My only experience so far has been my 2037 based set from 1957.
Man this Williams is nice. I was surprised at the weight of both the powered and dummy units. When running, iIt is so smooth and quiet by comparison. With the 2037 pulling the tender and 6 cars, it would start budging at 10v and moving slowly at 12v. By comparison, the Williams starts moving at 8v and is steady at 10v. I don’t know if it’s the second motor or just newer technology but I like it.
It even navigates my trouble switches with ease. I have an 1122 switch that gives the 2037 fits when coming in from the corner (blame the 2 wheel front vice 4 wheel if you must ) but the F3 is rock solid.
My only con so far is that it is a little larger in scale than the post war 2037 and the freight cars are obviously smaller. It looks little odd with the F3 pulling the freight cars. Looks like I need to pick up some passenger cars for these diesels…
Daniel you have a winner in your purchase. IMO, Williams manufactures the best modern conventional locomotives available. Their performance and variety is second to none.
The first Williams products I bought were in the late seventies. I have a FM Trainmaster from 1979. Jerry Williams improved his products very much since then. I have sevral of his latter day products and like them all. My thing has been GP-9’s
The Williams stuff is tops. The only drawback is, their trains are like potato chips,…You can’t have just one.
I’ve been guilty with putting a real hurt on their catalog over the years, I’ve bought a several F3’s and matching passenger consists, frieght cars, steam engines, E7’s, Alco PA’s. Golden Memories, Traditional Line…ITS ALL GOOD!
I dare to say that they are more “rugged” and forgiving than MTH, which I also own and enjoy.
Be prepared…your new Santa Fe F3 will not be your last Williams piece you buy.
I agree with theother posters out there. Williams/Williams By Bachmann are the best conventional locos out there! My wife bought me the Santa Fe F3 ABAs a few years ago and I bought a set of 7 MTH Railking streamliners to go with them. Looks great together.
One thing to watch for Is some of the older engines do not have flywheels. Once Jerry hit on the 2 horizontal motors with flywheels design, they had a winner. The engine I have with out a flywheels still preforms better than my engines with vertical mounted motors in the trucks.
I too Love my Williams Locomotives and one was not enough!! Wish I had discovered them before I bought some of my Lionel engines. They are smooth and quiet! Plus who can beat the price. If bells and whistles are not your thing go with Williams!!
I have done two kinds of modifications to 60-foot cars to get them through Lionel O27 turnouts:
Cut off the skirts, so that the floor of the car can ride over the switch machine. I have done this with a Lionel 19100 Amtrak baggage car, which now looks more like a prototype heritage car.
If you can’t or don’t want to cut the skirts, move the truck center bearings toward the middle of the car. This involves a bit of work to create a cantilever on the truck for the bearing, so that the truck can stay where it belongs. I have done this with all my Rail King Superliners.
I think that I have seen you mention the modifications to allow use on O27. I’m just not willing to alter the cars for use. I’ll go ahead and buy those designed for 027.
I have the older F-7 ABA set of Santa Fe diesels with the El Capitan passenger cars by Williams. So far I have no complaints with my Williams trains, other than having to add power to one of my F-7 engines, so now I have two powered F-7’s with an unpowered B unit.
On another forum some of the guys talk about putting the motors in series, electrically. I can do that, but why would I want to have an engine that is slower than a turtle[sn] is a mystery to me[*-)]. My other Williams engines(SD-45’s, and GP-9) run slow enough for me and have good speed performance, so I am leaving the motors alone!!
Does this mean you are running two powered units on the same train? Does this mean their pulling power is additive even though one would be in reverse?
My MTH Railking Santa Fe streamliners look great with my Williams Santa Fe F3s and also operate flawlessly on my Lionel FasTrack layout. You can see them in the above pictures. My track consists of 036, 048 and 060 curve tracks and I have never had any problem with my Williams locomotives either.
) but the F3 is rock solid.
