Having deleted RailMaster, put my Hornby Elite in the electronics recycling bin and swapped in a Roco Z21 controller with iTrain I wanted to see how they worked with my layout before getting into the detection side of things. 

Here's my layout in Hornby RailMaster Pro:

I have enabled displaying the point's ID numbers as I want to refer to them when setting up the same points in iTrain. The old Railmaster  diagram does resemble my layout in SCARM

It's roughly the same but RailMaster is confusing for me - Even at 50% there aren't really enough squares to make it look like it is and you have to fudge 3 way points and double slips by using two points for each of these.

To be fair my first go at iTrains was daunting. Some things are familiar but there lots of detailed settings and of course the jargon used is different. I started by slowly by just creating the switchboard to reflect my layout:

To my eye this looks neater and more like the actual layout:

• There are specific symbols for 3 way points and double slips rather than the Railmaster bodge of using two points to represent them.
• I can see my station and the turntable is resizable although I have yet to try and see how to get an ADM turntable to work with it
• The size of the grid doesn't matter so much and the curved corners are more elegant

Another key feature for me is that iTrain supports modern operating systems from Windows 10/11 (I am running it on windows 11 myself)  to Apple (OSX and IOS) and linux distros

The obvious downside of iTrain Plus edition is at least double the price the price of Railmaster Pro. However unlike RailMaster which is strictly per device, iTrain can be installed on many devices so I can design layouts in my office, use my all in one Touchscreen PC as my main layout controller, and have it on a laptop right next to where I am working if I am troubleshooting or configuring new stuff.  I can use any of these to drive my layout. Moreover iTrain is designed around detection and automation and because I’ll be using those features, it is better value for money for me. 

I also think some railway modellers can  be put off by the complexity and richness of iTrain.  That's partly why I am writing this.  I could have spent hours getting confused on YouTube watching others try to explain how to use it and use it and all the theory, but I chose a different path. Start simple, learn the basics and apply the principle of RTFM  (Read the ... Manual) :

• Get the switchboard looking like the layout you have
• Configure every point so that they throw correctly to match what you can see on the switchboard
• Add a test loco and run it!

All the advanced stuff for routes, detection and  speeds can wait until you are ready to explore more.  It's like learning to play guitar , learn three chords (may be enough if you are a Quo fan) , learn strumming, learn timing and rock 'n roll you are making music.  Sure there are more chords, licks and playing with your teeth, but that's for later.

That's what I have now done and a couple of days I feel at home and I really like using it - For example the fact that all of the settings for every accessory, loco and can be seen in a list that can be sorted and there is a diagnosis screen to show you what needs fixing later -For example I have not done any measuring yet (more on that later)

It's also really really stable.

So now I have found my way around iTrain my next task is to fix the wiring  - Both to move to a track/accessory bus setup and to wire in the Digikeijs DR5088RC detectors.

Finally a polite request  - if there is anything wrong in here please let me know, as  I do see a lot of conflicting advice out there, and my mission is to keep things simple but accurate.