murphaph

The comments on Hornby's tweet are also "interesting". It's all Hornby's fault according to certain people on there. They failed to prepare you see.

Trying out the 121s:

Lovely space. I hope the electrician is going to put an alarm on it

But the As at least had a fairly "orthodox" red/white-red/white configuration, right? The as delivered 121s seem to have had this "weird" red/white-white/white configuration and this seems to be reflected in the model, but how were these illuminated is the question. Where all three white lights on simultaneously? Given the As predate these locos and were fairly standard it seems a really odd departure. Wikipedia example of B126:

But looking at pics on the net there were twin twin arrangements too, but were they white/white on one side and if so were both these lights actually illuminated simultaneously? I think the 121s had a crazy mix of lighting arrangements. Many pics show a lamp on the lamp iron on that side with the white/white (assuming the model is correct) side. It looks like they standardised on the 141s and later 071s with red/white - white however, but the 121s seem to be a real Mish mash.

Did B121 really have this red/white white/white configuration and if so were the white/white lights both illuminated like that?

This intuitively feels wrong when I look at any other pictures of the early marker lights. They were usually a twin red/white on one side and a single white on the other. But I don't have any pictures in any of my books of this loco in delivery condition.

It'll all be running under Rocrail. No stand alone controller per se. I'm guessing any controller has to use POM (possibly in the background) to achieve this because the decoders with an advanced consist address don't respond to throttle or direction commands on their native addresses and to individually shunt them together for coupling you'd certainly need to address them individually before giving them both the same advanced consist address.

Yeah I'm using blank Loksounds with the ESU 8-567CR file modified to use Irish horns so drive hold is all set up. The downside the advanced consisting seems to be that the locos only respond to the consist address (which annoyingly is limited to the simple address space) so you can't shunt locos together and build a consist on the layout without using POM to program the shunted loco with a consist address after it's been coupled up to the other one.

To those consisting these locos: Are you using the advanced consisting features of the decoders or just flipping the direction of operation of one loco using CV29, bit 5? I watched an American video where the guy suggested that drive hold doesn't work unless you use the advanced consisting? That didn't sound right to me but I'm happy to hear of your experiences.

Yeah I reckon patience is key here. Over xmas not much will happen anyway.

Oh that's a shame. Who gave you that information? I certainly won't be returning for refund as these things are all sold out now.

Hmm, I'm in Germany and the issues are really just these very minor cosmetic things (little plastic bits) that I can stick back on myself if I had them. No speaker or LED problems that need major surgery or anything like that. I'm kind of happy they didn't sustain even more damage on the way here now that I see just how fragile they are to be honest so I don't want to post stuff back to Dublin or Hattons. It can't really be cheaper for MM to do it this way than to just post me a few bits of plastic I'm sure, even if he just sends them straight back to China for rework (which I assume sure his contract with the manufacturer allows). I can even provide a Dublin postal address so we'd be talking about the price of an envelope and a stamp to sort me out.

So I took the other IR 121s out of their boxes and I also have damage. need 2 vac bags and a cab end facing horn and on 133 the packer even managed to break the NEM pocket so the TLC droops and is about to fall off. The handrails are also snapped off (I really think this handrails should have been included separately or at least there should have been foam between handrail and body like on all previous handrailed models. I wonder why this was omitted here. What's the consensus on where to request spare parts? I don't want to ship the locos back as there's every possibility they will sustain more damage in transit and I feel perfectly comfortable replacing these things myself (and that's surely much cheaper for MM of course). Contact the retailer directly or is it cheaper for MM to post these bits out to me? Edit: I have no LED or sound issues to report which is good. The external cosmetic stuff is easier to set right.

Thanks a mil. Much appreciated.

Thx! So there was a simple pair of switches for each colour at each end (4 switches in total) or was it an on switch for all the marker lights and then a colour selector toggle switch for each end?

Does anyone know what the driver was presented with vis a vis the switches for the marker lights? Was there one switch to turn on all marker lights and then another to cut out the feed to the rear red ones when running in consist or when hauling a train or were there there two independent switches or were there even 4 switches, one for each end/colour? I'm setting up a decoder and while I won't be able to replicate things exactly it would be nice to have an approximation.

Ah yes of course some rewiring would be required but I had already assumed that, sorry. I realise not everyone is comfortable with a soldering iron.

Oh that's a shame that all the 129s have two red lights instead of two white lights. I expect a manufacturer to be forced through economics to sometimes release a livery that doesn't exactly match the hardware in a given time period because the cost of modelling every modification of a loco would be prohibitively high. So I take the "slightly off" hardware to get the livery. But this lighting arrangement never seems to have existed on any 121 from what I understand so appears to be an error either in the spec or on the factory floor. Are there lenses in front of the LEDs or are they those colours naturally? I'm wondering can they be fixed using spare parts to get two whites and one red.

The same flickering?

Yeah that's poor QC at the factory. I assume the red LEDs are driven by the same decoder output so the fault must lie in the wiring from PCB to led or in the led itself or the common positive to that led but a RTR model shouldn't have such a defect. I'm sure MM will be equally annoyed with such things.

Can you send it back for replacement? Stuff like that shouldn't happen.

My black Friday bundle arrived today. Very happy. Almost a shame to remove the loads and use them for containers but a great way to 8 new running numbers for little effort. Packaging much improved over the gypsums. Items snugly packed with bubble wrap in the void to stop the rattling around.

Hattons don't anyway. I have the three IE ones on pre-order there and the IR pre-orders went straight through the system as soon as they were added I reckon. The IE ones are still showing as pre-order on their website. Of course the pallet may have arrived and not been broken down yet. I expect Hattons have a lot of stock coming in so close to xmas.

Good to hear the warehouse packaging issues have been addressed. I'm in the middle of setting up a 121 with a blank LS5 decoder. Just using trial and error to see what is wired to what but there's not that much really. A question. Do you guys like the MM way of describing the front of the loco as the cab end? I know they were driven cab first for most of their lives but inside the cab as far as the driver at the controls was concerned that was still "in reverse", right? It's not important and each to their own but I am more inclined to label the bonnet end the front when I am setting up the decoder etc. Am I the only one or does anyone else prefer the "bonnet is front" school of thought? It's good to see all the lights are on their own function outputs so we can set things up so the bonnet end lights are off when in consist or hauling a train. Quick question about the IR era marker lights. Were these LEDs or incandescent bulbs?