Hornby turntable foibles

[loftpidgeon]

hi

having picked the wrong section once ,I hope I have hit the right one this time

For years I have had the problem of my Hornby turntable getting out of synch because of differences in the number of physical tracks to the graphic tracks on the Railmaster screen icon

Is there any way to fix this or do i just chuck it in that bin and go somewhere else ?

I have been using RM for years now and although it checks for updates every time I flash it up , their never seems to be any , yet when I reloaded it due to computer failure , it was a newer version

[P-Henny]

Given the nature of the clunky graphics used on the Railmaster track plan screen I doubt it is graphically possible to increase the number of tracks shown on the TT icon, unless the size of the icon was significantly increased in matrix size to encompass a higher number of on screen drawing squares. This would make the TT on the track plan look disproportionately out of scale to the rest of the plan.

[loftpidgeon]

Hi

your right the graphics are a bit “ clunky “ and could be improved

There are 12 tracks on the icon , 3 in each corner , whereas the turntable has 14 , which is where the problem lies .

If your just going 1 or 2 tracks it’s workable . But when your using it for 180 turn rounds 6 clicks will take it half way round on the screen but not physically , because half way round is 7 on the actual turntable

I have never really done anything about it , just fiddling till it’s back in sync again

I was hoping by now ( I had it over 2 years ) someone would have solved the problem

[P-Henny]

Have you tried editing the TT Timer in the .ini file as described on page 93 of the RM manual? So that selecting the 6th (180 degree) TT outlet actually moves the TT seven positions.

Also, 12 is a very convenient mathmatical number when the icon has four sides. Whereas, 14 is not very convenient mathmatically as the only realistic mathmatical distribution is two sides with 7 on each. The only other potential mathmatical solution using four sides from a graphical perspective would be 4 outlets per side or corner (total 16) with two of the 16 being unused in the RM software.

The problem being that any change to the TT icon away from 12 outlets might also need additional new track icons to provide alignment with the revised outlet positions.

[96RAF]

I am sure there is an outstanding query with HRMS about this graphic as a result of previous forum discussion long time ago. Their answer was from memory- too difficult due to the limitations of the graphic but it is ongoing.

[loftpidgeon]

Hi

just read your replies and thanks for replying ,

Your mention of the time in the .init file has given me an idea

I did alter the time originally when I first set it up cos it was stopping in between tracks

I had slowed the motor down which I’d driven via a loco decoder cos it was noisy plastic gears , pretty tacky for the price

since I only use it to turn locos round 180 degrees , i will find out how long it takes to go halfway round and set the time to that so that 1 click will do what I want

my original post was to see if there had been any improvements , obviously not , and I’m not buying another to see if they’ve changed the design ,they are almost 100 pounds

alternatively I might try and make one

thanks

[96RAF]

I have one that is a year old and it is no improvement over the older versions. Noisy, clunky and sounds as if it is trying to self destruct but it does the job so it stays in work.

The RM manual does say it can get out of synch and will have to be reset by running it manually on the decoder address.

Of note the TT icon only has 12 possible roads whereas the actual TT (latest versions) have 14 roads, so RM cannot possibly work correctly with all roads from the screen.

[St1ngr4y]

There is a fault in the way RM handles a TT when the icon is clicked on the screen. When you click on the icon, it starts the TT motor and it displays on the screen the number of roads to move. The more times you click, the more roads are traversed using the information for the TT in the INI file. However, each time you click the icon, RM resets its TT clock back to zero I.e. the time the motor is running for the first road is increased by the time it takes to click the icon n times. So the quicker you click the less effect it has. But try this…

If the TT timer value in your INI file is, say, 23, click the TT icon to start it off. Count to, say, 10 seconds then click the icon again to increase the road count to 2. Then wait another 10 seconds and click it again. Sit back and watch where the TT ends up 😆

Ray

[St1ngr4y]

@P-Henny

Actually, the turntable has (mathematically) 16 track positions but two of them can’t be used because of the location of the operator’s cabin.

[P-Henny]

Therefore, it would be artistically feasible to create a new larger icon with 16 mathmatical track spaces but only 14 used for actual track.

Congratulations for being the first respondee to my posts to correctly refer to me as Henny, everyone else seems to think I am a Henry. yum

Regards, Paul Henny

[St1ngr4y]

@P-Henny

"Therefore, it would be artistically feasible to create a new larger icon with 16 mathmatical track spaces but only 14 used for actual track."

Never having been one to turn down a challenge, how about this ....

The number of track outlets which can be catered for with a layout designer environment such as Railmaster's, depends on the number of "ordinary" track pieces which can be placed around the TT icon. This, in turn, depends on the number of grid cells are used for each side of the TT icon. The designers of RM chose 2 for this figure i.e. a block of 2x2=4 grid cells for the TT icon. But the mathematics behind the sizes works for smaller and larger icon sizes than 2x2. If they had decided that they would simply use on grid cell for a TT icon, it might look like this ...

I've used the circle with the red line through it, since it already exists as an icon within RM. The grid cells marked with a x are those adjacent cells which can be used for the outlet tracks, and there are 8 of them, not enough for a Hornby TT. When ordinary track pieces are placed where the x's are, it might look something like this ...

So they decided on using a 2x2 sized TT icon ....

Again the x's show the adjoining grid cells capable of being used for outlet tracks, in this case we now have 12. Still not enough to cater for all the roads on a Hornby TT. Now with all track pieces available, these can only join to each other either at the corners, or at the centre of the side of a grid cell. So in all of these examples, I have used the diagonal track pieces at the four corner adjoining track pieces, and horizontal and vertical pieces for the others ....

Ok, I know you can use adjoining pieces which have kinks in them to make it look more like it does on your actual layout, but this post is trying to show how it would be mathematically possible to construct a TT icon which could cater for 16 outlets....

... and so we come to a 3x3 TT icon, which could look something like this ...

16 is a very nice number when discussing this sort of thing. When a circle is divided into 16 slices, the angle is 22.5 degrees, the same angle seen on a compass. Unfortunately, in the mathematics of the RM layout, there angles are multiples of 45 degrees from the horizontal or vertical. So in the suggested icon above, the new outlets which are at positions NNE, ENE, ESE, SSE, SSW, WSW, WNW, and NNW i.e. the 22.5 degree ones, are converted to fit the RM geometry by connecting to the centre of an adjoining grid cell, making a slight kink as it does so ....

Pretty, isn't it ? But quite impractical simply because of the size it would occupy on a layout diagram, which is probably the reason that the designers of RM decided on a 2x2 icon, catering for 12 outlet tracks. They probably reasoned, and I agree with them, that any layout which used all 14 available outlets on the turntable (16 - the 2 unusable because of the cabin hiding the motor) would be the size of a club exhibition layout.

However, this 16 outlet version would be capable of having RM rotate the icon bridge in sync with the real thing, but it would have to "remember" the bridge position between RM sessions.

By the way, the mathematical formula for the number of tracks catered for by each TT icon size is ...

Number of tracks = 4(n+1) where n is the number of grid cells used for the side of the TT icon.

Ray

[P-Henny]

............unless the size of the icon was significantly increased in matrix size to encompass a higher number of on screen drawing squares. This would make the TT on the track plan look disproportionately out of scale to the rest of the plan.

 

 

Ray, your graphical exercise demonstrates exactly what I surmised in my earlier reply quoted above. Your supporting text appears to concur with that statement.