Has anyone here upgraded the Williams Scale Hudson with one of those TMCC kits?
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Yep, it's pretty similar to most other installations. What specific questions do you have?
How difficult is it?
I am accumulating Williams trains that I get a good prices to upgrade.
Tired of staring at $800 - $1500 Hudsons.
It's a pretty standard install, the difficult is dependent on your skill level. If you've done other steamers, it's pretty much the same. There's nothing unique that imposes any special difficulty with the Williams engines.
This is a big engine so finding room is not a problem. Usually the hardest part is the mechanical work. Making holes for switches and speakers. Maybe installing a tether with more wires. Installing a fan smoke unit if you go that route.
FWIW K-Line Scale Hudsons with TMCC are going in the 400-450 range.
Pete
I also saw a Williams Scale Hudson that was upgraded to add additional detail. I do not recall where I saw it, but it looked great. With a small additional investment you can really add realism, features and modern day detailing to these. I just added grab irons and metal horns to a Williams F7 and for about $6 it made a difference. Point is that Williams gives you a solid core to work with and uses the same quality of components that all the other train sellers do.
The Cruise Commander really tames the wild beast inside the Williams scale Hudson. It will run as slowly and smoothly as you want. Additionally, this loco has a plastic coal load, so you can mount the antenna inside of that and do not have to insulate the tender shell.
When ERR was developing the Cruise Commander, we used a Williams scale Hudson as an example of the most difficult loco to tame, given its propensity to run a 200 scale MPH. It did the job admirably.
Alex M. did mine for me. Ask him about the process. Bob
I did mine dont forget that you need to put in a good fan driven smoke unit and Johns super chuffer unit.
The seuth smoke unit dont cut it.
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The seuth smoke unit dont cut it.
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Certainly. Posted photos of it in Weekend Photo Fun a week or two ago. Makes the
loco usable if you install cruise; only reason I did it - ran very poorly. I did add
detailing to mine, as it does not have much as built. Those expensive Hudsons you mention are better-looking locos, you know.
I actually disconnected my Seuthe smoke unit in the loco, as it smoked too much; messy.
Smoke I can take or leave.
Here it is again; I've added details/weathering, so it may not look like a Williams (the point, actually...). It has a Cruise Commander and sound. The plastic coal load (love 'em)
is where the antenna is attached. No nylon screws, tape and wrestling with a tender
body required.
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Originally Posted by D500:
Certainly. Posted photos of it in Weekend Photo Fun a week or two ago. Makes the
loco usable if you install cruise; only reason I did it - ran very poorly. I did add
detailing to mine, as it does not have much as built. Those expensive Hudsons you mention are better-looking locos, you know.
I actually disconnected my Seuthe smoke unit in the loco, as it smoked too much; messy.
Smoke I can take or leave.
Here it is again; I've added details/weathering, so it may not look like a Williams (the point, actually...). It has a Cruise Commander and sound. The plastic coal load (love 'em)
is where the antenna is attached. No nylon screws, tape and wrestling with a tender
body required.
That is beautiful!
I have built desktop gaming PCs many times.
Will that help?
Also, I like working on vintage Lionel trains.
Where is the best spot to mount the Reed switch for the cuffs and how many magnets should I use to get a realistic amount of cuffs per revolution.
There was a nicely detailed Williams Hudson on the For Sale forum here recently.
For anyone who has converted one of these to TMCC; how do you adapt a Lionel or MTh smoke unit to the huge stack hole left in the boiler after the seuthe smoke unit is ditched?
CHIPSET - thanks for the complement.
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Per my ERR-upgraded Hudson, above: the smoke unit question I can't answer - I've never done that sort of thing - again, smoke, for me, is...meh.
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Per the chuff question from OG3RAIL - I mounted my reed switch on one of the tender trucks, as is typical. Always an annoying process, but not hard. I use Walther's Goo - it's immediately sticky, which helps in testing, but allows adjustment for a while.
I put one magnet on the tender wheel for the reed switch. Is this 4 chuffs per revolution? Don't know, and it would be only by coincidence, but I find that it approximates it well enough. Reed switches have a reaction time/reset component to their behavior, and too many magnets on a small wheel could make them "skip", I would think. You can always add more and experiment; it's easy. Ideally, 4 mounted around the inside of a driver would be best. I've never done that.
Thanks for the answer D500..I finished the installation today and took your advice and installed one magnet on on of the tender trucks. Very happy with the results sounds great!!
As far as the question about the stack, I use brass tubing soldered to the ferrule that screws into the MTH smoke unit. If I need it slightly larger, I "build it up" with a couple of short pieces of the next smaller stock. I always try to make the smoke unit stack fit fairly well in the boiler stack so you don't miss with the fluid. 
Regarding the number of chuff magnets to trigger four chuffs, that's obviously four on a driver, and since most tender wheels are about 1/2 the diameter of the drivers, usually I put two on those. I had one recently that had large tender wheels and it needed three to get close to 4-chuffs/rev.
