Found a very good deal on a Rivarossi Heisler with DCC and Tsunami sound decoder. Per the seller, it was only driven to church on Sunday mornings by his 72 year old Grand Mother (Read that as used very little).
The locomotive seems to function well and I think I made out like a bandit! However, there were no instructions nor was there an exploded view, which I would hope Rivarossi would have provided. Can someone who owns one of these locos tell me what there are for instructions? This is a model from previous to Hornby taking over Rivarossi; or, at least when it was packaged no mention of Hornby was made.
I have visited Hornby’s website and the technical sheets aren’t available at this time
I have also contacted Hornby’s website asking about this and they said they would get back to me.
Why do you always seem to need to put some condescending/curt remark at the beginning of almost all your posts?
I want instructions because they are necessary/valuable when a repair needs to be performed. This seems fairly obvious to me! Besides they should have come with the loco! The seller has looked for them and can’t find them; so, I need to run them down.
Yes, per the seller the Tsunami sound decoder was a custom installation. I didn’t indicate that I thought this was a factory install.
I guess I should still thank you for the links, even though your naturally cranky personality really puts me off!
I just spent the past hour and a half there - and I’ve known about it a long time. I started tracking downt he catalogs for things I had as a kid, like the AHM catalog I paged through so many times it was just a loose collection of papers, dreaming about buying different locos and setting up interesting accessories.
Those sheets witht he exploded view on HOSeeker are what you would have gotten if the original owner kept the instructions, or you bought it new in the box. I don’t know that there is much more, a few articles over the years in model magazines about tuning them up maybe. I still have some of the ones for the early 70’s RR/AHM stuff we had (some of the old timers were Pocher), all very Euro - numbers have commas where we would use a decimal point, normal for them (and hey, they were made in Italy). If the scans are good enough, the online version may be better - the sheets were not large, they had to fit inside the box under the tray for the loco, so the pictures are not very large. If the scan is good, you can blow it up much larger than actual size on a screen.
Yes, Randy, Thank you! Although I didn’t prompt anyone to talk about this locomotive, it usulally doesn’t take much prompting to get a conversation going on locomotives.
I’ve found the Heisler to be very well detailed and nicely finished. For some reason, who ever put in the Tsunami sound decoder into it, gave the loco the number 3. So, I ended up removing the decals and renumbered the loco to a new address. Also, I have determined this is a 2002 edition, from the number 2002 found on the underside.
I’m finding that the loco doesn’t make very good contact with the rails and stops at any miss que! I need to do some further investigating into why this is happening.
Randy mentioned possible magazine reviews or tune up tips for your Heisler. Might I suggest the magazine index search thingy at the top of MRs page under the “Resources” tab. I get some good results there sometimes. Not that I have all those different magazines, but it’ll give me a place to start.
That has been an avenue I have attempted in my research for this locomotive. Supposedly a review was done in Model Railroader in November 1986 on page 50. However, I have been all through that issue of the magazine and found no information on this locomotive, there.
I just looked that up and unfortunately that was Model Railroad"ING", not Model Railroad"ER".
It was, however, November of '86 and on page 50 (and more.)
Jim Hediger did a repower in the October '85 issue, but I don’t think that’s what you’re looking for.
Sorry I’m not better at helping with your current search for those specific instructions. In fact, as I look back at my contributions, I was no help at all…[:$]
It is sort of unbelieveable there isn’t more information on the loco, it has been around for ever and a day and I would think there should be people who know it very well!
Was this a factory installed decoder or after market. I have a DC Rivarossi Heisler still in the box. I’m planning to use it for a lumber operation on my new branchline which I haven’t started. I will add a decoder when the time comes. I have all the original documentation. In fact I hadn’t even opened up the plastic bag which holds it until I read your post. If you can’t find what you need from Hornby, I could copy what I have for it. There are two sheets. One is basic instructions for operating and maintaining it. The second sheet is a parts list with an exploded view. Its printed on card stock.
They’ve been around for a long time, that’s for sure, in at least 3 different versions. But I don’t know how popular they were. One club I visit now and then has one set up with an automatic shuttle circuit to run log buggies up and down a steep grade, other than that I don’t know that I’ve ever seen one in the flesh. I see them advertised, I see them reviewed, but no one I know has one. Seems like a decent model to me, I guess more people want Shays for logging.
Randy (above) put me intouch with all the documentation there is available on the loco, I have explained that the Soundtraxx Sound decoder is probably not a factrory in