Britannia Builder

This is a strange problem, but given all the things that you have tried it does seem to be a faulty decoder. It appears that when it reaches a certain output voltage some alternate path opens up to drain some of the current. I don't think that wiring the decoder directly would invalidate the warranty - I should return the decoder to Hornby. Regards, John

I use the Class 31 profile in my Hornby Class 101 3-car DMU, and I find the sounds quite pleasing. I'm not sure how realistic they are - it's 60 years since I used to travel to school on 101s, and I can't really remember what they sounded like. Regards, John

I successfully deregistered a few weeks ago after a hard disk failure - I loaded an evaluation copy on the new computer, tried to register with the original key, it correctly said that it was in use, and gave me a form to deregister which I filled in with the original licence details. No response initially, but I later found the confirmation email in my junk mail. So the deregistration had happened almost immediately and I was able to re-register successfully. Perhaps worth checking your junk mail? Regards, John

All back up and running now. Railmaster support had deactivated the key from the dead computer immediately, but their confirmation email went to my junk mail so I didn't see it immediately. Now successfully activated on the new computer, and the track plan and all 8 locos are working again. The trickiest part of the track plan was to work out by trial and error which port numbers I'd assigned to the points - luckily I remembered that I had used the range from 50 upwards. I've decided to back up the important RM files in future by attaching them in an email to myself. I've saved the following files: activate.dat railmaster.ini [trackplan].pln resource.mdb I don't have any RM program files to save. Regards, John

Just a word of warning... The hard disk failed in my 10 year old HP laptop a couple of days ago, so I've bought a new bottom-of-the-range HP Windows 11 laptop (£259.99 from Amazon, amazing value, much less than the old one cost 10 years ago) and successfully restored all my documents, spreadsheets, photos etc from Google Drive, which I had set up to do automated backups of any file that changed. However, when I installed Railmaster some years ago I overlooked the fact that it keeps its data in a program folder, not under the main Windows Documents folder hierarchy, so my Google Drive wasn't backing it up. My fault entirely! So now I've downloaded Railmaster to the new computer in evaluation mode and got it talking to my elink successfully - this worked first time, after some grumbling from Windows Defender about viruses in the software, and I've rebuilt my track layout - luckily I found a saved screenshot of this, so it didn't take long to redo. I just now need to set up the locos in Resource.mdb again - I have an old saved copy of this with some of my locos, plus an up to date Excel spreadsheet of the Resource.mdb contents, so this shouldn't take too long. I found the Railmaster CD with the activation key, still sitting in the Majestic train set box, so I've submitted the details to Railmaster support and hopefully they will soon deactivate the key from the dead computer so that I can activate on the new one. We live and learn! Regards, John

After experiencing the CV19 corruption when running under Railmaster I did wonder whether the RM red 'all stop' button would have stopped the runaway loco (in fact I used my physical emergency power off switch), but it sounds as though it wouldn't have done. Presumably the controller sends out a stop to each address that it knows about, rather than some generic DCC 'stop all' command that would have covered the corrupt CV19 address? Regards, John

A few observations: - I've created a member gallery called Britannia Builder's Layout - it contains 4 photos, which are all visible if you go into the gallery, but the summary says there are only 2 photos. - as others have mentioned, I can't edit the photos after posting to give them more meaningful names. - when I go in via Create and choose to add a new photo to an existing gallery, it seems to give me all the members' galleries to choose from - I didn't actually try to add to another gallery, but surely this ought to be restricted to the owner (creator) of the gallery? But overall the gallery facility seems very useful. Regards, John

My DoG SD066 profile was only installed a week or two ago and so is presumably the latest version of the software. The address in CV1 is 6 - I don't use long addresses or high values. The other instances of loss of DCC control that I experienced were all nearly a year ago, on a Bachmann 3MT Tank running the Black 5 profile, but I don't know if these were CV19 corruption - I did a CV8=8 reset to recover. I rather thought that the problem had been fixed in a software upgrade, since the Bachmann has been trouble free for such a long time after 3 or 4 failures in relatively quick succession. I have a power bank in the Bachmann but not in the DoG. I'm using Railmaster; Fabio is using Rocrail. I don't use the app for train control, so Bluetooth isn't connected when the problem occurs. The only common factor that I can see is that the loco is in motion (under DCC control) at the time that control is lost. I wonder if the decoder is susceptible to some random glitch in the power or the DCC signal which causes it to write random CV values? My CV19 corruption was a value of 16; Fabio mentions a value of 16 but also other seemingly random values. Have there been other reports specific to CV19, apart from Fabio's and mine? And how common is the corruption of CV2? It's all very puzzling, but not too serious as long as you have an emergency track power off switch close to hand! Knowing now that it's CV19 that needs resetting saves having to use CV8=8 and then laboriously reset all the other customised CVs. Regards, John Sorry - this is an edit of previous post, changing CV19 to 16 rather than 4. I tried to edit the post but seem to have created a duplicate. Mod note - your previous unamended post hidden from view to avoid confusing folk.

I've just had an occurrence of this CV19 corruption problem that Fabio reported above. I was running my Duke of Gloucester with the new SD066 profile under Railmaster DCC control when it stopped responding to the throttle. I had to power down the track to stop it. Interestingly it still responded to sounds, which I guess is how a consist works - CV19 for the throttle, and CV1 for the sounds? I then used the app to read all the CVs from the decoder, and sure enough CV19 was set to 16 as Fabio reported earlier. I've no clue as to what might have caused this CV corruption - the loco was running normally beforehand, and I hadn't been using the app at all. Resetting CV19 to 0 cured the problem. Incidentally there's a minor bug in the app CV editor for CV19 - it isn't possible to set the CV to 0 from the slider or keyboard, but it can be zeroed with the reset button. Regards, John

While upgrading your Elite to the latest version is undoubtedly a good thing to do, I'd be surprised if it fixed the problem of CV corruption that you describe in your original post. There's plenty of anecdotal evidence on this forum of this sort of problem - I've had 3 or 4 instances (not recently) of loss of DCC control while running at speed, necessitating a CV8 reset, and someone else spotted that CV19 had been corrupted after he lost DCC control. I don't know what the answer is! Regards, John

The eLink should work perfectly well as a power supply. It's obviously normally used with a RailMaster PC attached, but I've often used my eLink to power the track without bothering to connect the PC when using the app to download profiles etc. Regards, John

I was pleasantly surprised to see SD066 for the DoG, since this hadn't been advertised on the schedule of forthcoming profiles. I duly downloaded it to my DoG, which had been running the DoG TTS decoder and more recently TXS with the Tornado profile. The set of whistles on F2 and F3 includes some really excellent sounds. The exhaust sounds are interesting - with my complex speed curve I get exactly 6 even chuffs per revolution at very low speeds, then a rather odd uneven beat at slightly higher speeds, then a steady and rather soft chuffing at high speeds. Maybe this is a quirk of the Caprotti valve gear - it's clearly a different recording to the old TTS sound. Overall very impressed! Regards, John

It appears that users who started using the app on Android 13 and then upgraded to 14 can still access the photo library - this is a quote from an Android developer website: Photo and video access is preserved when the device upgrades In cases where your app is on a device that upgrades from an earlier Android version to Android 14, the system keeps full access to the user's photos and videos, and it grants some permissions to your app automatically. The exact behavior depends on the set of permissions that are granted to your app before the device upgrades to Android 14. Regards, John

This seems to be a bug affecting some Android 14 users - see this recent thread: There doesn't appear to be a workaround, so you'll need to wait for the app to be fixed. Regards, John

If you navigate to page 2 of the Hornby forum and then bookmark that page in your browser, ie a url of https://community.hornbyhobbies.com/forum/3-hornby/page/2/, you can bypass all the other brands and most of the old pinned threads. Personally I really like the new format - this page that I've bookmarked shows me all that I need to know, and I haven't had to look into a sub-forum since the new software was released. I simply click on each unread thread that interests me, and I'm taken straight to the unread posts at the end of the thread. I have set the tick boxes on the sub-forum picker to include just the 6 or 7 sub-forums that I'm interested in, which gives me just 2 pinned posts at the top of page 2, so these are not much of a distraction. It would be better if the pinned posts were not given priority in the list of recent posts, but just included in date sequence according to when they were last updated. Regards, John

It seems that Android 14 has only rolled out very recently on selected Samsung phones, and it has introduced some enhancements for selective access to photos, so there could just be a genuine problem here. Regards, John

Surely other users must have successfully added loco images on a modern Samsung by now. I wonder if it's a bug in the app, trying to add a photo before assigning a decoder? Regards, John

Hi Stephen I've just tried this on my Samsung A34, also running Android 14. I downloaded the app some time ago on this phone but have never used it since all my locos are assigned to the iPad. I've just tried setting up a new loco but get the same symptoms as you - if I try to import a photo it gives the 'error opening photo library', and if I try to take a photo nothing happens. My permissions screen for the app is the same as yours. Regards, John

The pink star seems to be a thread to which you've contributed, or a red star if you've contributed and there are unread posts in it. Regards, John

I've noticed that if you right-click on an entry in the sub forum list you then get an option to open the target in a new window (in Chrome, at least) Regards, John

Another option, starting from the list of recently updated threads across all your selected forums, is to scroll down to find a thread in the target sub forum and then click on the subforum name which is a clickable link within that thread description. Regards, John

Probably the quickest option is to set up a bookmark url for each of your favourite sub forums, eg https://community.hornbyhobbies.com/forum/13-forum-website-feedback/ Regards, John

Thanks Rob, I did try the Activity/Unread, but I couldn't see a way of avoiding the cars and ships from the other forums. Regards, John

I think this new platform is a huge improvement, so congratulations to those responsible. I particularly like the ability to see all recently updated threads across all subforums with an indication of threads with unread posts, and to jump straight to unread posts at the end of the thread. A minor irritation is the number of pinned posts occupying the first page and a half of the recent posts display. I've partially bypassed this by bookmarking page 2 of the display, ie a url of https://community.hornbyhobbies.com/forum/3-hornby/page/2/, but perhaps some of these sticky threads could be combined? Or is there a way to show just threads with recent activity, ignoring pinned ones? Another minor suggestion is to add a 'favicon' so that the Hornby logo appears on the browser's bookmark bar, as it used to with the old forum. Regards, John

It might just be worth trying to run auto-calibration, which applies maximum voltage to the motor and bypasses back EMF control, and see if this makes the motor run. You'll need to be under DCC control, but you can use Bluetooth to set CV149 to 0, then set F0 on the DCC controller to start the auto-calibration. Regards, John