murphaph

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?

The big UK retailers are well used to selling ex-VAT to outside the EU already so that's not a problem. Model railway stuff is zero rated for customs at WTO level so it's just the VAT that should be added back on. It'll come down to the handling charges which An Post extract and how easy they make it to pay them. Here in Germany I pay a flat €6 handling charge on stuff from outside the EU which customs have stopped but I must pay the guy the VAT cash on delivery. If I'm not home he takes it to the local post office where I have to go and pay before collection. It's not so bad but it would be nice if I could pay online in advance so the item is just dropped off even if I wasn't there. But for sure whereas before I would often have bought from the UK I will be looking for a local supplier a bit harder. Imagine even in our little hobby the amount of sales the UK is forsaking. This can't end well.

Major changes in regular parcel services from Germany to the UK (so presumably in reverse too and presumably to large parts of the EU if Germany is affected). From January latest, in some cases before: -DPD only serving business customers -Hermes stopping all business -GLS stopping all business

Parcelwizard gone as an option from Friday Brexit starting to have a negative impact already. If the only ones left are An Post with AddressPal you can imagine what they awil start charging. It's already much dearer than parcelwizard.

These are the first Irish locos released since IRM entered the arena to provide a whole bunch of RTR stuff to haul. Probably no surprise that they are possibly the fastest selling Irish locos of all. Absolute golden age for Irish modelling. If I'd come back to the hobby a little over a decade ago I'd probably have modeled US or possibly German outline to be quite honest. Irish stuff would have been too much effort for me, box opener that I am! I want a LOT of stock on a large layout some day. That's not practical if you have to build all the rolling stock yourself. You'd run out of time on this earth.

DPD managed to drop my Hattons parcel last week despite the fragile tape all over it but Hattons packaging left a lot to be desired in fairness. Oxford diecast items protected with a single layer of old school single layer bubble wrap that looked like it had been used a dozen times before. Normally I can't fault DPD here in Germany either. These big logistics companies seem to be formed by merger after merger, takeover after takeover so the company culture is a patchwork of old ones. They are very different in respect of how they operate in each geography I reckon.

Even if that is true you don't need to repeat the digits.

Yeah the orange/black on white were not really visually impaired friendly either. Barely any contrast between orange and white. I hadn't noticed the platform number signs in the background in the image posted by Rob. They are exactly right, why they needed to use a different design between the two signs is a bit of a mystery to me. The sign in the foreground would be far easier to read if it just had the three platform number "shields" like the sign in the background!

The new signs are ok and hopefully will last a bit longer this time. I have no problem with the idea of a common typeface and sign design for all PT nationwide. That's a good thing, but pick a design and stick to it. I find the use of the "Platform" agus aris as gaeilge to be completely superfluous on a railway station. There's no need to clutter the sign with words that are not needed. There's even a pictogram of a train if it isn't clear enough with the numbers alone. Signs should convey information as quickly as possible and wherever possible words should be replaced by pictograms and numbers. There are people who have difficulty reading be it due to being sight-impaired or dyslexic or whatever. There's no need to over-complicate their lives and we can all understand pictograms. Anyway I don't mean to be overly negative. The common "identity" is most welcome.