I know that I’m years late on this one, but I thought I’d pass along my experience with this unit as there are several still out there to be had NIB. I initially was looking for a MTH premier unit and had several slip thru my fingers on “the bay” as I had a bid ceiling set for myself. While searching I stumbled upon several NIB (new in box) K-line units that were priced very affordably. After doing some research here and elsewhere, I decided for the price I’d give it a try. My unit arrived yesterday and my initial reaction when opening the box was shock! I was shocked how well detailed it was, with the see-thru grills with the spinning fans beneath them, directional lighting, engineer figures, tubular railing, it is very slick looking. Mine is a “Virginian” scheme, and the finish is flawless.
After greasing the gears, oiling the pickup rollers and priming the smoke unit, I decided to turn her loose. She traversed my small 7x8 layout very smoothly, having no overhang issues or problems negotiating my 031 tubular layout. What I did notice, as is typical with a lot of new units such as Williams, is the unreal amount of acceleration it had, as well as the low voltage level to keep it moving briskly. It had so much power in-fact, that it would open its coupler and separate from its 9 car consist when opening the voltage too sharply. In addition, the lights were very dim and the smoke unit barely received enough voltage to wisp out smoke, even at a pretty fair clip. When sitting in neutral on higher voltage settings, the fan driven smoke unit will fog the room in a heartbeat, so I knew what had to be done.
I removed the shell and went about wiring the motors in series instead of the factory parallel wiring configuration. This should effectively double the voltage to the lights and smoke unit and half the voltage to the motors for a given “throttle”
