RM v1.60 is released

[HornbyRailMasterSupport]

OssieB, It seems that your installation may have been corrupted and is in a different display mode. You should download and install from www.powerpos.com/rail-master/rm_setup.exe. All of your set up locos, track plans and programs will remain intact.

 

poliss. If you read our posting carefully you will see that it was written from the point of view of dismay rather than temper. There is no point getting angry at these things as it serves no purpose. We do not understand what you mean by "Customer relations" when we are just setting the record straight. You can knock a product. That is your prerogative, but to mislead other customers is not right and must be addressed. We have done that.

 

Incidentally, Roco Z21 retail price = £349.99

RailMaster+eLink retail price = £84.99

 

eLink and RailMaster are far more flexible that the Roco unit and RailMaster has many more features. If you own RailMaster then you already know this.

 

[St1ngr4y]

Hello guys,

First of all, I would like to say that I have had absolutely no problems at any time in downloading and installing RM updates onto my Windows 7 desktop pc.

However, I must again express my disappointment that none of the faults I have reported in the last 6-12 months or so, have been fixed. The release notes mention "Minor enhancements and bug fixes". When will we get some MAJOR bug fixes? At the moment, I am running with none of my TrainTech signals working properly, and I am still having difficulty developing new programs because of faults with the Accelerate/Decelerate and Chain commands. 

Ray

[HornbyRailMasterSupport]

Hello guys,

First of all, I would like to say that I have had absolutely no problems at any time in downloading and installing RM updates onto my Windows 7 desktop pc.

However, I must again express my disappointment that none of the faults I have reported in the last 6-12 months or so, have been fixed. The release notes mention "Minor enhancements and bug fixes". When will we get some MAJOR bug fixes? At the moment, I am running with none of my TrainTech signals working properly, and I am still having difficulty developing new programs because of faults with the Accelerate/Decelerate and Chain commands. 

Ray

Ray, as you know, we have been working closely with another forum member in trying to get to the bottom of the problem with Train-tech signals that was brought to our attention. In the final analysis we obtained several more signals for testing and discovered that one of our existing test signals was causing the problem. The other formum member is trying out some suggestions and will be in contact with the signals manufacturer. The signalling system, using Train-tech signals works fine. There are no bugs in RailMaster pertaining to this. It may have been an idea to email us regarding this aspect and we would have put you in the picture with details that we cannot publish in this forum for privacy reasons.Regarding your issue with accelerate and decelerate, as you know we have been unable to replicate this scenario and therefore this requires more looking into, as you have been notified of.

[Fishmanoz]

As a matter of interest HRMS, has there been any change to the update since initial release? It does seem that there has been at least one report of it not working first time but then did subsequently.

[HornbyRailMasterSupport]

As a matter of interest HRMS, has there been any change to the update since initial release? It does seem that there has been at least one report of it not working first time but then did subsequently.

It is possible that there may have been a corruption (judging by OssieB's posting) in either the automatic download setup or the rm_setup.exe. We don't know for sure. To be on the safe side we recompiled and built the setup file and uploaded both versions again, including the international versions earlier this evening.If there are any niggles or oddities, please either use the Help Request system or email us at support@rail-master.com to let us know and we will check them out.Although a maintenance release, quite a lot of work has gone into this update for future functionality, which we cannot tell you about yet!

[OssieB]

As a matter of interest HRMS, has there been any change to the update since initial release? It does seem that there has been at least one report of it not working first time but then did subsequently.

It is possible that there may have been a corruption (judging by OssieB's posting) in either the automatic download setup or the rm_setup.exe. We don't know for sure. To be on the safe side we recompiled and built the setup file and uploaded both versions again, including the international versions earlier this evening. If there are any niggles or oddities, please either use the Help Request system or email us at support@rail-master.com to let us know and we will check them out. Although a maintenance release, quite a lot of work has gone into this update for future functionality, which we cannot tell you about yet!

I have just completed the download as suggested, and I have complete success this time, even thoughI had tried twice previously using the direct  method earlier today with no success. Therfore, it would seem that the recompiling etc by your goodselves has cured the corruption. Thank you HRMS for your prompt attention at a weekend.

BarryO

[HornbyRailMasterSupport]

That's quite alright Barry. Good news. We just want to ensure that everything works after an update. if you have any other problems or queries just send us Help Request.

[poliss]

This is what I mean by bad customer relations. "It is a shame that there are a handful of users (representing the tiniest fraction of RailMaster users) who are intent on rubbishing the product, and indeed any Hornby product."

That is not the language to use when talking to people who have bought your product and are unhappy with it.

I know users who have replaced RM with the Roco system and are much happier with it. The Z21 lite system that comes with starter sets can be bought for over a £100.00 less than the £349.99 you quoted and you get a complete train set too. Sure RM is very cheap, but as the old saying goes, you get what you pay for. Guess what. The Roco system already has loco detection too.

[HornbyRailMasterSupport]

This is what I mean by bad customer relations. "It is a shame that there are a handful of users (representing the tiniest fraction of RailMaster users) who are intent on rubbishing the product, and indeed any Hornby product."

That is not the language to use when talking to people who have bought your product and are unhappy with it.

I know users who have replaced RM with the Roco system and are much happier with it. The Z21 lite system that comes with starter sets can be bought for over a £100.00 less than the £349.99 you quoted and you get a complete train set too. Sure RM is very cheap, but as the old saying goes, you get what you pay for. Guess what. The Roco system already has loco detection too.

It is a fact of life there is a minority of people who take great pleasure in rubbishing a company, seemingly for sake of it.There is nothing more to add to this as your comments speak for themselves.

[AusMod]

 

 

I have NEVER had a problem with Railmaster software. I did once have a problem with an eLink unit, but it was promptly investigated and fixed by HRMS. Name me another software company that gives the service provided by HRMS, at all hours of the day and night.

 

They are exceptional!!!  And so is the sortware.

[gilbo2]

Up until 1.60, if problems with the latest version you could simply install a previous version again. eg 1.56V9 I find to be the most stable for what I do. However, when I install an older versions now it only runs in Evaluation mode as it thinks I've copied from another computer, which I have not ;-(

 

How can I return to an older version?

[gilbo2]

I manually installed rm_setup.exe at around 12:45pm yesterday and the setup file was 77MB in size. On reading some of the problems above I thought I would download a fresh copy, now rm_setup.exe is only 67MB?

 

How come such a difference in size?

[96RAF]

As a matter of interest HRMS, has there been any change to the update since initial release? It does seem that there has been at least one report of it not working first time but then did subsequently.

It is possible that there may have been a corruption (judging by OssieB's posting) in either the automatic download setup or the rm_setup.exe. We don't know for sure. To be on the safe side we recompiled and built the setup file and uploaded both versions again, including the international versions earlier this evening. If there are any niggles or oddities, please either use the Help Request system or email us at support@rail-master.com to let us know and we will check them out. Although a maintenance release, quite a lot of work has gone into this update for future functionality, which we cannot tell you about yet!

Firstly my profound apologies HRMS for what may have been unfair critiscism of RM as a Company in my previous rant. I was trying to provide honest opinion of problems I had seen personally including those echoed on the forums and eventually the frustration came to the fore. I did point out that support is normally superb along with several other superlatives about the product and its potential.

I am a true blue Hornby supporter and always will be, but I cannot invest in the RM Pro-Pack until I can see a solid product based on users feedback on these forums, and that is very frustrating given the additional functionality. Hornby will certainly not lose this customer.

As I am 'international' could HRMS please tell me what difference that would make to any downloadable update across the internet, as you appear to have various versions - domestic and foreign.

I will now go and download the latest direct version and reload it over my previous direct download.

[choralc]

As I am 'international' could HRMS please tell me what difference that would make to any downloadable update across the internet, as you appear to have various versions - domestic and foreign.

I think this must relate to the language you chose when you first ran RM. From then on the pdfs show the link to the latest version on the powerpos website and the other language versions may have a different link but thinking about that now I'm going to contradict myself becuase the download would only install the language components registered on your machine. So what is the difference?

[96RAF]

Although I am in Cyprus, English comes up as the prime langauage option on my update, thereafter its all standard acceptance of t&cs , etc as it reloads.

I just reloaded the latest direct from Powerpos over my existing v1.60, having first renamed my loco folder to loco-old as there were some R-numbers missing and RM said they had them in their folder.

The reload gave me a new loco folder but these 2 are still missing from my new folder - R1038 (boxed set Merchant Navy) and R1139 (Blue Rapier Class 395). To fix my loco list I have searched for and included other R-variant MN and 395 for now.

Could others please take a look in their loco folder and report if they have these 2 locos or not and any others they may know about - thanks.

[HornbyRailMasterSupport]

As a matter of interest HRMS, has there been any change to the update since initial release? It does seem that there has been at least one report of it not working first time but then did subsequently.

It is possible that there may have been a corruption (judging by OssieB's posting) in either the automatic download setup or the rm_setup.exe. We don't know for sure. To be on the safe side we recompiled and built the setup file and uploaded both versions again, including the international versions earlier this evening. If there are any niggles or oddities, please either use the Help Request system or email us at support@rail-master.com to let us know and we will check them out. Although a maintenance release, quite a lot of work has gone into this update for future functionality, which we cannot tell you about yet!

Firstly my profound apologies HRMS for what may have been unfair critiscism of RM as a Company in my previous rant. I was trying to provide honest opinion of problems I had seen personally including those echoed on the forums and eventually the frustration came to the fore. I did point out that support is normally superb along with several other superlatives about the product and its potential.

I am a true blue Hornby supporter and always will be, but I cannot invest in the RM Pro-Pack until I can see a solid product based on users feedback on these forums, and that is very frustrating given the additional functionality. Hornby will certainly not lose this customer.

As I am 'international' could HRMS please tell me what difference that would make to any downloadable update across the internet, as you appear to have various versions - domestic and foreign.

I will now go and download the latest direct version and reload it over my previous direct download.

Please put the queries on this forum in context. RailMaster is a popular system with many thousands of users around the world. The number of queries raised here represent a small fraction of the number of users who are getting on with it without any problems at all. Just like a company like Microsoft has hundreds of millions of customers and therefore millions of queries raised on forums, it is all relative. The vocal minority, of course, will mainly voice negative aspects of anything. Very rarely, do people go out of their way to praise something. That is the nature of things. Fortunately, we get a number of emails out of the blue on a regular basis praising RailMaster as having revolutionised model railway control and for us, that is what it's all about.When an update is released there are bound to be some minor niggles, no matter how much testing goes on. RailMaster resides on PCs where every one is unique therefore there are bound to be issues with some due to the fact that RailMaster talks to the operating system, com ports, the Internet and so on.

[Bulver]

I have read, with great interest, the various views expressed on this subject, and understand the frustrations expressed by all parties - we are after all talking about a computer-based system, and nothing is guaranteed to irk people like computers!  People do, no doubt, suffering those frustrations, and feel it necessary to vent their ire, we all do it.  Some of the responses have clearly shown that.  Who hasn't been able to get a laptop or tablet to do what is required, particularly downloading updates?  I am personally happy with RM and Win 8.1, (and Microsoft!)

[ColinE]

After following this topic and viewing the criticism aimed at Hornby and RM I felt that as part of the satisfied majority I wanted to air my opinion. I've been operating RM for a year now and Pro for a couple of months and I make the following observations. (my opinion only !!) 

1) All the problems I've encountered with the RM program and setting up the computer have been covered by the manual, as HRMS always state, read the manual, OK not being a computer nerd I've sometimes had to read it several times and experiment a bit before realising what I'm supposed to do but the answer is there. As a bonus I now know all about static IP addresses and how to set them. As an aside if you look on RMweb roco have been having the same problem with a few customers.

2) On two occasions I've used the forum for problems I haven't been able to solve using the manual but it turned out neither were a direct RM problem. 

3) All updates on my system have all been optional, I've never encountered any problems in downloading them and the system has always worked afterwards including all the operating programs I've compiled.

4) The problem of the system 'freezing' I've reduced to zero by disconnecting my computer from the Internet while running RM and not rushing input commands. In fairness to RM though the laptop I'm using for my railway is very old and slow compared to modern machines so it was probably part of the cause of my freezing problem.

5) for the price I'm very pleased with RM, yes there is always room for improvement and new features including loco detection which I'm hoping will make loco positioning more reliable in programs.

Thank you HRMS for your efforts.

 

[PJ_model_trains]

Pj, hi, i dont think its a hornby prob, on last update, mine did the same, and my lady wife jiggled with the monitor controls, which then gave a fuller picture. Have a read of your monitor blurb. john

 

HRMS / John

 

UPDATE

 

After the download of v1.60, I was not able to see the full layout screen as noted earlier in the thread.

 

John suggested I Jiggle it a bit, as his wife did, and she fixed the issue for him.

 

Well, having not seen John's wife jiggle it, I attempted myself to J J J Jiggle it a bit!  By tweaking the stretching of the screen a midges it has solved the problem.

 

Thank you 

 

PJ

[mallone]

Hi...I'm new to the forum but I would just like to say that any problems that I have had with Railmaster or elink have been quickly resolved by Hornbys Customer Service Team. Any Hornby item that has been faulty has been replaced quickly, efficiently and free of charge.

I personally think Railmaster is brilliant and I look forward to future advances in the system.

A brilliant back-up service.

Thank you Hornby.