I just got a Williams GG1 engine for my layout which I power from a post war ZW transformer and I am seeing 2 problems:
It is hard to control at low speed…like for slowly approaching other cars for hooking up. I’m thinking this might be an indicator that I need new transfomer rollers or maybe the G1 needs a lower voltage (< the 8V min). Can I control the GG1 at low speed?
It looks like the horn will work with the left whistle control and the bell with the right. Most of the time I can’t get either to work and when i doit is only when the engine is in neutral. Horns/ whistles work on my other (post war) engines. So do I need some sort of add on device that would allow me to operate both.
The speed range of your GG1 is common with Williams. A lot of people re-wire the two DC motors in a series and it works quite well. You just have to make sure you get the polarity right so both motors power the trucks the same direction.
You need a bell button with old Lionel transformers. Lionel makes them and a lot of dealers sell them. I’ve used the Lionel model with Williams and it works fine.
You can do like mentioned above or you can splurge like I did for the cab-1 remote control set up then you won’t have a problem with the bell. You can control the # of steps of current to the track this way so you can start reaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaal slow if you want, I have found that it makes my trains tons more fun to play with. The problem with normally wired Williams and a transformer like yours, I find that the locos just start to fast and can pull cars off the track when starting in a curve.
I have a PW ZW and a Williams GG1 as well. The GG1 is just a real fast loco that takes very little voltage to get moving…and I mean moving. 8-10 volts will get this baby flying around the layout. Seems to be a common trait with Williams engines. Just hook A LOT of cars up to it (it can pull a ton), and that will slow it down.
As for the horn/bell, you do need a seperate bell button to ring the bell. The horn should work with your ZW’s whistle controller. If yours is like mine, you have to find just the right spot on the controller to sound the horn. Sometimes mine works well if I activate the whistle controller real fast, in one quick motion, rather than a gradual and slow motion. Or you could just reverse your track wires and access the bell. (but than you would not get the horn sound). Your other throttle might be wired in reverse if you are getting the bell from it.
With the Williams engines something that I have noticed is that you need to hold down the whistle button for three seconds for the bell feature to work with Williams when using the separate Lionel whistle/horn button.
You might want to get a new Lionel CW-80 or a new MTH Z-1000, both work well with Williams and have the slow start needed for Williams engines. The older post war ZW’s start at too high a voltage to get your GG-1 to work correctly, also you should consider using circuit breakers in addition to the ZW to protect your engine, put the circuit breaker on the wire from the A thru D posts.
I have about eight Williams engines in my fleet and have a complete Williams F-7 ABA passenger train set, have used the CW-80 and the Z-1000 with my Williams engines and both work great. If you get a CW-80 make sure it is a newer one and not one from the first production run.
Connect the + and - terminals of each rectifier to each other. Then wire the other two terminals in series between your transformer and the locomotive. Each rectifier module will drop the voltage about 1 volt. I would use the 6-ampere (or larger) ones between the transformer and the track. But, if you prefer to mount the rectifiers inside the locomotive, the 4-ampere version is just fine there.
If you want finer control over the voltage drop, you can use the soldered-together + and - terminals as an intermediate tap between the other rectifier terminals.
I just got a Williams BL-2. The first thing I noticed is that is was much faster at a lower voltage than my other locomotives. Like others have commented - must be a Williams thing.
I’m using a Legacy and TPC400 to control them. Seems that the BL-2 took off at something like a scale 40 MPH at the threshold voltage that the other locomotives would just start creeping! I think I hit all of the buttons on the CAB-2 before finding the e-stop!
All is fine after resetting the threshold voltage lower.
I have a new Williams F7 A-A pair. I too quickly found they will go like heck with only about 4 volts! I am now using only the MTH Z-1000 with my Williams engine. With the Z-1000 you can start up very smooth and run slow as well. My postwar KW works like your ZW does.
I switched my engine over to the series wiring at first(headlamp will stay very bright this way) and did not like it because to limits your top speed too much unless you have a transformer than can put out an honest 20+ volts at top end. Iended up changing the engine back to original wiring. My vote is the Z-1000 or CW-80.
I have not rewired my Williams engines to series wiring but have installed a bridge rectifier in two of my Williams engines to keep them going forward at all times. Bought the 8 amp 400 volt bridge rectifiers(one in each engine) at Radio Shack and soldered the connections, before soldering make sure what direction your motors are going. One of my F7’s refused to go the right way and I got tired of playing with it so I put the bridge rectifier in instead of the reverse unit and electronic board. Another engine, an SD-45 would cycle through all the positions but had no switch to stop that so I put a bridge rectifier in it to make it go forward all the time as I wanted to double head with another Williams SD-45.
Don’t confuse what Lee did with my suggestion above. He actually used the bridge rectifiers as rectifiers and bypassed the electronic reversing unit, which is why his locomotives travel only in one direction, as he intended. The trick I described just drops the AC voltage a little, whether used inside the locomotive or between the transformer and the track, and preserves the reversing function.
Sorry to be so dense, but I want to make sure I have this right. For each rectifier, connect the “+” side of one to the “-” side of another. Do the ends of the series then go to the transformer, one from a “+” on one side and the other from the “-” at the end of the other?
Further, am I correct that the two remaining terminals on each rectifier should be connected in series as in the #2 to another rectifier’s #2, then on to another and so forth, and the #3 to another #3, etc? Do these terminals simply connect to one another, but not to the transformer?
Let’s call the four terminals of the bridge rectifier +, -, ~, and ~. (The ~ terminals are interchangeable and are where you normally put in the AC. They may not be marked on some rectifiers; but they’re the two that aren’t marked + and -.) Let’s also call the transformer terminal that goes to the outside rails U (which is usual for a multiple-control Lionel) and the terminal that goes to the center rail A (although it could just as well be B or C or D or something else, depending on your transformer).
Normally you would connect U to the outside rails and A to the center rail.
Leave U connected to the outside rails and connect A to one of the ~ terminals of the first rectifier. Connect the + and - terminals of the first rectifier to each other. Connect the other ~ terminal of the first rectifier to one of the ~ terminals of the second rectifier. Connect the + and - terminals of the second rectifier to each other. Connect the other ~ terminal of the second rectifier to the ~ terminal of the third rectifier, and so on. Connect the other ~ terminal of the last rectifier that you want to use to the center rail.
You can use as many rectifiers as you need to get the voltage down to what works for your locomotive. If you discover that n rectifiers are too few and n+1 are too many, you can make the last rectifier a half-step by connecting its + and - terminals to the center rail instead of the ~ terminal that you would otherwise have used.