

There are formats churning away in the system. Model railways will most likely be back on the telly sooner rather than later.

I can’t find any conclusive pictures of them in olive green. Do your pictures show the livery clearly?

I don’t have an easy to set up DC track. However on reading the manual I discovered that the tOm decoders store a fault code to CV30. On reading this it showed the decoder had detected overload on the motor connectors. On dismantling and studying the wires carefully I discovered a tiny split in one of the wires which must have caused a single strand of wire to short. I’ve insulated it and the loco runs now.

I’ve just hard wired this old split chassis A4 from Bachmann. However I have a curious issue. It won’t run on DCC. The decoder programs and reads back just fine on the programming track. Power is reaching the motor because I can see the loco twitching on the track when being programmed. But it will not respond to the throttle on the layout. The decoder is a Train-o-matic 8 pin. I’ve turned the controllers on and off, done a chip reset, tried programming different values but the loco will not run on the layout. Can anyone suggest what the issue is likely to be? The loco ran just fine on DC prior to hard wiring. Removing/changing the chip is NOT an easy option to be performed lightly!

That’s my pair from the rear. I’ve been running both of these, and have to say of more importance to me is that the Rails one is a far more reliable runner. Hasn’t stalled once whilst the Hornby one sulks at every point frog. I had to really hunt for what was being talked about. Maybe it is less visible on the black ones, but is that really what people don’t like? My feeling is that if that puts a buyer off the Rails Terrier, then maybe they had already decided they didn’t want one long before they found that fault.

I felt my ears burning..... I’ve put my Rails Terrier side by side with the Hornby one and am struggling to find what people are complaining about with regards to the cab roof.

I was lucky enough to get an invite to a very large private 5” gauge railway. It was really mind blowing, not least because it was run prototypically with interlocking points and signals, complex junctions, sidings, as well as scale rolling stock. It was very far removed from the kind of ride on stuff you see at country parks. This was a very large scale model railway.

Mine arrived today. Definitely a display cabinet model. I’m actually glad that Hornby didn’t try and compromise the way it looks to make it run better. Tender drawbar is a pain though. Semi permanently attached would help protect those thin connecting wires. DCC fitting needs very careful choice of decoder.

Peco sent me one to build and review. It’s a nice kit and something a little different. Very easy to build with clear instructions so I reckon the perfect kit for a beginner to try their hand at.

my review video includes a full DCC fitting guide. Space is limited, however I used a Train-o-matic wired 6pin decoder. The chip fits perfectly in the space in the tank. At €18 it is also one of the cheaper 6pin decoders on the market and doesn’t tend to need any fiddling with the CVs to get good running out of any model.

Asda do some really cheap ones. From memory around the £30 mark. They are like the good old phones of the early 2000s. I used to use them until the producer I started to work with shamed me up to date into this iPhone world. to bring the thread kicking and screaming back on topic, I have a Guernsey on order after falling in love with it from the photos on the Rails site. I’m not looking forward to the DCC fitting. As a trial run I finally fitted my LSWR #91 and boy does it punish you for a wrong move! Once I reassembled the connecting rods and wheels, I was able to get a Train-o-matic wired 6 pin in by placing the decoder in the recess of the tanks where it was an interference fit and coiled the spare wires behind the smokebox. It’s rather tight on space for any of the direct plug decoders I had and none would fit. My advice would be that unless you are really good at DCC fitting, get the factory fitted ones for DCC running.

I tested how low a voltage these will actually work on and 3V seems to be fine. For anyone unwilling to chisel theirs out for return I’d recommend running it on such a low voltage and it should cope just fine without blowing its top. I use a spare track output from my Gaugemaster Model D controller to achieve this, now that the trains are all powered by the DCC.

The contents of electrolytic capacitors aren’t very pleasant. I forget what the electrolyte is but probably not good to inhale it. I plan on continuing with my original in use. I run it on 8-9V DC and no problems as of writing. If the issue is a capacitor rated only to 10V then theoretically I should be fine. I weathered mine and bedded it in so am loathed to chisel it out.

My review of the Terrier:

Mine arrived. Quickly posed on a corner of my stored War of the Worlds layout. Filming a review this afternoon to hopefully go out tomorrow. it looks a lovely little thing!

I’ve made a full video reviewing, installing and using the tower. It’s a reasonable little model bringing some playvalue to the hobby, hidden in a pretty good scale model. It weathered up pretty well too.

To be honest, I'm looking at the B12 from Hornby thanks to lack of Bachmann announcements! Bachmann take note!

It really is the most underwhelming announcement ever.

Just finished my live stream. I interviewed Scott Rhodes and he says that the J27 was designed with a J26 also in mind. There is a crane in LMS livery for the die hard LMS peeps. In my opinion an interesting release schedule with the GER van and cranes the highlights.

Announced at 10:00am I will be going over the range live on my Youtube stream if people want to join me.