Can a Williams Scale 44 ton engine be changed over to TMCC or Legacy

The whole purpose of the 44 tonner is switching,,,for which you need operating couplers.

dgauss posted:

The whole purpose of the 44 tonner is switching,,,for which you need operating couplers.

Paul,

You can add TMCC, but what I think dgauss is alluding to is it may not be practical to add TMCC controlled electro-couplers to this very small engine.  John (gunrunnerjohn) successfully added TMCC to his Williams 44 tonner but did not add electro-couplers because of the difficulty of doing it.

The Williams 44 tonner does have manual operating couplers.  After adding TMCC you can operate the couplers the old fashion way using an uncoupling track to operate the couplers.  Or you can open them by hand by pushing down on the coupler pin's tab.

I may be wrong, I have been before, but I thought John was able to use electro couplers but said it was a royal PITA. I have not looked closely at this engine. I know others have installed TMCC and electro couplers inside a K-Line Plymouth which may be even smaller than the 44 tonner so who knows.

Since MTH offers a command 44 tonner and I run both TMCC and DCS I haven't had any motivation to try putting command in the Bachmann engine.

Pete

CAPPilot posted:

dgauss posted:

The whole purpose of the 44 tonner is switching,,,for which you need operating couplers.

Paul,

You can add TMCC, but what I think dgauss is alluding to is it may not be practical to add TMCC controlled electro-couplers to this very small engine.  John (gunrunnerjohn) successfully added TMCC to his Williams 44 tonner but did not add electro-couplers because of the difficulty of doing it.

Au contraire!  I did add electrocouplers to my Williams 44-ton TMCC Upgrade.

Williams 44-Ton Upgrade with ERR CC-Lite, Sound, & Electrocouplers

As far as Legacy, the answer is a big no as Lionel has not licensed those boards to third parties and will not sell them separately. 

Thanks all for the feedback. I was basically looking at the possibility of being able to run it off a hand held. And I can get a scale one for 169.00 dollars and with adding maybe an ERR that would make it a bit cheaper then buying a MTH. With the Williams I can get my Canadian road name. I would not need electro couplers. I would just be using the couplers provided. Thanks Paul 

If you can do the installation, you can have sound and TMCC for around $160 total for the Cruise Commander Lite and the RailSounds Commander.  The electrocouplers on mine were the real time consuming part of the upgrade, the rest went pretty quickly.

gunrunnerjohn posted:

CAPPilot posted:

dgauss posted:

The whole purpose of the 44 tonner is switching,,,for which you need operating couplers.

Paul,

You can add TMCC, but what I think dgauss is alluding to is it may not be practical to add TMCC controlled electro-couplers to this very small engine.  John (gunrunnerjohn) successfully added TMCC to his Williams 44 tonner but did not add electro-couplers because of the difficulty of doing it.

Au contraire!  I did add electrocouplers to my Williams 44-ton TMCC Upgrade.

Williams 44-Ton Upgrade with ERR CC-Lite, Sound, & Electrocouplers

Rats.  I hate getting old.  Memory is the second thing to go.

John, if I remember correctly you said you would not do another coupler install on this engine due to the long time it took to do yours.  Is this still true?  I'm still trying to determine what to do with mine.

CAPPilot posted:

John, if I remember correctly you said you would not do another coupler install on this engine due to the long time it took to do yours.  Is this still true?  I'm still trying to determine what to do with mine.

That is still true.  It was a royal PITA to do them.  I really couldn't charge enough to make it worth my time.  It was an interesting experiment, and someday I may revisit it, but not today.

Wouldn't be easier, and cheaper, to buy the MTH version?  The Williams scale version is selling around $320.  They do have a "semiscale" version which is much larger.  That is going around $150.  The MTH has PS3 with electro couplers.  Also, it is a Premier product so it has a lot of detail.  I found it listed as low as $399.  An ERR upgrade, not including labor is going to be about $150.

I see pricing for both scale version vary by road name.

I haven't checked out the MTH 44 tonner thoroughly, but my LHS has one on display. I was there when they unboxed it and test ran it on their layout. The sound was very good and it performed very well. I've been thinking about it since and it may just have me hooked on it pretty soon. It's all die-cast and quite heavy for it's size. I have not studied all of it's features, but sure sounds a lot easier than what GRJ had to go through on his conversion, and he knows what he's doing! I am no where near as experienced as GRJ, so that definitely leaves me not wanting to do a conversion on one of these. I know absolutely nothing about the WBB version of this one as I usually only look at the command control stuff, it's all I run here. MTH version looks very good to me! 

I have my Williams conversion and the MTH PS/3 model.  The MTH one is, sad to say, a better model than the Williams, even with the upgrades.  It's also a much better puller, all in all, a very nice unit.  My one complaint about the MTH is the fact that when you initially power them up, they rarely come up silent as they should.  Also, if you cut track power, they chop off the shutdown after only about a second.  It appears the supercap is undersized.

With all that said, as long as you run DCS, the MTH is the way to go.

Danr posted:

Wouldn't be easier, and cheaper, to buy the MTH version?  

Yes, if I didn't already have the Williams version.  The Williams version came out before the MTH version, and I bought the Williams with the intent to upgrade it with ERR products.  Still deciding on what to do with it.

Again, thanks for all the input on this. The reason I was leaning toward the Williams engine was Train world was blowing them out at 169.00 dollars and I though that would make it a good candidate to upgrade to TMCC...Paul

So $329 with command and still no electric couplers. G

Rich Yoder 44 tonner with electro-couplers.  An early ERR TMCC upgrade.  Couplers are part of Atlas articulated couplers that were torn apart and modified to fit.   I also used  an Atlas coupler cover part.

Original  three rail  couplers.

Used the same coupler mounts.  Note the coupler shank modification and the additional opening in the pilot.

ERR upgrade and sound.   A lot of luck,  with this upgrade.

 Mouse over, click on image triangle for a Photobucket video of the Rich Yoder 44 tonner. 

. 

GGG posted:

So $329 with command and still no electric couplers. G

Hence my statement that I thought the MTH was a better deal for this particular example.