I purchased what the seller said were “early Williams F7 AA’s”. I am using a CW80 transformer and the engine does not reverse just go forward. He had said that the early Williams were reversed at the transformer and not in the engine. Is this correct? The power unit has 2 can motors and what appears to be a Rectifier. No sound either. He said I would need an E unit if I wanted it to reverse.
John
Try pushing the direction button on the CW-80 and see if that works.
No it doesn’t work. It powers off but when I release the button it continues forward.
No clue. But if you’re running passenger cars, who needs reverse? [;)]
Seriously, just call Williams, explain what you have, and ask them what needs to be done to make your trains reverse.
Jim
Try using a post-war ZW to power your Williams engine, also never heard of a Williams not having a reverse. I have six powered units by Williams and all have a reverse, whether it is automatic squencing to switched lockout reverse ALL my Williams have a reverse. If you have a Williams with NO reverse you have a real problem or somebody sold you a copy-cat of a Williams. Write or email Williams with the roadname and number of the locomotive and see if Williams will repair it for you.
Look underneath the chassis for the reverse switch, might be really small but should be there.
Lee F.
I once purchased a Lionel RS-3 with no reversing. I wired a DPDT switch on to manually toggle it. What a pain!
I don’t know anything about Williams’s history. But what the seller may have left out is that the locomotive was originally a DC locomotive, which would have been reversed by swapping the polarity of the DC track voltage, that had been converted to AC simply by adding the rectifier to the locomotive. This would leave you with what you seem to have, a locomotive that will run on AC or DC but not reverse.
Putting an e-unit into it is not hard. Connect the output of the rectifier, which now goes to the motors, instead, one wire to the e-unit’s frame and the other to its coil terminal that also has a short wire going to the fingers. Connect the green wire to the e-unit frame and the blue and yellow wires to the motors. In summary,
rectifier + output—e-unit coil and finger
rectifier - output—e-unit frame—green wire
blue wire—motor A terminal 1—motor B terminal 1
yellow wire—motor A terminal 2—motor B terminal 2
Do not allow the e-unit frame to be connected to anything else, particularly to the outside rails through the locomotive wheels and frame.
I don’t have much in the way of details, but early Williams engines were definitely manufactured without reversing units of any kind. We’re probably talking late '70s, maybe early '80s. The ones I’m aware of (sorta – seen years later at train shows, or on dealer shelves) are FM Trainmasters, but apparently early F-7s, also. Anyway, the early ones came with a rectifier to allow AC operation, but you had to install a regular e-unit to make them reverse (or something else, like a manual DPDT switch). This used to be common knowledge, say, fifteen years ago.
Thank you all for the info. I could not find any numbers on the engine. The only thing I see is W.R.L. on the bottom. I do not know if it is someones initals or if it could stand for Williams Rail Lines. As I am new to the hobby I have found this forum to be a great plus. I would probably be best off buying a ‘e’ unit from Williams rather than E-bay.
joncoy,
What road name is your F7?
Jim
PRR
I have 2 F-7 sets, 3 SD-45’s, & 3 GG-1’s from Williams that came without any reverse units. They were hard-wired for one direction with diodes. I put E-units in all, w/ full wave rectifiers, a couple even with filter caps(big ones). A “later” Williams FP-45 has a basic electronic reverse board. I wonder how many of these Mike Wolf handled/assembled!?
The E-unit method, one above, or mine - (AC to the E-unit) is fine, or the basic board from Lionel or others too.
“W.R.L.” is “Williams Reproductions Limited”.
Rob