Problems with Hornby Select

QUOTE (Gary @ 23 Nov 2006, 10:02) <{POST_SNAPBACK}>For a very large number of railway modellers residing in Britain they need look no further than a budget system.

It is questionable whether it is worthwhile spending £200 or more on an overall package if all you are going to do is run 3 or 4 locos on a small layout. Model Rail Forum members will appreciate this.

Happy modelling
Gary

In principal I agree - but why do the UK manufactures produce "budget" systems that are of no use (except to sell them on) if you want to upgrade later (I appreciate that at this stage we are not too certain regarding the abilities of the Setect & Elite).

For example - you buy a Lenz Compact & if you later upgrade to a LH100 or LH90 you can still use the compact controller as a slave, as indeed any decoders that you already have.

Likewise you can start with the Roco Locomause & the basic Fleiscmann ones & then use them as a slave for other systems.

The same almost certainly applies to systems from the likes of Digitrax & so on. BTW - if you want expensive have a look at ZTC !

Also, don't forget that DCC as we now know it (with the exception of Marklin & such like) is all based on Lenz anyway.

Another point - several friends of mine have small layouts with only a few locos - if they have your prefered budget priced DCC system it will work fine with their locos on their layout. But that would mean that we could not run each others locos on each others layouts. That's why the more experienced DCC'ers don't like some budget systems.

As far as I know the Gaugemaster Prodigy Advance (& yes, I know it's "badge engineered") as well as being a fully featured system is available for around £185.

Nothing wrong in principle with budget sets, but they are limited in performance & upgradability. As an aside I give out plenty of advice at exhibitions regarding DCC. So far the only people I have met who have gone "budget" have later told me they have regretted it !

To me trying to run decent/expensive locomotives with el-cheapo decoders/controllers is like putting remolds on your Beemer - they will do the job but you won't get the best out of the car.

As a matter of interest Gary - how long have you had "hands on" DCC experience ?

In your one of your previous posts Gary you intimated that some forum members had been a bit vociferous with their comments about the Hornby system, and that we should trust Hornby. Why should anyone trust Hornby ?. From the evidence presented so far they simply have not got their DIY DCC to normal accepted NMRA standards. The fact that we've had no announcement from Margate on what the system can and cannot do simply encourages the type of speculation below. Folks embarking on the Select /Elite route of DIY DCC may very well find themselves investing in a Cul de sack, with even the loco's fitted with non standard decoders which will not take even modest amounts of peak amps.

Consider these comments from yesterdays postings on Usenet:

QUOTE Well, I was thinking about going DCC, but all this talk of low address and high address and will it or won't it is putting me off. I thought DCC was DCC was DCC. Isn't there supposed to be a standard for all this?
Yes, there is, the NMRA Standards and Recommended Practices for DCC. Unfortunately, a number of manufacturers have decided they Know Better, and refuse to play nice. Hornby is one of these; Marklin is another. Note that both try to lock the buyer into their "systems", which is no longer a good marketing strategy. You either produce stuff that will play nice with other mfr's stuff, or you risk going under.
Actually, Hornby did go under, and so did Triang (who bought Hornby), and so did Lionel, and more recently Marklin did too. Serve them right IMO. The buyers of the Hornby marque seem poised to make the same
> mistakes as the original. Dumb, if you ask me. (Don't mind me, I'm feeling extra grumpy this morning.)

Stick with Lenz, Digitrax, NCE, Bachmann (limited, but standards-compatible), MRC, and even Atlas.
The key underlying standard is the protocol and packet format that every decoder, command station etc must comply to. As far as I can see the Hornby decoder and command station meet these but are restricted in what you can do with them which is price performance trade off. So pick the system that meets yours. A system is only non-compliant if it won't work with these protocols OMHO.
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Since that time I have refrained from making any comment about the Hornby DIY DCC . My absence from this subject has not stopped others from taking up the sword. It seems that many folks are concerned about the potential damage the Hornby DIY DCC system could do to the hobby should it prove to be a Cul de Sack system.

Common sense suggests that Budget systems are not fully featured. It does not require an experienced DCCer to tell us that! What I object to is experienced DCCers who say we must get a fully featured system for £££ from the outset or else we are wasting our money as we will inevitably trade up and so on and so forth. All this does is serve to confuse and put wanabee DCCers off DCC.

Experienced DCCers are absolutely hopeless salesmen I'm afraid and its no wonder we are still in the dinosuar age in the UK with they way they go about trying to explain things. There are examples within this very topic!

Why cannot DCCers simply suggest that railway modellers spend £50 and try out the DCC experience. If they don't like it then they have only lost £50 less whatever they get for their system on eBay. If they do like it then they take it a stage further. This to me is so blindingly obvious but not to DCCers apparently!

If you DCCer lot got your act together then the whole of Britain could be DCC in 5 years. But if you continue to perform as you have done to date there is absolutely no chance.

My DCC experiance is that I am a busy person wanting to set a layout up, plug in a console, put a few locos on the track, and have a bit of fun. I have absolutely no interest in the technology and how it works. As long as it does what I want it to do then I am very happy. From this perspective I have had 100% success to date with both the el cheapo Bachmann and Hornby systems and they are all I am ever likely to need.

When I observe how they have to faff about at Warley MRC with a high spec systems from a well know supplier and all the associated wiring and wiring plans and short circuits and blow outs and cut outs and so on and so forth then I am absolutely glad that I stick with the simple stuff with no wiring!

5 men for 8 weeks (2 evenings per week = total 240 man hours) and the layout is still not sorted!

I want to play trains and have instant gratification not faff about with all the spagetti underneath.

I guess I am the typical Hornby customer and do they know their customers!

Long may it continue!

OK. From a DCCers perspective Hornby (and Bachmann?) customers may be fools, idiots, bufoons, representative of neanderthal man or whatever however at least we know how to have fun!

Happy modelling
Gary

G.Common sense suggests that Budget systems are not fully featured. It does not require an experienced DCCer to tell us that! What I object to is experienced DCCers who say we must get a fully featured system for £££ from the outset or else we are wasting our money as we will inevitably trade up and so on and so forth. All this does is serve to confuse and put wanabee DCCers off DCC.
B.A lot of people do not understand that these systems are "budget". I have NEVER told anyone the MUST get a fully featured systems. Just pointed out the possible drawbacks.

G.Experienced DCCers are absolutely hopeless salesmen I'm afraid and its no wonder we are still in the dinosuar age in the UK with they way they go about trying to explain things. There are examples within this very topic!
B.Possibly so, but personally I am much better explaining things face to face.

G.Why cannot DCCers simply suggest that railway modellers spend £50 and try out the DCC experience. If they don't like it then they have only lost £50 less whatever they get for their system on eBay. If they do like it then they take it a stage further. This to me is so blindingly obvious but not to DCCers apparently! mad.gif
B.If you had read my last post correctly you would see that we do agree (for once) on this.

G.If you DCCer lot got your act together then the whole of Britain could be DCC in 5 years. But if you continue to perform as you have done to date there is absolutely no chance.
B.No control system will be standard - DCC or otherwise - we still have people using 3-rail DC & AC, as well as clockwork & of course now live steam. And FYI "us DCC lot" have pefectly good international standards & was progressing nicely before budget systems arrived & muddied the waters.

G.My DCC experiance is that I am a busy person wanting to set a layout up, plug in a console, put a few locos on the track, and have a bit of fun. I have absolutely no interest in the technology and how it works. As long as it does what I want it to do then I am very happy. From this perspective I have had 100% success to date with both the el cheapo Bachmann and Hornby systems and they are all I am ever likely to need.
B.Just as I thought - no hands on experience of fully featured systems.

G.When I observe how they have to faff about at Warley MRC with a high spec systems from a well know supplier and all the associated wiring and wiring plans and short circuits and blow outs and cut outs and so on and so forth then I am absolutely glad that I stick with the simple stuff with no wiring!
5 men for 8 weeks (2 evenings per week = total 240 man hours) and the layout is still not sorted! wacko.gif
I want to play trains and have instant gratification not faff about with all the spagetti underneath.
B.Well, if WMRC are as good with wiring & electrics as they are with returning phone calls, e-mails & snail mail, then I'm not surprised !

G.I guess I am the typical Hornby customer and do they know their customers!
Long may it continue! clap.gif clap.gif clap.gif
B.Believe me I really want the Hornby system to do well, but if it is "out on it's own" then it just may go the same way as Zero! - & there was agreat opportunity missed.

G.OK. From a DCCers perspective Hornby (and Bachmann?) customers may be fools, idiots, bufoons, representative of neanderthal man or whatever however at least we know how to have fun! tongue.gif[
B.When, exactly did I describe H & B customers as "fools, idiots, bufoons, representative of neanderthal man or whatever" ?

B.Sometimes I wonder exactly what your connection with Hornby is (or how many Hornby shares are in your family).

QUOTE (Gary @ 23 Nov 2006, 14:35) <{POST_SNAPBACK}>My DCC experiance is that I am a busy person wanting to set a layout up, plug in a console, put a few locos on the track, and have a bit of fun. I have absolutely no interest in the technology and how it works. As long as it does what I want it to do then I am very happy. From this perspective I have had 100% success to date with both the el cheapo Bachmann and Hornby systems and they are all I am ever likely to need.
Well said, I completely agree - apart from the no interest in technology bit. I am quite intrested in the technology and as I said earler I do understand buses quite well and, when I get some time, I'm going to look at the protocol and addressing scheme used in DCC. Address decoding is always fun. The early IBM PCs didn't decode the Address Bus properly because IBM did't see the need for 640KB in a PC but that, as they say, is another story.

However this is all going to have to wait for some spare time......

>Why cannot DCCers simply suggest that railway modellers spend £50 and try out the DCC experience. If they don't like it then they have only lost £50 less whatever they get for their system on eBay. If they do like it then they take it a stage further. This to me is so blindingly obvious but not to DCCers apparently! :mad.gif:

I think that's exactly what experienced DCC users want to suggest BUT if it turns out that the budget system chosen has limited or no compatibility with more advanced units, users who want to upgrade are forced to start all over again. Their "DCC on board" locomotives must be stripped and re chipped which will be a harder task than fitting a DCC module to a "DCC Ready" loco and the control unit is either "eBayed" or junked. Some may even consider that they have been conned. So who in all conscience could suggest such a route?

David

QUOTE I think that's exactly what experienced DCC users want to suggest BUT if it turns out that the budget system chosen has limited or no compatibility with more advanced units, users who want to upgrade are forced to start all over again. Their "DCC on board" locomotives must be stripped and re chipped which will be a harder task than fitting a DCC module to a "DCC Ready" loco and the control unit is either "eBayed" or junked. Some may even consider that they have been conned. So who in all conscience could suggest such a route?

Again the DCCers are making assumptions that everybody who tries a budget digital console will want to upgrade to another system. Again with negative talk designed to put people off even trying DCC. I don't understand it. Some will upgrade. Most won't. But at least talk the opportunity to try DCC up!

I am very confident that the budget companies will introduce enhancements of their own systems in time so that is not an issue. Bachmann have since the launch of EZ-Command and no doubt Hornby will to (as they have done with Scalextric Digital). The fact is the Bachmann Sound Locomotives will work entirely under the instructions of the budget EZ-Command console as has been demonstrated by Bachmann. This will help to sell more budget digital consoles in the UK than anything else I would suggest.

Now given that the extremely experienced DCCers feel unable to recommend buying a budget system then why do you take those to task who have experience with budget systems for suggesting that budget systems are tried out by the beginners?

Again this makes no sense and defies logic.

Happy modelling
Gary

QUOTE (Gary @ 23 Nov 2006, 19:40) <{POST_SNAPBACK}>Again the DCCers are making assumptions that everybody who tries a budget digital console will want to upgrade to another system. Again with negative talk designed to put people off even trying DCC. I don't understand it. Some will upgrade. Most won't. But at least talk the opportunity to try DCC up!

I am very confident that the budget companies will introduce enhancements of their own systems in time so that is not an issue. Bachmann have since the launch of EZ-Command and no doubt Hornby will to (as they have done with Scalextric Digital). The fact is the Bachmann Sound Locomotives will work entirely under the instructions of the budget EZ-Command console as has been demonstrated by Bachmann. This will help to sell more budget digital consoles in the UK than anything else I would suggest.

Happy modelling
Gary

Gary - why don't you actually read the points put forward by myself & others - go away for a while & think about them instead of immediatly shooting back the people you seem to regard as "anti-budget".

I answered all of your comments in a recent post & put forward relavent comments based on actual conversations & you have completly ignored most of them chosing to answer only those that suit your arguments.

OK, fine you stick to your budget systems & I'll stick to my fully featured systems (Fleischmann Twin-Centre, Lenz LH100 & Gaugemaster Prodigy).

Until you properly consider other relavant comments I've had it with this thread.

You cannot p*** against the wind.

Well here we go again;

Well actually no I don't. As a neutral I advocate that a railway modeller purchases a system entirely appropriate to their needs and their comfort zone.

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How can you even pretend to be neutral? You really are having a laugh. Remember that there are several people who use this forum each day and see the constant bigging up of Hornby by yourself. I am not saying you are being paid by them as you seem to be saying earlier but sometimes you do make it sound like you are.

See there you go again.

I guess I am the typical Hornby customer and do they know their customers!

Long may it continue!

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And it"s not just me who thinks this

Sometimes I wonder exactly what your connection with Hornby is (or how many Hornby shares are in your family).

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Maybe, just maybe all the people who have pointed out the weakness'es of "budget" systems are experienced DCC'ers.

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Right on the button again Brian.

Experienced DCCers are absolutely hopeless salesmen I'm afraid and its no wonder we are still in the dinosuar age in the UK with they way they go about trying to explain things. There are examples within this very topic!

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That's the thing Gary we're not salesmen, at least I'm not. I have no vested interest in people buying one system or another. I just answer questions as honestly as I can to try to help people.
I'm not selling anything and I have no shares in any model rail company.

My DCC experience is that I am a busy person wanting to set a layout up, plug in a console, put a few locos on the track, and have a bit of fun. I have absolutely no interest in the technology and how it works. As long as it does what I want it to do then I am very happy

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That's me too Gary. I just want a good system with better features which will allow me to do more things.

[/quote]Now given that the extremely experienced DCCers feel unable to recommend buying a budget system then why do you take those to task who have experience with budget systems for suggesting that budget systems are tried out by the beginners?

Most of us do recommend budget systems. I would recommend the Roco MultiMaus or the Lenz or Digitrax equivalents as good places to start. Alll NMRA compatible. The Roco and Lenz can be used with many other systems.

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Until you properly consider other relevant comments I've had it with this thread.

I know exactly how you feel. It's like banging your head off a wall with this one.

Like Brian I notice you have been very selective with the points you choose to answer. This tells me that your responses are more about defending Hornby than trying to find out more about other systems. Maybe you are happy with a basic beginner set but many other people may not be and it is unreasonable to try to hold them back what ever your agenda. Do try to read some of the points made by Brian, David MMaD and myself and have a think about them. It would benefit us all.

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Lets just take a few of the points made here.

QUOTE I want to play trains and have instant gratification not faff about with all the spagetti underneath.

If you took just a little time Gary with DCC you would realise that wiring with DCC is simplified, less complex, it's is just what you should be looking for if you want the instant gratification thing. Actually maybe if your looking for something like, that model railways could be a bad choice .

The whole point of all these posts to alert potential users to hold on and wait. Don't buy on trust like you sugguest. See the specification, check any incompatibility, read the reviews, understand what your buying.

These are folks who have long memories and have only, or rather are maybe just forgetting Zero one. The damage will be caused by folks trusting a brand name buying themselves "possibly a non standard system" and becoming disillusioned with their Cul de Sack DIY system. I do sincerely hope the Hornby DCC system will be more standard that what we've heard, and compatible with some other popular makes. Yes we've read the flannel about it being for kids who want to run a few trains, but that's what the Select was for. I find disturbing that we now have a combination non standard plugs, under rated decoders, and suspect addressing. DCC has made a lot of ground in the UK in the last 12 months, we have momentum, what we don't need is an under specified system, working to it's own DIY protocol, confusing the market.

Gary,

QUOTE (Gary @ 24 Nov 2006, 00:35) <{POST_SNAPBACK}>Common sense suggests that Budget systems are not fully featured. It does not require an experienced DCCer to tell us that! What I object to is experienced DCCers who say we must get a fully featured system for £££ from the outset or else we are wasting our money as we will inevitably trade up and so on and so forth. All this does is serve to confuse and put wanabee DCCers off DCC.

I think you should read what I and others have written before firing back unsubstantiated statements.
It seems to me that you have purchased an entry-level budget system which evidently (and rightly so) meets your needs. However, having now commented on it in this forum and seen feedback from others, it appears that you are begining to realise that it wasn't such a sensible purchase afterall. What we are now seeing in this thread appears to be an exercise in defending your decision.

Look, my view is that people should buy the system which is most appropriate for their needs and budget.
Personally, I chose the Lenz 100 system for the following (among many) reasons:

- The NMRA standards are based on it, so compatibility wouldn't be an issue
- Because the NMRA standards are based on Lenz, Lenz was unlikely to become obsolete quickly
- It uses 4 digit addressing which means that it is compatible with all my friends who use 4 digit systems and we can interswap locos between our layouts without a problem
- I personally prefer to support European products

In retrospect, I believe I made a good choice, but given the same situation again, I would seriously consider NCE as well.
As others have said, LocMaus and Gaugemaster Prodigy represent very good starter systems in comparison to Select.

QUOTE Experienced DCCers are absolutely hopeless salesmen I'm afraid and its no wonder we are still in the dinosuar age in the UK with they way they go about trying to explain things. There are examples within this very topic!

It isn't a salesman issue at all! Unfortunately, some people won't listen to advice.

QUOTE Why cannot DCCers simply suggest that railway modellers spend £50 and try out the DCC experience. If they don't like it then they have only lost £50 less whatever they get for their system on eBay. If they do like it then they take it a stage further. This to me is so blindingly obvious but not to DCCers apparently!

Why take this approach at all ?
I did my research, looked at all the products and features available and then made my choice. I decided that having seen friend's DCC layouts that if this was an investment I was going to make then it was going to be a one way thing from the start. I went into it having done all my research with my eyes open. There was going to be no going back. I knew what I was getting for my money and decided that cheapo entry systems were not the way forward as I was going to be serious about this.
The 'toe dip' approach is nearly always a false economy. Why buy two systems when you can buy a decent one in the first place, especially when the first system which is the one you promote is a cul-de-sac system which is going to make the cost of upgrading even more costly when one has to replace everything ?

QUOTE If you DCCer lot got your act together then the whole of Britain could be DCC in 5 years. But if you continue to perform as you have done to date there is absolutely no chance.

As an ex-pat Brit, I will say that while the above may be true, Britiain suffers very badly from the not-invented-here syndrome and resistance to change! That is why DCC hasn't taken off over there yet.

QUOTE My DCC experiance is that I am a busy person wanting to set a layout up, plug in a console, put a few locos on the track, and have a bit of fun. I have absolutely no interest in the technology and how it works. As long as it does what I want it to do then I am very happy. From this perspective I have had 100% success to date with both the el cheapo Bachmann and Hornby systems and they are all I am ever likely to need.

I think if we re-translate this, it means no experience at all beyond Select.

QUOTE When I observe how they have to faff about at Warley MRC with a high spec systems from a well know supplier and all the associated wiring and wiring plans and short circuits and blow outs and cut outs and so on and so forth then I am absolutely glad that I stick with the simple stuff with no wiring!

Short circuits, blow-outs, cut-outs etc are all symptomatic of people who haven't wired their layouts properly and sadly, in a lot of cases, these people don't want to know how to do it properly. None of this is unique to DCC layouts - it is very common on DC layouts as well.
If people wired their layouts properly for DC (which many do not), they wouldn't have a problem converting to DCC. I didn't.

QUOTE OK. From a DCCers perspective Hornby (and Bachmann?) customers may be fools, idiots, bufoons, representative of neanderthal man or whatever however at least we know how to have fun!

Believe it or not, us 'DCCers' probably have more fun because we have systems which have features which enhance the enjoyment of operating our layouts.

My personal opinion is that some of the latest entry-level systems are likely to have the opposite of the desired effect on DCC as a system for operating layouts. Those of us who took the time to do our research are quite happy, but those who just jump in will probably be very disillusioned by the limitations of entry level systems and may well abandon DCC as 'not worth it'. Now that would be very sad.

Graham Plowman

Maybe, but then it would have to be a padded room.

QUOTE My DCC experience is that I am a busy person wanting to set a layout up, plug in a console, put a few locos on the track, and have a bit of fun. I have absolutely no interest in the technology and how it works. As long as it does what I want it to do then I am very happy. From this perspective I have had 100% success to date with both the el cheapo Bachmann and Hornby systems and they are all I am ever likely to need.

I have read this statement a number of times and quite frankly I don't think we can really fault it. It may not represent the majority of the people here but there must be a place for this kind of person in the hobby as well as on this forum. I know in the US there are more than a few model railroaders that seem to be an expert on everything yet when you actually ask them they don't even have a running layout! They have set expectations so high that they have in fact overwhelmed themselves and they could never build the layout that they say everybody else has. Now I am not accusing anybody here of this but lets step back and judge what we say and how it may appear to the beginner or casual hobbyist honestly.

What's wrong with the person described above? Frankly I think nothing. Let's show a little respect for that type of hobbyist. Gary may irk some with the way he delivers some of his opinion but that doesn't necessarily mean that all of the points he makes are rubbish. I would hate to take any hobby to seriously. If I did I would quit.

QUOTE The reason I am not answering every point is that those who respond all seem to be repeating the same arguments over and over and no matter what is said about budget systems you will not move out of this groove. You are simply not prepared to accept the big picture as it applies to the UK and continue to make the negative observations about budget systems.

Gary - I consider this discussion over "for now". We've scored our points and made our mark. There have been no negative remarks about budget systems, the negative remarks have been confined to Hornby and DIY DCC as applied to the Select and the Elite which are non standard systems. If you and others don't consider this an issue then you'll buy the product. But don't then complain when the product dosn't perform like a proper DCC system. Bachmann to their credit have avoided this route, and probably in the longer term offer a much better budget system.

BTW The second Hornby DCC is now available:

GWR Western Pullman DCC



Contains:

* GWR Castle Class "Whittington Castle" locomotive
* 3 x R223 Pullman 1st Class Parlour Cars
* GWR 0-6-0 Class 2721 Pannier Tank
* 3 assorted wagons
* Starter large radius Oval plus two sidings
* &#8230; plus the new version Hornby TrakMat



Hornby Select Digital Control