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Hi Fishy, I don't think the LD system needs to report anything about speed, because when a detection occurs, RM knows already what speed that loco should be doing. Ray

There may be a demand for an ADS-4, if they don't do one already, for the reasons I mentioned. Ray

Fishmanoz said: Michael_A said: Easy enough when you know how. What alternatives are available, easier, and only £22? One alternative is the DCC Concepts ADS-8 which handles 8 points at less than double the price from the same supplier. Programming consists of connecting to track, move the decoder switch to learn mode, throw the point you want it to control, move switch back to run mode and you are done. Sound simpler and cheaper? There are others too. I have recently installed 3 ADS-8's and I have 2 more on order from Liverpool. Another great advantage is that each of the 8 decoders has its own capacitor discharge unit, so there is no issue with cdu recharge time when throwing points. I am highly delighted with their performance as the cdu seems to provide an excellent 'kick' when fired. The only disadvantage which I think is worth mentioning is the fact that there are 8 decoders on the one board. The three which I have installed already are in places on my layout where there are 8 points each available. But the two I have on order are for points which are in smaller geographical groups. Placement of an ADS8 will have to be between two smaller groups of points with longer wiring to the points as a result. I am waiting for someone to say that they have successfully cut an ADS8 into two to make two 4 decoder units! Ray

OK you asked for it... What is being suggested is to use the point icona themselves in the Layout Designer to configure the points i.e set their addresses, decoder types, default settings, routes etc., and to make the red/green buttons optional extras for actually switching the points when they appear on the main screen. The program code to do the configuration is already there - it is called when you right click a red/green button. All they need to do is call this code when you right-click the point icon. The .pln file which is used to hold your designed layout may need changing if there are two records, one for the buttons and one for the point, to store the configuration information in the other one. All of the points except the Y points, are already capable of being switched by clicking on the point itself rather than the red/green buttons. This feature simply need to be extended to include the Y points too.

I agree it could be a hefty change to the program, but I'm sure not an impossible one.

walkingthedog said: They're saying the red and green are part of the programming system so can't be changed without affecting the whole programme. What do you mean by the 'programming system'?

When a Help Request is issued through Railmaster itself, can a unique reference number be allocated to it please? This way, if no resolution has been forthcoming after a reasonable amount of time, the user can request an update via email quoting this reference number. Ray

HornbyRailMasterSupport said: Only allowing toggling of a point is not a good idea as users may wish to switch a point in a particular direction if it is a( sticky or b) if they are not sure they pressed it in the first place. The red/green, left/right functions also follow in the programming system and through the hand-held devices. This is why the word 'optional' was used. Those people who prefer the red/green buttons could OPT to use them for the reasons (a) and (b) you give. Then those who would prefer to click the point itself to toggle it could OPT to do without the buttons. Could you clarify the final sentence please - I don't understand it. Ray

HornbyRailMasterSupport said: The red and green point control buttons cannot be made optional in favour of just pressing the point itself. Why not? If a user looks at the blue indicator, they will know which way the point is switched. Incidentally, if & when diagonal points are introduced, where will the red/green buttons 'snap' to?

RDS said: The points icons in v1.54 now have arrows, pointing Left & Right and this is to aid those people, (myself included) that suffer from Colour Blindness. Maybe this is another argument for at least making these buttons optional. Ray

@RDS Ok, I'll start with this one... It's good that when designing your layout, you can assign default positions for each point and signal, and that you have the choice of having RM fire each point or set each signal when the layout is loaded. However, I have about 45 points and 24 signals on my layout, and I found that allowing RM to set them all to their start values was taking a long time. I was wondering if it would be possible to leave blank the start values of those items you want to omit from the startup routine. For example, you may find it unnecessary to set all of the points in a fiddle yard, but desirable to set all of the points on the main line. In this way, the setting of your chosen items at startup would take less time to complete. Having set startup values on all of my points when I designed the layout, I tried to blank some of them, but the layout designer (currently) won't let you do this. Ray

MetmanUK said: My guess is that the settings in 1 are stored in 2 (or should be!) so the latter gives a quicker way of developing 'programs'. Option 3 gives flexibility of when/how to run 'programs'. Therefore I think all 3 should be retained. Sorry to disagree! I think your guess is wrong - none of the items in System Settings are in the .ini file nor vice versa. There is an entry in System Settings to specify the name of the layout to load up at start, so why can't the program to be run at start be in there too. Ray

In another thread I have described a method of running a chosen program at RM Startup. This means there are three different ways of configuring RM:- 1. The System Settings window 2. The Railmaster.ini file 3. By a command line parameter. Could not categories 2 and 3 be merged with category 1 so that all of the settings are accessed in a similar way? Ray

RDS said: 4) There is small square Black box just to the right of the 'Stop the Program/Start the program Icon', that does not appear to do anything, except flash brighter every now and again. Does this box need to be there at all? Have you noticed that if you hover the mouse cursor over the 'Stop the Program/Start the program Icon', it always displays the text "Stop the program" even when there is no program running. It's a trivial fault, but one of so many which are too trivial to report through the online system. Ray

Apologies if this suggestion has been mentioned already... There is a command which can be included in a program MOVE PLAN [x,y]. The manual says "Simply specify the x-coordinate and y-coordinate grid square and the plan will move to that position". By trial and error I believe that the grid square they mean is the one which will appear at the top left corner of the window after the command has been executed. My suggestion is that the x,y co-ordinates of the grid square currently on display at that position, are displayed somewhere on the screen, so that you can drag the screen to the position you want, then using the displayed co-ordinates, use them in the MOVE PLAN command in your program. Ray

Fishmanoz said: See the Point Icons in RM Schematics thread regarding 45 degree icons (already planned for a future update according to HRMS) and, more importantly, incorporation of point lights into the point icon rather then having them separate. Thanks to PJ for this suggestion. Another suggestion was to make the red/green point lights optional, and to make the point icon itself right-clickable in the layout designer for configuration purposes. Ray

I don't know if this has been mentioned before, but the seconds clock which runs at the top of the main screen when running a program, is hard to read because, irrespective of the colour scheme in use, it always displays as red numbers on a black background. Could another pair of colours be used such as white numbers on a black background, or better still, black numbers on a white background? Even better, could the colours be chosen by the user, either in the system settings or as entries in the .ini file? Ray

I've noticed that too, so I use Alt+Tab to switch applications. Ray

RDS said: Could I respectfully ask that we keep this thread for 'Desirable features' only. Thank you Ok - how about adding a print button to the layout designer which causes the current track plan to be printed without a background colour, irrespective of the colour theme in use. Ray

Deltic_Malc said: I have a loft layout and would like to have a dedicated PC to running rail master, with the minimum amount of software on it, so I would like to have the facility of designing tracks and writing routes and timetables on a separate pc and then being able to transferring them onto the dedicated one.( I use the laptop at the moment and its not ideal).I would also like to see a print facility to print off the track plan and time tables. My track plan is to big to be shown on one screen even at 50%. Setting your own default screen size would be good. Also I would like to see a version for mac operating system. RM produces a file called TrackPlan,bmp in the Railmaster folder. It's a bitmap image, but it retains the black background that you see on the RM screen. You can use Windows Paint or similar to change the background to white, otherwise it uses a great deal of black ink if you print it out. A track plan print button might be desirable inside the layout designer, but only if the background is kept white!! Ray

Hi guys, I am also in favour. I recently suggested (through customer care) adding diagonal points and incorporating the red/green buttons as part of the point icon, but maybe a list like this may have a better chance of achieving an improvement. Ray