Mousehole

As reported in other posts, I have only just become operational with eLink and Railmaster and have started looking at point control. On my layout all my points are operated by Peco PL10W point motors on Peco points controlled with Peco point switches. All work well, even where two are operated simultaneously on crossovers and on Peco three-way points. I have a Hornby 8247 decoder that I have set up successfully on Railmaster and it will operate a point motor when stand-alone but when attached to a point there does not seem to be enough energy to throw it. I have set a pulse length of 600ms. Is there any reason for this failure? Are there any other accessory decoders that will be more successful by providing more power? I have seen several comments on the ADS-8, would these be a suitable alternative?

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As well as new technical facilities, the user interface and manuals should be considered too. In my short time using Railmaster with eLink I have encountered deficiencies in both that should be corrected. I find the user interface somewhat confusing – some icons and facilities are not in the most logical positions and seem to have been added as an afterthought. For example, the zoom control for the track plan is in the top left corner with no label to say what it is. The use of the green ticks and the red crosses is inconsistent. For example, in most windows the green tick means save the changes whilst in the accessory decoder window it means read the decoder settings – saving the settings is a small icon at the bottom left. The manuals, again, I find confusing and not logically set out. Apart from the typographical and technical errors there are serious omissions. We have become used to manuals describing complex systems such as audio-visual systems and cameras and those for Railmaster do not bear comparison. As a few examples of the problems I have seen, there is a mention of activation of the software in the early pages dealing with installation but no information on how to do it, or a forward reference to it, until page 87. There is a clear instruction on page 16 to set the baud rate to 19,200 whilst on page 14 it had already been stated that the eLink can work at 115,200 and, in fact, eLink requests that this baud rate be set. I am not sure why there is insistence on using a COM port of 4 or less and what the consequences might be if it is impossible to change it, but my limited experience is that the eLink will look for ports up to 16 and I have had it working with port numbers above 4. The programming section starting on page 76 has a list and description of the program commands but there is no indication that in each field there is a drop-down list of all the available options. On pages 55-56 in the description of setting point switches there is no mention of the blue arrows indicating point direction when a decoder is connected. Until one has done this, the blue arrows on the sample plan remain a mystery!