Tag: Model Railway

Add keep Alive to Hornby Jinty

I bought the Hornby Freight set. It came with a class 8 shunt diesel and a Jinty steam loco. At the time of the purchase I added a keep alive capacitor to the diesel shutter and housed it in the radiator. The Jinty had an open cab. There was no room for the capacitor any where so I couldn’t install one. While browsing the internet sight of YouChoos an option presented itself. It was a 6800uf super capacitor. My reasoning suggest that it might be able to be installed in the bunker. One was bought on spec. It turned out to be just the right size to fit the bunker of the Jinty.

Note the position of the capacitor in the bunker. Look closely. The capacitor is clear of the mounting hole.

To start the body of the loco was removed. The DCC chip does not have the usual heat shrink plastic cover on it. It was removed from the clip in preparation for soldering. A very small hair sized insulated blue copper wire was soldered to the + of the capacitor. A similar piece of white wire was soldered to the – of the capacitor. These wires were about 4 inches long. The capacitor was fastened into the bunker via double sided tape. Be careful to not cover up the little cutout in the body for, if it is covered you won’t be able to get the body back on the chassis.

Next task is to run the wires to the DCC chip. I fastened the wires to the body via the use of a little Loctite 401. Super glue will also suffice. In either case don’t glue yourself to the model. In the photo you can see how I routed the wires in the tanks on either side of the loco. It went under the footplate on either side too. The visible part of the wires were painted black. The glue was applied using a small Jules’s screw driver. This helps. A small pair of tweezers will be of assistance as well.

You can see the capacitor in the bunker and where to solder the wires on the chip.

A third hand is recommended. Something to hold the DCC chip steady. The photo shows how the two wires were soldered to the points on the board. Remember that blue is + and white is –. Care should be taken when soldering. You don’t want to bridge any connections. Use a visual aid and a small soldering iron. This stuff is so tinny that it is like grains of sand. Loose one on the floor and you will never find it. What I am saying is this. If you are not familiar with such fine soldering work, you might want to get someone to do it for you. Or alternatively go on line and learn about how to successfully do this kind of work. Once this is done the DCC chip can be put back in its clip and the body can be fitted back on the loco. Now comes the time to test. If all went well, the loco should have a functioning keep alive feature.

A close up of the jinty’s DCC chip so you can better see where the wires go.

My loco used to stop on points from time to time. Having keep alive functionality helps the loco get over these spots without faltering. How it works. The super capacitor is like a small battery. It supplies power to the chip for a few seconds. This allows the loco to still operate for a short time while it passes the dead section. Enjoy your modeling.

More on DCC Model Railways

Elesewhere on this site I talked about the Hornby decoder that keepped being reset to use address (0). Following are more thoughts on the subject.

To start let me show you a couple of rules that have been valid from the beginning of electric powered model railways. Firstly is is a dusty, dirty environment. So regular maintance is needed. Keep the track clean. Keep the wheels clean. Keep the pickups clean. In the 60s the locos came with their own electrical filters. Now we still need filters. They can be purchased from various places or make your own. DCC works better with filtering. Sparks or arcing can generate interference which plays havoc with the chips. Both loco decoders and accessory decoders.

In an earlier post I spoke of trouble I have had with an accessory decoder. Well this is being revisited. The trouble was found to be a programming one that was caused by either programming a loco on the main line or electrical interference. The Hornby forum has some entries about this very subject.

How to fix this. First you must reset the chip. It doesn’t mater if it is a loco or an accessory decoder the reset is the same. What is needed is to return the chip to its original factory setting because it has been corrupted. Set the Elite to “Clasic” mode. Write to VC 8 using data value of 8. We are talking Hornby here. All Hornby chips will reset using this process. Some manufactures use a different process for resetting their chips. Check the information on how to reset your chip with the chip manufacturer.

Once the chip is reset you need to reprogram it. You can use the Elite or RailMaster to reprogram the chip. This must be done on the programming track with no other chip present. Set a loco to its previous value in your fleet or set the accessory decoder to the desired group. That is:- if is the third accessories decoder then that would be set to (9).

With the accessory decoder still connected to the programming track read VC 513. It should have a value of 3 in it because this is the third group. If this location remains at 000 then the decoder is not properly programmed. Try to program it again and check the results. Once this is done the decoder will work properly. With out the correct number at VC 513 you will have a recurring problem of the decoder being reprogrammed to a negative value.

It is hoped that this shed some light on an otherwise dark subject. Understanding digital communication is difficult for most people especially if all they want to do is run trains. Programs like RailMaster make live much easier. It is worth spending time to read the instructions that come with RailMaster. This will save you a lot of headaches.

Rail Master Update and Antivirus Software

Recently version 1.63 of RailMaster became publicly available. My copy of RailMaster was duly updated automatically. From that moment RailMaster stopped working correctly. It would start-up ok and set all points to normal but then it kept complaining about loosing communication with the Elite. Nothing I could do would convince it otherwise. It was definitely RailMaster that was at fault. The railway worked fine with JMRI and the Elite.

Two days ago I bit the bullet and decided to fix it. Well I started reading all the PDF files on it that rm_setup.exe puts on the desktop. Systematically each remedy was tried but to no avail. Next thing was to try to install RailMaster on another computer. The first attempt failed. Here is where I twigged that BullGuard might be the cause. This is where rm_setup.exe was prevented from completing the install by BullGuard.

Next step was to make sure I had the latest rm_setup.exe downloaded to a temporary directory. Then go to settings in BullGuard and make sure that both anti virus and firewall will not continue to work once the program was shut down. Switch off the Internet.  BullGuard was then closed. I have Windows 10, so I went to security and settings from control panel to check that Windows firewall and Windows defender were both turned off.

After using programs and features from control panel to uninstall RailMaster, RailMaster installed correctly on my 64 bit computer. A test was done on a short straight piece of track and a single loco. Every thing ran as it should. Before the next step restart your anti virus and firewall software on all the computers that had it turned off and restart the Internet connection.

Now back to the train set computer. It is a 32 bit clam. In the instructions supplied as desktop PDF files some where it says “Make sure you de-register your programme keys before uninstalling and reinstalling RailMaster otherwise you will loose your keys.” To de-register your programme you need to run RailMaster with an internet connection first. Once the programme comes up a nuisance window will come up saying that the programme has lost communication with the Elite.

Pay no heed to the contents of this pop up. You need to press the green tick to get to the "?" icon.
Pay no heed to the contents of this pop up. You need to press the green tick to get to the “?” icon.

Press the green tick every time this happens. Take no notice of what it says. While it is occupied trying to connect with the Elite, click on the “?” icon. The window that comes up will have your keys displayed. At the right is a box to select the key you want to de-register. If you have remote devices de-register them also. Once you have ticks all down the right of the keys click on de-register. A pop-up will show asking if you really want to do this. Answer yes. After a time the RailMaster main screen will show “EVALUATION” at the bottom right and a window will pop up saying you have successfully de-registered your programme. Gee! I hope you remembered to write down all the keys and what they were for.

Remember to de register your keys.
Remember to de register your keys.

Do not proceed any further if you did not receive a successful de-registered message. At this point I went to programs and functions to uninstall RailMaster. What I noticed was that there were two instances in the list of RailMaster. I un-installed both. A copy of the latest rm_setup.exe needs to be available for installation. The internet was once again turned off. I could have done the key de-registration while it was on the first time but I didn’t. The anti virus and firewall software was once again disabled. On the 32 bit clam the rm_setup.exe programme was right clicked on and it was run with administrator privileges. This time the set-up programme completed successfully.

Testing was done on this computer as it was with the 64 bit one. The tests were successful. What happened next? The anti virus and firewall software were turned back on. The internet connection was also turned on and once the internet became available RailMaster and the hand held devices were once again registered using my keys. Each hand held device becomes available for registration once you use it to connect to RailMaster.

BullGuard complained about rm_setup.exe being a virus. It complained twice and twice I pressed “Register a False Positive”. I don’t know weather this information gets back to BullGuard or not but my copy of the programme didn’t prevent RailMaster from running. I still don’t know what will happen when the next update comes around. Happy Railway sessions.

One thing must be mentioned before the end. What was said earlier about the pop up above where it says lost communication with the Elite only applys to this problem. You should explore its solutions first. Some anti virus programmes like McAfees and Nortons may need un installing first. Install Rail Master then install your anti virus programme again. This is one of the reasons I like BullGuard. You can turn it off, but be careful. Never go on the internet without protection.