Gazza-1

Apologies if this has been discussed else where as I see the last posting date is 2015. But I see similar problems still with V1.74 when starting railmaster pro. I have a reasonably complicated points and signal configuration with home and distant signals, but despite making sure that the startup order does not trigger more than one signal per decoder in succession. I still get signals that don't get reset at start up, yet they still work when activated from the screen. When I initially did all this, I did it the only way I could make it work, and I wasn't that familiar with signalling. I was signalling from a signal and not points because I couldn't see how to set a distant light signal from a point as it only offered 2 colours. I have redesigned it all in railmaster in the last couple of weeks so that the points set the home signal and from the home signal it sets the distant signal. Although I did find something that didn't make any sense. I had to set a 2 aspect signal to 3, set the signalling up and change it back none in the signal type for it to work. I have hammered the signalling on the screen and it does seem to function better, but haven't a chance to hammer it on the layout to see what happens as I am redesigning signal gantry's and changing some of the wiring, just in case it makes a difference.

Thanks for all the advice. I appear to have resolved all the problems without changing any configuration items. Baring in mind this was all working before it went south, I am not sure what I did that kicked the 8.1 machine back into life. After an hour or so hunting for a clue, I connected it all back up to the layout and it mysteriously burst into life. The semaphore signal still wasn’t playing ball but after the B e-link gave up the ghost and was restarted, again mysteriously that resolved itself. All that now seems to be happy, and it has been restarted a number of times and yesterday the little controller had a supervised go. I have reviewed the start up sequence to make sure that there is a good gap between each set of points being reset by sequencing it such that it moves around the decoders until all have been done. I did the same with signals, I don’t have points and signals on the same decoder. I don’t for one second think it made any difference, but there really should be no related problems The windows 10 machine, a complete mystery. Copied the layout plan from the 8.1 machine, as this was the most up to date one and put it on the windows 10 machine. Quite why, I don’t have an answer as the layout plan was copied the other way at the back end of last week, All I could think of was some corruption. After a bit of hesitation it sprung into life and everything worked fine. Having spent 40 years working in IT support and development, this has been about as frustrating as it gets. It’s resolved, but if it happens again, I have no idea how to fix it again. Have still put a question into railmaster support in the hope they can explain it.

As most things were working, I have been teaching little un about signalling. It was all working , then the b elink appeared to stop working . Shut down railmaster, power cycled the elinks and restarted. This time everything came back and the semaphore signal went to the correct state. I have done this more times that I can remember to no effect. I don’t for one second think I couldn’t have made a mistake somewhere,, but this is all a bit random, and it works most of the time. Definitely one for railmaster support.

As most things were working, I have been teaching little un about signalling. It was all working , then the b elink appeared to stop working . Shut down railmaster, power cycled the elinks and restarted. This time everything came back and the semaphore signal went to the correct state. I have done this more times that I can remember to no effect. I don’t for one second think I couldn’t have made a mistake somewhere,, but this is all a bit random, and it works most of the time. Definitely one for railmaster support.

Firstly, apologies for posting on the wrong forum. Since posting the 8.1 laptop has decided it can see the elinks without changing a single thing, which is frustrating. So I am left with it not knowing which state one of the semaphores is in on that laptop. The other laptop still hangs when trying to edit the layout. Looks like I will be getting on to hmrs.

Railmaster is driving me nuts at the moment. I have 2 laptops both with railmaster Pro. One laptop has windows 8.1 and the other windows 10. Windows 10 is fine locating and initialising the elink interfaces, but has suddenly started acting up and I am having problems editing the layout. It basically just hangs and I can't to anything. The windows 8.1 was working fine until today, just when I wanted it to work as the grandson is coming round. It cannot see either of the e-links and despite having been thought the config and ini file and made sure all the changes suggested are in place, it just flat refuses to see them despite both being in device manager. I have tried uninstalling the device and allowing it to be rediscovered with no affect. Neither are used on the internet, other than railmaster looking for updates when it starts, but I have put antivirus software on, ran scans many times and it finds nothing, so I am at a loss as to what is going on. So if anyone has any suggestions, they would be appreciated. The other problem I am having is with train-tech semaphore signals. All but 2 signals are lights using either Hornby or Train-Tech. The semaphore signals use a train-tech controller and for some reason railmaster seems to think one of the signals is the opposite to what it is actually showing. I've tried reversing the polarity, not affect. The startup position is clear, and it never sets it, its as if railmaster has lost the plot and you cannot convince it that the signal is at danger. The signalling configuration is quite complex as there are quite a few 3 aspect signals, but I have been through the whole thing visually and thought the configuration and I cannot seem to convince it that it has got it wrong. Even manually changing this one signal, railmaster always says it is the opposite to what it is showing. Any offers again would be appreciated, its really beginning to annoy me as I have spent a long time getting this all working and now it just seems to have a mind of it's own.

Thanks for the replies. I will put it down to one of those things, Although I use the engine number as the address, I now have the pro add on and use voice control, the address now is less important. But it was really odd that both a Hornby and Bachmann decoder appeared to do the same, but never rule operator error out. I had spent a lot of time building the layout learning about DCC and setting up points and signals, then not touched it for several months, needed a bit of a refresher.

It's been a long while because I got fed up with getting nowhere. So I finally went back to it because I already had a Hornby Thomas which I had had problems with. So DCC ready motor and a new 4 pin decoder. Same story, can read and write to the decoder but still the loco would not budge. So I phoned Hornby Customer service. The suggestion was to do a factory reset of the decoder and then program the address. Did that, the same. Back to a reset and see if it works with the default address. Bingo. My address assignment is basically the number on the side of the engine, so Thomas is 0001. I've not read anywhere that says you can't use 0001 and Railmaster offers it as an option. So I tried 0100, perfect. So I went back to the Bachmann Thomas and reset the decoder and set it to address 0101, bingo! This may be me being plain stupid but although Railmaster will allow you to set 0001, either it or the decoder doesn't like or accept it and from what I can see, somewhere along the way of adding a new loco and addressing it, it doesn't work if I use 0001. At least my grandson will be happy with Thomas running around the layout next time he is over.

Thanks Chris, That makes more sense. With 40 years in IT support I took the reply for what it said and was looking for a decoder database to add it to. It might have been more help if rather than ask me for loads of CV values and documentation for the Next 18 decoder, followed by months of radio silence. They gave me an answer something like yours might have been more helpful.

Some months back I bought a Bachmann Thomas the tank engine with a Next 18 decoder. When I try to do anything with it Railmaster says "decoder not recognised" so I did as it says and logged a problem with railmaster support. I had loads of questions about CV values and they wanted a PDF document for the decoder and then nothing for months. I pinged them last week and enquired what was happening. I got reply saying it wasn't a problem all I had to do was add it to the decoder database. I didn't find anything in the railmaster documentation about how to do that and I have looked through all the files on my laptop. Unless I am being dim, there are a number of files which begin decoder or are named decoders.xx. If I can read the contents, I have no idea what the numbers mean. Am I missing something, I have no idea where to add the decoder and I have no idea what to add even if I knew where to. Any ideas, other than reply to railmaster support and ask them how to do it. I've been away so I had to wait until I got home to have a poke around on my laptop. Thanks

Deleting and re-adding seemed to do the trick. Maybe having done that a few times before is the reason it worked this time. The comm port stuff I remembered doing some of that, but not moving the 2 items to the bottom, so that is done. It seems to recognise the elink controller most of the time, but on occasions the laptop will throw a fit and say it doesn't recognise it and there doesn't seem much you can do other than shut it all down and leave it. Thanks for the info, I'll bookmark that