St1ngr4y Posted September 25, 2013 Share Posted September 25, 2013 Almost a year ago, I purchased a Class V2 "Durham School" (manufactured by another company), and I requested the retailer to install sound in the form of a Loksound 4 decoder. Until a week or two ago, the loco ran perfectly and gave me great satisfaction running it via my Elite / Railmaster combination. Then I was running it one day when everything stopped because of a short circuit on the layout, which I later found to have been caused by another locomotive fouling an electrofrog point. After I had rectified the short, I discovered that the V2 had sound, but no movement, either through Railmaster or directly through the Elite. I transferred the loco to the programming track and was able to read its CVs successfully - everything looked OK. All of my other locos and accessories were working fine. I switched off everything overnight, but still the same. I rang the retailer and described the symptoms, and I was told that it sounded like a wire to the motor had become disconnected, and they suggested sending the loco to them for examination. This I did, and they rang me to say that the loco was working perfectly on their layout. They sent the loco back to me, but still I had sound but no movement. In desperation, I did a reset on the Elite, and lo and behold, the loco is now operating perfectly again. This episode, which has cost me £25 in postage expenses, leads me to believe that the Elite in some way stores status information about a locomotive, information which is preserved in its memory through a mains power on/off, and which can only be got rid of by a reset of the unit. Can anyone confirm this? Ray Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
RDS Posted September 25, 2013 Share Posted September 25, 2013 @St1ngr4y I would be interested to hear Hornby Supports' opinion on this one. I am not sure what the implications of resetting the Elite are on any of the values that you need to retain. In general, resetting is something I would go out of my way to avoid! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
koo9 Posted September 25, 2013 Share Posted September 25, 2013 I commiserate with you in this incident but there is a lesson here, I learnt it the hard way too. A simple circuit breaker will keep your data safe especially when running locos. Too many things to short the track in a micro-second. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
St1ngr4y Posted September 25, 2013 Author Share Posted September 25, 2013 RDS said: @St1ngr4y I would be interested to hear Hornby Supports' opinion on this one. I am not sure what the implications of resetting the Elite are on any of the values that you need to retain. In general, resetting is something I would go out of my way to avoid! Since I use the system through Railmaster, there are no values which I have set on the Elite itself, so resetting the Elite, though inconvenient, is not a big issue for me. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
St1ngr4y Posted September 25, 2013 Author Share Posted September 25, 2013 koo9 said: I commiserate with you in this incident but there is a lesson here, I learnt it the hard way too. A simple circuit breaker will keep your data safe especially when running locos. Too many things to short the track in a micro-second. I hear what you are saying - I already have a DCC Power Bus Suppressor (DCC Concepts) fitted to reduce spikes caused by shorts. But I would have thought extras like these should be unnecessary i.e. they should be built in to the hardware of the Elite. Ray Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Fishmanoz Posted September 25, 2013 Share Posted September 25, 2013 Certainly sounds like a strange problem. I too would like to hear what HCC or RM Support have to say. Certainly doesn't sound right that Elite should decide a loco should no longer work because there was a short on the layout, not even caused by the loco. Koo, are you suggesting a circuit breaker will shut the system down on a short before the Elite can do it by itself? Also, my understanding like st1ngr4y is that a momentary short problem is due to spikes taking out loco decoders on voltage recovery after the short clears, and hence fitting a suppressor, not one of causing the Elite to malfunction. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
koo9 Posted September 25, 2013 Share Posted September 25, 2013 I agree that it is a strange problem and Support should be questioned further, it may not be picked up from this forum at all, use facebook or email directly. My EB1 breaker isn't the quickest by far but does provide a time from short circuit to shut down of 16ms (16 thousandths of a second). It also checks if the short is still evident and keeps power off until it clears. Without typing a book, there are also factors regarding power districts etc. to consider. At the of the day you should reduce any short to the aboslute minimum and only if it cannot be avoided, a 4/5 amp fuse is not good enough these days. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
BODS3 Posted January 14, 2014 Share Posted January 14, 2014 Has there been any results on this? As the same thing happen to me today on my midland Pullman. For no reason no shorts or overloads present the loco would not drive but function buttons o/k Reset power, still not working my other logos all working o/k.I then did an Elite reset now o/k. Anybody know why Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Graskie Posted January 31, 2014 Share Posted January 31, 2014 I've resurrected this thread because of an experience I had today with one of my locos. I had put it aside some while ago because, while all the fitted sounds worked, the loco just sat there and buzzed. Needless to say, I didn't leave it doing that for very long! Anyway, I decided to have a look at it today, opened it up and discovered that a decoder wire had become trapped in the drive cogs. No wonder it didn't move! I carefully released the offending wire and bundled it up with others to prevent that happening again. I suppose I could have ended up with a severed wire and or even motor burn-out. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
2e0dtoeric Posted January 31, 2014 Share Posted January 31, 2014 Or even a chip burn-out due to the current drain of the stalled motor. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Fishmanoz Posted January 31, 2014 Share Posted January 31, 2014 Certainly an Elite reset isn't going to pull fouled wires out of gear trains. Just one bit of info on this that has come to light in the meantime. There have been reported instances of faults leading to particular addresses not working on decoders. And address change has fixed the problem. I'm not about to hypothesise how this can happen but it would seem it is something to do with some residual memory somewhere in the system. Far better to just try changing address and see if that works. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Graskie Posted May 1, 2014 Share Posted May 1, 2014 Sorry, but I'm resurrecting this thread yet again. I myself have now recently had 2 sound locos retain all sounds but cease to move on my Elite or RM, possibly following shorts. Yes, I can reset my Elite and I have the necessary instructions to be able to do so, but is it absolutely necessary? The only personal information I would lose, as far as I am aware, is the fact that calling up a loco gives it its full number or name. I assume I would also then have to update my Elite to v. 1.41. Any advice, please, regarding the possibility of more recent developments in this respect to rectify my problem? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
St1ngr4y Posted May 1, 2014 Author Share Posted May 1, 2014 Graskie said: Sorry, but I'm resurrecting this thread yet again. I myself have now recently had 2 sound locos retain all sounds but cease to move on my Elite or RM, possibly following shorts. Yes, I can reset my Elite and I have the necessary instructions to be able to do so, but is it absolutely necessary? The only personal information I would lose, as far as I am aware, is the fact that calling up a loco gives it its full number or name. I assume I would also then have to update my Elite to v. 1.41. Any advice, please, regarding the possibility of more recent developments in this respect to rectify my problem? Hi, If you have RM, I don't understand why you need to store any information on the Elite, so resetting the Elite, although annoying when it becomes necessary, is no big deal. Ray Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Fishmanoz Posted May 1, 2014 Share Posted May 1, 2014 Graskie, if your Elite is not at 1.41, you should definitely update it. All you will lose from an Elite reset is your loco list, you will still be able to run everything from the address you have given it though. That said, I think it will be more likely fixed by a decoder reset, not an Elite reset. Write 8 to CV8 to do this. It will then be back on the default 003 address and will probably run from there. Or, as I said above, just change its address and see how it goes. I don't think anything new has come to light on this in the last 3 months. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Graskie Posted May 5, 2014 Share Posted May 5, 2014 Thanks! Sorted guys. My Elite was already at 1.41, Fishy, but I was just a bit concerned that an Elite reset would send that back to an earlier version. Anyway, I tried it, it being an extremely easy thing to do, lost my loco "names", as expected, but was relieved that I didn't have to re-update to 1.41. It worked as well on both locos, so, as you said, Stingray, well worth doing, with little loss of data from the Elite. I use 4 rather than 2 digit IDs for my locos, based on their actual cab numbers, so no real problem selecting them on the Elite without having to go to the bother of renaming them. It shouldn't really be necessary to do such a reset, though, should it? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
PJ_model_trains Posted May 6, 2014 Share Posted May 6, 2014 Graskie said: Sorry, but I'm resurrecting this thread yet again. I myself have now recently had 2 sound locos retain all sounds but cease to move on my Elite or RM, possibly following shorts. You can always try pints and see if that helps ;-) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Fishmanoz Posted May 6, 2014 Share Posted May 6, 2014 Just like sometimes you need to reboot your computer Graskie, sometimes you need to reset your Elite. Shouldn't have to, but nothing's perfect. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
walkingthedog Posted May 7, 2014 Share Posted May 7, 2014 The title of this thread makes me think of Graskie. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Graskie Posted May 7, 2014 Share Posted May 7, 2014 Thanks, WTD. I wonder if my cardiac device could reboot me. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
walkingthedog Posted May 7, 2014 Share Posted May 7, 2014 Take it easy Graskie we've got to meet up again in the not to distant future. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Graskie Posted May 8, 2014 Share Posted May 8, 2014 Do we really have to? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
2e0dtoeric Posted May 8, 2014 Share Posted May 8, 2014 All together now - - We'll meet again, don't know where, don't know when...... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Graskie Posted May 8, 2014 Share Posted May 8, 2014 I think we'll veer away from that one. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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