In order to run RailMaster on a PC and laptop for example you will require two licenses. As the eLink unit comes with an installable version of RailMaster on disk a single license is present in the box but you will need to purchase a second license from Hornby to use alongside it. Therefore one license for the Master PC and the second for the laptop. If you are using a HandHeld mobile or similar in order to run RailMaster then you will require a license which is different to that used in this scenario. Please check the Hornby site or forum for further information on those.
Obviously the first objective is to install RailMaster on the PC which, for this purpose, will act as your MASTER computer for the network. Then register the software with Hornby. Instructions on how to do all this can be found here... Installation
Installing RailMaster on the laptop is exactly the same as it is for the PC except that a disk cannot always be used as there may be no DVD drives attached. The software can be installed, however, from a single USB stick if required. Simply download the software from the Hornby Forum RailMaster page or download from this site from within the Installation pages.
Once all the installation procedures are complete and the registration of both copies are finalised the next thing to do is TEST the master copy on the PC. Given that you have followed all the instructions and correctly set up the software and its settings you may then begin testing. This is a good point to find out if any errors occur and you must correct these before going further.
Simply make sure you are getting instructions to the loco’s and they are running smoothly. A quick test of any programming, on the master unit only as you cannot run or create programs on a slave unit, may also benefit as you will certainly be using these in future, so you may as well test those now. Most of this may be obvious but just bear with me if there are any newbies looking in.
Make sure the fixed IP’s are set up within Network Settings on the computer (see "Fixed IP Addresses" on the Home Page), the software is correctly registered and ensure the settings are as they are in the screen capture on the right of the screen taken from within RailMaster’s own settings. The COM1 port may be different to your setup and can be any COM port from 1 to 4. Just make sure it matches that in Newtork Settings. For additional settings information see the Installation pages.
Open the Settings tab within RailMaster on the MASTER PC.
The setting for Controller A must be set to Hornby eLink as per the Screen Capture. There are no other settings to be set here if you correctly setup your ports earlier apart from the COM port as stated previously.
Open the Settings tab within RailMaster on the SLAVE laptop.
The setting for Controller A and Controller B must be set to None. Now click the Loco Detection tab and type the IP address of the MASTER PC into the area at the foot of the dialogue window where it asks for the Master Terminal IP address. Type the IP address of the MASTER PC in these boxes, i.e. 192.168.1.2, or your own IP you have set yourself when binding the Master PC to its MAC address via the router. Click the tick to close the window. There are no other settings to be set here. You should now be done and can run loco’s from the slave terminal (your laptop) as well as the MASTER PC. The green icon on the laptop normally telling you that the eLink is now talking to RailMaster is replaced with a networking icon (two green monitors) and that both machines are now talking to each other. Congratulations.
Hornby Forum Community Moderator, RDS
Copy plan, program and database files from master to slave when networking RailMaster. If once you have installed RailMaster onto a slave unit, whether another PC, laptop or tablet, and the necessary files which load your plans, programs or database are not automatically copied over from RailMaster on the master PC, laptop or tablet then you should MANUALLY copy the following files and note EXACTLY where you copy them from and place them in the same folder/s on the slave: Resource.mdb (database file from the root directory), *.pln and *.prg. Now these two latter file types are plans and programs you will have saved. So you really need to know what filenames you have given them (hence the ’*’ for the filename) and to be safe just copy all of them over. That way you will have the same working plans and programs as on the master.
