Friendly Fryer

OK forgoet about the CV stuff. Note to self don't search in here use the search engine in your browser. Found loads of good stuff thanks @Chrissaf to the link to Tony's trains. It would be nice ot have a delete post button for idiots like me

Friends I have dome testing today as part of running in Cock o' the North (and because it's raining wohoo!) as I do try and follow the excellent advice on here. My main line route on my layout is only about 12m in length or about 0.61 scale miles. The P2 takes about 235 secs to complete the course and maths makes that a speed of 8mph . However the speed I set on Rail Master was 14mph so she's on a bit of go slow. At the sime time I was running on Channel Packet which is fitted with the rigth MN TTS decoder. She was also set to run at 14mph and got round in under 2 minutes so an actual speed of 18 mph. So what's interesting here is that I have right TTS decoders in the right locos, with no chnages to any CV's apart from setting their ID's and one goes roughly twice as fast as the other. I'd appreciate any thoughts on this feel free to cirrect my maths too. However what I am really after is a good guide to gettnig the best out of these lovely looking models. @RAF96 you mentioned some CV stuff ealrier in this thread, so is there a guide, blog post or even dare I say it Hornby documentation to help me understand what to fix as well as actually fixing it Thanks as always

I doubt this will close this thread out, but here goes : Yes I make a lot of typos as its hard being being even midly dyslexic and an awful typist, so my suggestion was to make it easier for contributors to make less errors not for moderators to fix them. Screengrabs are too hard in here and it looked fine when I used the tools above to show that screen grab I tried to post, which is my profile on Microsoft TechNet forums where I am a moderator with a high reputation. As for tone - I am only rude to my friends and colleagues who I trust. On this forum we don't really know each other and what will offend so I try and be really considered as I would like this to be a more inclusisive community where a range of views can be expressed. On other forums there are 1:1 chat options and it'd be nice to do thaty with say @RAF96 as I value his experience etc. Getting back to trains 😉 one are where I feel this forum is weak is that Hornby and the subbed out software house that runs Rail|Master don't seem to respond let alone try and fix problems raised here - can we agfree on that and try to fix it thanks for listenning and for your views.

I too have noise distortion on my pristine P2, but mine was virtually unused and I can see the flying suacer speaker is the original. I don't have this issue with other TTS units for example the Tornando TTS unit is fine in a rival Tornado. Silver Fox , Channel Packet and Coronation Scot all have the right TTS units and they are all pretty good and it's a shame Hornby don't see TTS as somehting they want to invest in. So just to be claer on your P2 there's a sugar cube in there now or is that the plan. As for Hornby's testing strategy I think the P2 was an older model, and they seem to be getting better e.g. Channel Packet has a smooth quiet unit and a decent flywheel (I have a separate post on getting the P2 to achieve this)

I have tow bits of positive feedback to improve this forum: The easy one is to support spellchecking, if I post on RMWeb forum or on the new DCC Concepts forum my typing errors clearly show up. Your members aren't great typists and this would improve the qulaity of their questiosn and answers.Much harder to fix is the toxic culture on here.Some members are quite rude and there seems no sanction for this. Is this because you aren't particularly worried or is it that you don't have the resources to porperly moderate. I'd be interested to see if I even get a reply to this, whihc is a shame as there is some good stuff on here and most memebers are great and really know their stuff

My P2 derails negotiaing a Peco finescale double slip set to the leftmost route as you approach it which I think that has an effective radius of 784mm? . So @Colin B, I am grateful for the advice on adding weights or a spring to the front bogey as I can see it floating, where the pony truck bogey has no flange and therefore can exert no side force. If that works I might swap in a pony truck bogey like I have on my A4 Silver Fox close couple the tender and see if derailment reoccurs. My tornado is fine but I went Bwith the offering from the comptettion (for better detail) and they have a fixed pony truck, but the bogey can move from side to side to compensate for this and both of these run well on my layout along with Evening Star and my Duchess of Hamilton. What annoys me is that in my opnion this loco is not fit for purpose as this fault is in the design and we should be better at getting Hornby to acknowldge this and fix it, if we can bring VW to task about emissions rigging then surely Hornby shoudln't be allowed to make claims anbout 2nd radius curves that are clearly not true.

Hi both, just be clear it does move at slow speeds, but rather jerkily possibly because of the motor design. I know I can fiddle with CVs whihc I guess will ultimately supply less current to the actual motor but what I am after is a smoother action at that low speed. So I am sorry my original post did not make that clear

Hi, As I have mentioned elsewhere I have a new P2 (R3246TTS) and while it looks the business and occasionally derails this topic just relates to its jerky motion at slow speed, whihc is my other complaint about her. I have read that this is due to the quality of the motor fitted, so my question is can that be easily changed, corrected with the adition of a heavy flywheel, or are their experts out there who can do this for me?

I have just got a P2 3246TTS and my Peco75 points are all fine with all other locos except this one. To my eye is seem there's not enough weight over the front bogey and no self centering action so the bogy just seems to float. for my track work the minum radious is 784mm dictated by the inside radious on peco 75 curved points, although this problem happend when traversing a double slip set to left route to left route a syou approach it and the fron bogey got hoplessly stuck. I have A4 silver fox , P1 Tornado, 9f evening star and MN Channel Packet goign over this flawlessly. My questin is has nayone got any handy tips for fixing it as I love the thing despite it's appalling low speed control

I wish I had though of that, so fine work Zero 1. I worked on the rocket car challenge with Thrust SSC a few years ago and we used IR sensors for that and tracked students cars at 80mph actual not scale speed with no problem. I am also interested in RFID sensors though the readers have to be pretty closed to the tokens. So thanking for igniting my interest

I got a good deal on a new P2 with TTS (cheaper than the railroad version) and I wondered what the green steps are for as the minimalist instruction sheet doesn't mention them. So has anyone got one and actually put these detail parts on to help me out here. I have to say it's beautioful engine and Hornby have done a great job to bring it to life. I'll report back on derialling issues I have seen on here, but I am hopeful as I have a min radios of 784mm dictated by the inner radios on a peco finescale curved point.

so I gave up and bought a P2 R3246TTS I was amazed at howe cheap it was but I don't feel guilty as this was pristine and surely it can't be right that trains are left in boxes for years and never run. Possibly I am influenced by James May or Toy Story. Anyway I'll get it it modified to look like the Prince of Wales if |Hornby can't be bothered

What is annoying about this is that those mdf and mdb files are Microsoft Access database files. Sadly they are from a really old version and they can't be opened. However what you can and should do before any update is to back these files up. I actually back up all the files that change and do that when ever I make a chnage - add a new loco change my layout design as some of this stuff can take hours to recreate. This should mean that if thgey get lost or corrupted you can copy them back over the top of an update or a clean install say on anopther PC. The only possible problem is if the structure of those files could change across RailMater updates but I have not seen this and given that RailMaster is not really being developed this fall backup and restore should work, indeed on the pro pack there isactually a weak attempt to provide this but its not cloud enabled (oneDrive dropbox etc.). It's also annoying you can't open the database files in Access to see what's in them and hack them the way we hack our locos and rolling stock to make them work for us.

Thanks all @Raf96 I think I owe you a whole case of beer by now and Yelrow nice to meet you as well

Case closed as scanning is OK now but you hvae to wonder why RailMaster can't scan this automatically and only certain TTS decoders are listed (I went with TTS steam) anyway thanks @RAF96 as always