Railmaster Upgrade

[justmike]

Hi, I purchased Railmaster and the upgrade recently. I have the key for activating the upgrade, the master program already having been activated. The activation will not work, I keep getting errors that the program cannot access the resource? Initially I thought I might be having trouble with my wifi as the setup is upstairs and a bit of a blind spot. I have gone to an ethernet connection but still the problem persists? I cannot even send a help request to Railmaster as, guess what it says no internet! Yet I can connect to google and surf around ok?

I must admit to finding the whole process a bit dated. I get an indication that RailMaster can see the eLink but as yet, no through link from RailMaster to my track, I am probably making a mistake somewhere, but nothing is intuitive and Hornby's comment seems to be, don't ask for help until you have read the manual several times!

Grump over, any guidance welcome

Regards

Mike

[Fishmanoz]

Hi Mike and welcome to the forums.

There’s not much info to go on here to find solutions for you. For a start, what do you mean by “purchased the upgrade”. Upgrades are free and the first thing you should do is ensure you have downloaded and installed the latest version as administrator.

RM Pro is not free. Is this what you are referring to?

Very first step - go to the sticky threads at the top of this forum. Start with the FAQs. You’ll see the link to the latest version there too.

RM is unfortunately not plug and play but there are some tried and tested fixes for the common problems. All can be found via the sticky threads.

If you still have problems, please come back. But tell us exactly what you’ve done, and what symptoms and error messages you are getting. Then you can get some targeted advice.

[justmike]

Hi Fishmanoz, thanks for the reply. you were correct, I was referring to the Pro option. I have resolved the issue. I bought a new computer, it seems my old one did not like connecting to the internet very much. I also managed to de-register RM and re-register it on the new machine and after a bit of fiddling about with USB ports, now have RM and the eLink connected.

My next issue is power to the track. If I connect to the track from the Track connection points on the eLink, I can see power going to the tracks. However, if I move the connections to the Prog connectors, there is no power flowing. Is there something I should do in RM to let it know I want to add trains?

I have had a look at the FAQ's and seen the HowTo for adding Locos manually but with no power, I do not see the locomotive?

Thanks again for any advice or pointers as to where to look

Mike

[96RAF]

There are two stages:

1. Use the Prog track to give your loco decoder a unique address. Prog is a low energy output and only sends a burst of commands to the decoder during a programming event. There is no measurable power on the output all of the time.
2. List your loco in the loco roster with the address you have given it. It will then appear in the throttle panel to the right of screen. You can then control it on track.

Note that you have the Track connection connected to your layout and the Prog connection connected to a separate isolated piece of track called a programming track. These two tracks however must never be connected to each other or the Track power will burn out the Prog side of things.

[Chrissaf]

Just to re-enforce what Rob has posted in text, here is a drawing from my forum library. See how the 'Track' output of the eLink connects to the 'Layout Track' and the 'Prog' output of eLink connects to the 'Programming Track' piece. Note also that the two tracks are totally physically isolated.

The connectivity for the R8247 Accessory Decoders is not as per Hornby's documented installation guidance, but in my opinion far more reliable as it negates using track connectors which can be a fault liability.

All DCC commands that are used to control DCC devices such as locomotives and points are routed out of the 'Track' output of the eLink. The 'Prog' output is only used to PROGram DCC decoders as part of their setting up. The 'Prog' output is not used to control [operate] anything at all. There is no measurable constant power on the 'Prog' output.

[justmike]

Sorry for the delay in replying and thanks everyone for the info! Still not able to identify a loco when on my test bit of track. Obviously doing something totally silly will have to keep trying!

[Chrissaf]

Can you describe what you actually mean by your term "identify".

You obviously seem to be struggling with using a PC to control your layout, thus it is critical to use terms that we understand and use very specific descriptions of 'tasks' that you are trying to achieve.

In an earlier reply Fishmanoz wrote:

"If you still have problems, please come back. But tell us exactly what you’ve done, and what symptoms and error messages you are getting. Then you can get some targeted advice."

To help us to help you, you must comply with Fishy's request and give us an itemised 'step by step' description of the exact steps you are following and what is happening at each step. Unlike hardware issues, there are too many variables in software applications for us to just guess (correctly) what you are doing.

It would save a lot of text writing if you would provide screen captures of your RM screen to supplement what you reply with.

For example, screen captures of the "Locomotive Setting" screen for the loco you are trying to control and a capture of the large throttle for the same loco on the main RM screen.