I have been out of touch for awhile and do things change. My question is, is it possible to take a williams engine and equip it command control? And if so would you do it? And where can you buy the boards needed to do it? I know electric railroad, I believe it was called , use to sell what you needed but they are gone. Any info would be appreciated.
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Which Command and Control system are you interested in? There are several including the popular Lionel and MTH systems.
One you decide, you may want to move this to the proper Control System Forum.
FWIW, ERR is alive and well and I even sell their stuff. 
If you're interested in TMCC upgrades, ERR is the ticket.
There's also the MTH upgrade kits to upgrade to DCS. If you run MTH PS/2 & PS/3, then you can use the ProtoSound Upgrade kits for steam or diesel.
If you have a Williams loco you really like and plan to keep, they are good candidates for conversion. I have 3 Williams steamers that now have DCS and another on the way (thank you, Gunrunnerjohn). Don't convert it because it will add to resale value, because it probably won't. Convert it because you like it and plan to keep it and run it.
John
What he said. 
Upgrade them to run them, not to sell them. If you're going to sell them, let the new owner upgrade them.
John, just curious, what would be the recommended ERR kits for a tmcc upgrade for a Williams steamer? How about a diesel? Assuming both have been gutted except for motors, and assuming can motors.
Ccriss, I have two scale KLine Mikados and a scale NYC Hudson converted to PS-2 using upgrade kits, and they are great. They run well and they are great looking well detailed engines to start with. So if it's an engine you like and you want to run command, by all means upgrade is the way to go. Whether you do it yourself or pay to have it done depends on your individual comfort level with doing this kind of thing. 
Rod
For Williams steam or diesel you would want either a Cruise Commander or DC Commander. Then the appropriate Railsounds board. Quite a few choices there. Also electro couplers are an added option.
For DCS a PS3 Diesel or Steam kit would be more complete.
Pete
It's a no-brainer for me, I use the ERR Cruise Commander and an appropriate ERR RailSounds Commander kit. For steam, you will need to address the chuffing and managing the smoke unit. Of course, I use my own Chuff-Generator and Super-Chuffer II for this task.
As Pete says, the PS/3 upgrades include managing the smoke unit and generating the chuff signal. You do have to have a compatible smoke unit for PS/3 upgrades for proper smoke operation.
If you run both DCS and TMCC/Legacy, the PS/3 upgrade will be cheaper overall. If you strictly run one of these command environments, your choice is obvious.
Yeah, I have a few that I am working on upgrading/converting in the works. Some man need more work than others depending on what the engine is as far as how old. Current one going in is a TMCC that the board is unresponsive, which from what I was told would be an issue with this particular one a bit ago. So, board, smoke, LED's and such to get it to a very fine locomotive when done. The best thing is that this like all my steamers is one I really enjoy so that just makes it even better.
This will take time to get worked on because the backlog from everything getting shutdown. Should get it back sometime in July as long as I get it out tomorrow.
The other one that will be done after that one has no TMCC and very old bits, so that will need just as much work plus a few others like the Electrocoupler
Conversion of a conventional engine to command control using either TMCC or DCS is a reasonably good approach. But keep in mind that once you go track signal based, you have for the most part ruled out battery power as a future option.
Maybe he wasn't interested in doing battery power.
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