Setting up a Bachmann Loco on Railmaster

[WilliamDavid]

I have just bought a couple of Bachmann Class 43 Warship locos and have been having a little problem with setting them up on Railmaster.

They are identicle locos, but run at different speeds to each other on Railmaster, and both way to fast for the indicated speeds, eg. at an indicated 50mph, they belt along dangerously.

I can get over this by setting the shunt speed to 5mph and the cruise speed to 20mph.

However, if I use the knob on the Elite, the indicated speeds on the screen are much more realistic, ie 20mph is now shown as 50mph, etc.

I have previously thried the speed correction function with no real success, and get by by setting the speed values to give a more realistic loco speeds.

Can anyone explain why the Elite and Railmaster are so out of sync?

When entering a loco not on the list, ie Bachmann, do you base it on a near Hornby lookalike or totally construct your own? Would this have an effect on the speeds? 

I hope from the above maenderings, someone can chip in.

 

[96RAF]

This has been covered several times on the forum, both the variant speed issue and setting up a Bachmann loco.

 

To briefly answer it again for you...

The Elite is sending a direct speed signal whereas RM is sending a modified hence artificial speed. Try deselecting scale speeds in RM.

 

To set up a non sound other make loco you could follow the instructions in the RM manual or just list it manually and pick a picture of a similar Hornby loco from the library (except Hornby doesn’t do a Warship) or import your own.

 

To set up a sound loco there is a curly arrow under the functions list in the loco setup screen, pressing this cycles through typical generic Hornby steam, Hornby diesel, Bachmann steam and Bachmann diesel sound sets. You can then modify the individual listed sounds to fully match your sound loco. Note that regardless of whatever is written in the function box your loco will only play the sound allocated to that function on the decoder, unless your decoder is function mapping capable in which case refer to the decoder manual.

[WilliamDavid]

What I am trying to understand is, if RM set up a certain loco, eg. a Black 5 and I use that for a Bachmann Std 5, I presume the scale speed will be wrong.

Should I use that programme or programme from scratch?

From scratch, would the scale speed be the same as that from the Elite, as I gather that scale speeds are programmed by Hornby for each loco?

I don't want to turn off scale speeds, as this would affect all locos.

To put it another way.

When setting up a Bachmann loco

1. Would you totally create a new programme.

2. Find a near Hornby equivalent and edit.

I used a Hornby Class 42 for the Bachmann Class 43, and the speeds were nowhere near.

I can't get the speed correction to work right.

If I manage to correct the cruise speed, the shunt speed is off. 

Also, I know this subject has been discussed before, but as I am asking the question, they obviously did not provide me with any answers.

[96RAF]

It explains in the manual how calibrate and set scale speed for other make locos...I don’t have the manual handy so you will have to look To find the applicable pages.

 

The Elite does not send scale speeds it just sends speed steps per NMRA methodology. RM fudges this by calibrating each Hornby loco into a database and sending equivalent speed steps, if you have scale speed enabled. There has been forum discussion of where these values are stored and how it is possible to amend them.

 

We are not setting up programs for locos we are merely recording certain values in a database for RM to use. You can use a similar locos setting if you can find one - not likely to be easy for instance look at the many variations of Flying Scotsman.

 

You can set cruise and shunt speeds to any value you like but all this is setting up of speeds and stuff has to be from scratch if your loco is not in the RM database. 

[WilliamDavid]

I am not posting here because I have any running issues. I just set the shunting and cruise speeds at whatever values looks right. Just is the equivalent of a faulty speedometer.

Using the oval rail is fine if you have the spare track and the room to put it.

As a long retired Engineer, as just like to know things, and appreciate it is RM's way of correcting the great variations of their loco's speeds.

The main question is whether to use a loco from Hornby's database or start from scratch. I presume from scratch there is still some 'correction', or is there?

Thanks for your input. Might as well leave it there as just one of RM's peculiarities. 

I still love Railmaster, and probably would have given up trains without the added interest dcc and Railmaster have given me, and the interesting discussions on this forum.

[96RAF]

The answer remains - IF you can find a suitable Hornby loco to clone then fine but you could be there all day trying to find one when starting from scratch is much quicker.

[WilliamDavid]

I think you are correct there, RAF96.

Cheers.