[dwb]

Now there's a tempting piece of information

Not really. Hornby's reorganisation of their dealership network caused me to 'lose' several pre-orders and has left a nasty taste in my mouth. It broke the 'must hava' spell, which is probably a good thing. For now my hobby budget is being spent on finishing off my Continental Shelf layout. Hornby haven't lost out completely as I have bought some Rivarossi items.

David

 

[butler-henderson]

The triple pack seems to becheaper here Hornby Open Carriage Pack containing 3x Open Carriages (Stephensons Rocket) R40102 - The Island Railway Shop
And according to Hornby more are expected in Spring.

 

[Julian2011]

Noooo!!!... 😱 Ssshhhh!!!!!... 🤐🥶... Turn the Monitor OFF!!!...

Oh, that's better, screen turned down and Mrs R tucked away downstairs with the TV and M-in-L for company. Ulp.. ☹

J

 

[Julian2011]

Not really. Hornby's reorganisation of their dealership network caused me to 'lose' several pre-orders and has left a nasty taste in my mouth. It broke the 'must hava' spell, which is probably a good thing. For now my hobby budget is being spent on finishing off my Continental Shelf layout. Hornby haven't lost out completely as I have bought some Rivarossi items.

David

I have to agree with you on those dealership decisions, I did get involved in one of the consequences of that, but fortunately saw what they were up to and refused to play their game. It seems that there must have been a significant number of folks who expressing themselves about similar experiences and the policy did eventually change. However, as you rightly say, there is still caution in any approach to them.

Looking at the coaches, they seem to be quite nicely finished and should add a bit of extra to the Rocket rakes - apart from those confounded plastic couplings. I will probably find some real chain, in the spares box and see if I can remember how to swing 3 links..... {at least, at that scale, there isn't quite the same risk to my left thumb!! 😌 }

J
Now, just where did the magnifying headband get to?

 

[Julian2011]

Progress...

Having got the Rocket to run reasonably, it seemed a good time to find and remove any capacitors. At first I couldn’t see if/where a capacitor might be fitted into the Rocket body, but eventually noticed a small item on the Hornby 6 pin socket, which had C1 written next to it. It looked like a metallic case, with soldered ends, onto the socket. I got a pair of narrow nose pliers on it to see how firmly it was soldered and there was a sharp crack noise, leaving some ceramic looking residue and fine dust on the desk. That seemed to answer the question about removing it and the residue was easy to remove with a few strokes of a Dremel burr, including the thin soldered tags.

After...

I then ran a check to ensure that there wasn't a problem with the motor running under DCC. I swapped the ESU decoder for a DCC Concepts ZN 68, which had been intended for the Rocket, but was just a bit too long for the Water Barrel. With the Zen laid on the open barrel, it was as smooth as anyone could wish for, so there were no DCC, PWM issues with the motor. So, back to the ESU...

I did notice that the ZN68 had CV 2 set to 5 and did the same to the ESU, which was also just fine. Once the other CVs had been adjusted this was reduced by one number at a time to find the minimum smooth speed. The lowest was CV=2, just about smooth, so it was set for CV-3 to make sure it was completely smooth.

For the re-run of the next CVs, I had recorded the Factory settings and the CV 54 = 0 runs. For each of the next CVs I noted the performance of:-
Factory, the CV 54 = 0 – Run; then simple Min; Max; Mid; settings to see the effects.
CV 53 {BEMF for max speed} went from 255 to 130
CV 52 {Low BEMF} went from 1 to 10
CV54 {stronger BEMF (sic) control} went from 15 to 25

CVs 5 & 6, were then be adjusted to 100 & 40 to give near scale 1.5 - 30mph.

So far the changes really improved the starting and smooth slow running.
CV 55 {load control} went from 25 to 10, interesting, in so far as it says the higher the momentum, of the motor [large flywheel, bigger motor] the lower it has to be set... umm, right? At higher numbers it just got much faster and at 255 I didn't even go anywhere over half throttle. CVs 5&6 got another adjust to 80 & 35.
Thanks to Ahjay’s help, the Rocket now runs well, from a steady 1.5 to 30mph, max, with the 90deg bent 6 pin ESU. A satisfactory end, but it would have been nicer if it had done that out of the box like it did with the Zen ZN68, out of it’s box.

J