Railmaster and Old DC Trains

[96RAF]

Folk have reported DCC27 decoders giving trouble to the point of sending them back for a refund.

 

Is your 6-pin decoder plugged in correctly not that it should matter if lights are not involved.

 

Have you tried resetting your decoders by writing value 8 to CV 8.

 

If you double click on CV7 in RM loco programming there is a drop down list of all decoders that are compatible with RM. you don’t need a loco to see this, just pretend you are reading a new loco and press the  i  icon.

[GaryC]

Did not know about the DCC27's perhaps i'll look at a different decoder and try one of those. 

I'll give the reset ago as well.

Should Railmaster work with the Gaugemaster decoders? its anoying because they who control side work fine its just not being able to change the channel from the default 3

[96RAF]

Hello all, 

I have recently move and now have space for my trains. I have a railmaster DCC system which is great but i am trying to convert my old DC trains as i have a number of them and don't want to loss them. There is alot online but it all proven confusing. 

I got a R7150 to try and fit. Now i can get the train to run forwards, however switching to the other direction it does not move the railmaster locks out and has to be unplugged to restart.

I tried the Gaugemaster GM-DCC27 and the train moves forward and backwards with no issue however with this i can't change the default address from 003.

Anyone have an suggestions as to what decoder to use that works with the Railmaster? 

These older trains only have basic wiring, no lights or sound so to me it should be simple.

[Chrissaf]

You haven't told us what controller interface you are using with RailMaster. If it is an Elite and not an eLink, then you can use an Elite in other programming modes (register and/or operate) to configure a GM DCC27.

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The eLink only supports the 'Direct' programming mode which is the one that can cause problems with the DCC27.

[ColinB]

I assume Railmaster is a PC front end to the Elite or Select units and communicates with these devices over the USB link, using the hardware in these devices to generate DCC decoder commands. So probably the first thing to do is check that the loco works backwards and forwards without the Railmaster software and just the Elite or Select units on their own. That at least tells you whether or not the basic DCC hardware is working properly. So if your loco goes backwards and forwards on the basic unit, then the error must be in the Railmaster software. It may be that the Railmaster software is issueing the commands to the DCC unit too fast, for that particular decoder so it loses them. I must load up my copy of Railmaster sometime to see what it does (it came as part of the Elite package, I bought off EBay). I suppose Hornby do not issue a specification containing the USB commands over the link.

[Chrissaf]

Colin for info,

RailMaster can only control an eLink or an Elite. The cable hardware (intelligent interface with ICs and firmware in it) to connect RailMaster to a Select was cancelled by Hornby and never released to market. Thus the Select option still in RM 'system settings' has no current functionality.

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The Elite can function stand-alone without RM, the eLink can not.

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The USB protocol between RM and the controller is propriety to Hornby and not published in any form.

[ColinB]

According to the data the Select supports XpressNet Protocol which looks vaguely like RS232, so I assume the lead is probably a USB to RS232 interface, but that is probably a guess. Most of them use an FTDI chip which converts USB to RS232, so this is probably one of the ICs you mention. Perhaps the other ICs are to get the right voltage levels or current loop.

[96RAF]

In principle you have the basic interface cable idea correct Colin.

You have to remember that the USB end is at 5v and the Xpressnet end is at 12v, so a voltage converter or opti-coupler is definitely in the mix. No doubt as Chris said the firmware/protocol involved is proprietary to Hornby.

Whether a ‘NATO Standard’ USB to RS232 converter cable would work is out of my bailiwick, but I can confirm the Select-a-Link test cable I have works a treat. A shame it was binned as it wasn’t expensive and would have opened up RM to all Select (v1.5 or better) users. Hattons are still advertising it on pre-order - R7135. but you may wait a very long time for it.

[ColinB]

Yes, I did a lot of work on this sort of thing before I retired. The USB to RS232 leads come in two sorts, some do true RS232 which uses weird votages or there is one that does basic logic levels to interface directly with 5 volt logic, so I assume it is the second type that they use with a bit of extra logic and a different connector. The reason I remember it so well was a Supplier supplied us with the wrong ones and it took a while to work out why the leads didn't work. The Fleishmann Twin Control system I use, uses a similar setup as I had to buy one so that I could upgrade the software to the latest level. I imagine if you look hard enough you can probably find a commercially available lead that will do the job, from what I read on the web this is an "Industry Standard" interface.

[96RAF]

Gaugemaster  do one for double the price compared to the Hornby one, but it includes operating software akin to Decoder-Pro, whereas Hornby already has RM so additional add-ons are not required.