hornby track master

[BRSteam81]

hello, just bought track master but not sure if its working correctly as its very basic, no inclines, bridges or tunnel options. is this correct ? also i have to start it each time as admin is this also correct ?

[Train_Man]

It's a basic track design system that doesn't pretend to be anything else. It's based on hornby track you would buy, so that's why it doesn't have, for example, tunnels. You would build that yourself. Same with inclines. It doesn't let you sculpt scenery,

 

or anything like that. It tells you what it can do on the packaging.

 

It serves the purpose of creating a track plan up to, I think, about 5m x 5m and allows you to print a list of all the Hornby track bits you need. It also has platform pieces.

 

I

 

designed a nice layout with it and it worked well for me. If you want something more sophisticated then there are other programs that will do that for you.

 

 

[dougal_robb]

Is it useable with dcc select controller?

[HornbyRailMasterSupport]

Dougal, it isn't a train control system. It is a track plan designer. For a train control system you want Hornby's other product, RailMaster.

 

BRSteam, you don't have to start TrackMaster with admin rights every time you run the program. You can, however, right click on the TrackMaster icon you use to start the program, select "Properties", click on the Compatibility Tab and tick the box that says "Run as administrator", then you won't have to right click and run as admin each time, just double-click the icon to start.

[ModelerXYZ]

I used it to plan mine. the lack of inclines is slighty annoying, I combatted it by making 2 plans and then merging them. the resulting track looks rather complex with tracks on top of one another. Railmaster is the one for driving trains,and that doesn't have inclines on it either. ADMIN please note: a tool to convert between the two would be useful

[HornbyRailMasterSupport]

We have looked at the possibility of importing plans from TrackMaster into RailMaster however because TrackMaster is a to-scale plannig tool and RailMaster uses a non-scale, non-radii MIMIC diagram (like you get in signal boxes) it would be virtually impossible to import. The best analogy is the London Tube map. In reality there is no scale and therefor distances between stations on the Tube map bear no resemblance to the actual distance on a real map so it would actually be impossible to convert the Tube map to a scale map and vice versa. Just as a note, it took the deisnger of the Tube Map over a year to design it for readability based on the real map (they tried the latter for a while on the public and it was a failure as they didn't understand it, which is why simplified MIMIC diagrams are so much better).

 

The up side is that it takes no time at all to re-create a plan in RailMaster precisely because it uses a MIMIC system and there is no concept of scale or track radii. Also, if you have used one of the Hornby base track plans in TrackMaster to start with and made minor modifications, you will find that all the work has already been done in RailMaster because the same plans are also supplied ready-made in that program too.

[PJ_model_trains]

I found TrackMaster very good for getting an idea to fit in a space. The radius' of bends were right and everything clicked into place and are proportional.  It isn't a lot of good for flexi-track though, the software works with standard hornby track sizes.

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I would recommend TrackMaster for anyone new and wanting to design their own layout rather than using a standard one.

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RailMaster plan is totally different and it isn't always proportional but as HRMS kindly confirm above it is not meant to. The disadvantages with the mimic plan are points, two way points etc, these tend to dictate the area they take up. Especially as points need a piece of track between, before the next set of points. Initially I found this frustration but soon realised these had to be like this ot they wouldn't work. When I first started my layout I tried to make it longer and narrower, more like my layout but found it went wider than the visible screen. I soon realised as HRMS have confirmed in their example with the tube track plan it doesn't have to match my layout. I now have a more dumpy looking layout on screen, having reduced the length of the straight track, I can now get it on the full screen at 100%. Reducing the length of straights made this possible.

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The first time I used RM Mimic plan it took me ages! When fitting signals there was a bug, I needed to know it was not from my plan so I started again and built the full layout again in under 15 minutes. It is so easy to use.

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Well done Hornby