4 of the 8 reindeer passenger cars of the North Pole Central, and an early Williams NYC FM Trainmaster and 4 heavyweight cars.
As always, I do have a few questions.
Comparing my NIB NYC Trainmaster (with the chromed metal handrails) and my new (to me) “early” Trainmaster, it has plastic handrail stanchions and formed wire hand rail.
I’ve been looking at pictures, and does this make it a “Crown Edition”?
Does it have the same “6 amp” reverse board as the new one?
Does it have a horn / bell?
I have not run it extensively yet, as its really dry, and needs a good lube. How do i tell if it has any of these when I open her up?
If I do decide to add more sound (Like the MRC AC sound board), is it easy?
If it is a new Williams by Bachmann, it has the True Blast 2 sound unit installed in it, the sound is either a diesel horn or steam whistle that plays a grade crossing sequence of; two long, one short, one long. Unfortunately some of the electric engines, GG-1’s and EP-5’s have the diesel horn sound unit. Also the new Williams will have a 6 amp circuit board for the motors, starting in forward, then nuetral, reverse, nuetral, forward. Another thing about most electronic circuit boards that I have fopund to be true, if the unit sits more than 5 to 10 minuters it automatically recycles to forward, even if locked into nuetral!!
As far as the Crown Edition by Williams; it is discontiued!! The Crown Edition was a special or top of the line run by Williams in the mid 1980’s. Also the Crown Edition came with a ‘QSI industies’ circuit board installed. The QSI sound unit has horn and bell features that can be accessed one at a time, some QSI diesels may have the diesel revving sounds or the sound of a diesel engine going faster or slowing down. I have a set of Santa Fe F-7’s that are Crown Edition models.
If you want to find out more about Williams products go to www.bachmanntrains.com and go to ask the Bachmann topic and click on Williams trains.
At first Williams did plastic hand rails then they up graded to metal ones I have an engine which had the plastic but got broken PRR FM Trainmaster which I got metal replacement ones for it. If you look on Bachmann Website you will see that the newer ones have metal handrails. Also if you hit the horn and it does a set pattern I may have this wrong but its like 3 long 3 short then 3 long again ( might be the other way around short long short) thats the true blast 2 and you probably have a 6 amp reverse board. ) now if you can control the blows its an older engine with the other board and all in it.
Crown edition also had where you first took off it would say engine number what XXXX departing and it didn’t match the engine number of most the engines they had one set number in the chip and all engines got that number I had this in my Shark set B&O ( I had A-B-B-A ) if i remember right it was in the B unit that had the sound chips.
I put tmcc in my PRR trainmaster so I can’t look at the reverse unit in it and can’t get to my Virginian to take a pic for you at the moment as its packed so you can see what the reverse unit looks like or would take a pic for you. maybe someone else has one handy so you can see what it looks like in fact if you goto this heres what a reverse unit looks like this is on bachmann’s site.
The True Blast 2 sound system from Williams is a mid 1990’s item, so it won’t be in any Crown Edition engine from the factory. TB-2 can be installed but then you lose the other sound system(QSI) that came with the C. E. The QSI system has the announcement of train # and leaving on track 10. If any older Williams engine other than C.E., it should have the horn only.
True Blast 2 has the grade crossing sequence of; two long, one short, one long. Also TB-2 has a bell feature, but can not be accessed when the horn is used or the bell when in use won’t let the horn be used.
For a while he made the trains with no sound just a reverse unit. My. PRR trainmaster was that way. I had to make a place for the speaker when I put tmcc in it.
There is the universal motor control board that Bachmann sells for the Williams engines, and you can buy the True Blast 2 horn and install it yourself. Look at the cost of a new engine and compare it to the parts you need to buy for the older engine before just saying that I will buy a new engine. Prices have gone up sharply for new Williams products.
So far with Williams engines that I have bought, all have reverse units, the really older ones don’t have a horn or traction tires. The older SD-45’s have all metal wheels, even the unflanged wheels were metal and would conduct electricity.
A somewhat newer SD-45 had plastic unflanged wheels with traction tires and it stopped on the accessory activation devices. I got some metal wheels from a power upgrade job I did to an F-7 diesel and cut the flange down on a grinding wheel. Since the modification to the wheels I have no problems with running the SD-45’s over accessory devices such as the highway crossing light three wire lock-on.
I just installed regular old-school Lionel e-units in all of them and wired the motors in series. They all run great.
Rob
Rob,
As far I understand things with Williams, they use D.C. motors in their engines and not A.C. motors. So it surprises me that a post war E unit would work with the Williams engine. Did you add a diode or two along with the Lionel E unit?
I have installed a 6amp 50 volt bridge rectifier in two of my Williams engines that I wanted to permantly control the direction of travel.
Most postwar Lionel locomotives have universal motors, which will run on AC or DC. To run permanent-magnet DC motors on AC requires a rectifier, which the Williams locomotive would have to already have if it was to work at all. So a rectifier is needed but does not have to be added to run with a Lionel e-unit.
The Williams motors I have to agree with you about, as I thought they were D.C. can motors, so you need a rectifier. Just hope that Rob don’t burn up a set of motors. Williams power upgrade kits are going for about $165.00 with shipping from Bachmann.
I received an inquiry from Fred on the wiring for the Williams diagram. The scheme is correct, but the rectifier is a different one than is commonly available and has a different pinout for the case style indicated - follow the pinout matching your chosen rectifier for this setup.
