RailMaster losing control of locos

[menacesco]

I have RailMaster v1.73 (I have tried to download 1.74 but cannot get a connection to the appropriate download link) with Elink with 5 amp power operating two controllers - one for track the other for accessories. My computer is a Microsoft Surface running Windows 10. I only normally run 2 or 3 locos at any one time.

Sometimes I have a situation where a loco is running and then cannot be controlled from within RM and ignores all attempts to stop it etc. The throttle control on the screen appears to be unresponsive and doesn’t respond to touch control or mouse gestures, although the RED STOP button normally works. I also have occasional incidents where a loco will suddenly stop and start to go in the opposite direction! There is no physical connection between the wiring for track and accessories as they have their own BUS circuits.

Could anyone suggest what may be causing these problems please.

[Chrissaf]

Many users have reported problems trying to download the current RM installer from the official download site. As a purely temporary fix, you can download the latest RM 1.74.2 installer from this link below. Note that the installer .exe file is contained within a ZIP wrapping as my cloud service does not allow raw .exe files to be uploaded to it and will need an unZIP utility to access it.

BT Cloud - Shared files - Public links

I stress that the inability for you to access the file on the official download site is an issue with the security configurations on your PC. I as well as many others have no issues downloading the file from the official site source.

The issues you describe are typically related to the quality of the DCC signal being received by the decoder. Dirty and-or grubby track for example. Although that would not normally affect the operation of the throttle slider response in the RM application itself as you have described.

Windows itself has a tendency to hog resources to perform scheduled 'house keeping' tasks. Windows updates, Microsoft Store updates, HDD optimisation etc as examples. Windows also tends to treat RailMaster as a very low priority as it is not written to modern Windows 10 standards. It may be that your PC is not responding to your attempts to control RM because it is too busy doing other things in the background. Open 'Task Manager' and look to see what is hogging Windows system resources when you observe these control issues.