Williams Brass N&W J Question

I have one that I had converted to TMCC with EOB speed control.  It is a good runner and although I have not tried to pull its limit, I have pulled an eight car consist (7 MTH premier passenger cars and a Weaver RPO car) up 2 percent grades without any problems.

I have seen and run Lionel and MTH J's on my layout and still think the Williams brass J is the best looking.

I have also upgraded to DCS several other Williams brass engines and have been very pleased with results.

Good luck and happy railroading,

Don

These were well-made by Samhongsa, and are very nice. I was wanting one, but

ran across a scale Lionel J (from the early 2000's) that had a price that

I couldn't pass up; I would have had to upgrade the brass one to command and sound,

and the Lionel unit was so "cheap", that the price was a wash.

Anyway; Samhongsa stuff is usually very well made. They made HO, O and O3R. All

those nice Williams USRA 4-6-2's and 2-8-2's, plus the NYC Niagaras (I do have

one of those ERR upgraded and weathered) and the SP GS4 are by the same builder.

Camelbacks, too.

Bottom line, unless you abuse your equipment, the Williams scale J will do anything

that you ask of it.

Advice: it needs Dullcote, black-painted wheels and general

weathering; also, brass locos are prone to loud drive trains (it resonates), but it

does not mean that you have a problem. If it is loud, lube your gearbox and also check your motor mount regarding the angle, and shim if needed. I have a Weaver Dreyfuss Hudson (brass, Samhongsa-built) that was a real grinder, and I discovered that it was not the gearbox but rather the U-joints. I shimmed the motor to ride more in line with the driveshaft and 90% of the noise disappeared. This depends on how the drive train is structured. But, the J is likely to be a mechanically loud loco, regardless.

If everything is lubed, lined up, there's no binding and no chips in your gearbox grease, it's just the nature of the brass beast.

Loud? Mine was loud, and I made the mistake of putting a slower Pittman motor in it.  It is still a nice model, but way too slow.  I figured out that it was the flywheel that was causing the noise - they do not balance these things.  Take it out, or balance it, and your locomotive will run like a Cadillac.  I am still looking for the original motor, or a faster Pittman.

Also, the 2-rail versions need the tender truck side frames moved inboard a bit - a trivial exercise.

I know that Lionel's and MTH's models of the J have a flat finish but having seen the J in Roanoke, I can confirm that the real J has a gloss finish and the photos I have seen of the J are usually pretty clean and glossy.  To me, the Williams J is is correct with regard to finish.

With regard to weathering, seems most railroads in the steam era prided themselves on the cleanliness of their consists and would not be allowed to be very dirty.

I do agree that the wheels would look better blackened.

Happy railroading,

Don

Considering the great prices you can pick these engines up for now, I don't see how you can go wrong.

The only thing I didn't like about them, as others have stated, was unlike Weaver brass engines of the same era, the wheels are not blackened.

I do remember at the time of the infamous Williams meltdown, the dealer I was buying most of my train equipment from, told me that he was dropping Williams because of all of the upset customers he had, that were blaming him for what had happened, as if was some kind of conspiracy.

Thanks for the info.  Now I need to determine how much I want to modify it.  What was the reason for the big Williams melt down.  I heard a story it blew up the dealer network for sure.  G

DG Jones,

     I like a glossy finish, too. At the end of their careers, many steam locomotives looked downright crummy. But the N&W kept the J's clean.

     When the first Reading Iron Horse Ramble ran on October 25, 1959, No. 2124 looked clean and shiny as a new penny. Yellow handrails and white/silver tires really dressed her up. After the first 3 Rambles, she ran to Jersey City Terminal to film the opening scenes of the movie FROM THE TERRACE, starring Paul Newman and Joanne Woodward, by 20th Century Fox, on December 2, 1959. After the opening credits, her bell is heard as the camera pans down from a skylight. Some names of towns in John O'Hara's novel ("Gibbsville," for example) are posted on the destination board. Moving along the platform toward the camera, No. 2124 shines in the lights. In the final scenes, a company official barks orders to the company doctor. They step down from a 2000-series semistreamlined ('blimp") coach and walk past No. 2124's tender. As they talk, the front of No. 2124 recedes behind them. A T-1 is 110' 1 1/2" inches long, and it must have taken too much screen time and dialog to walk along her full length. So she "jumps back" as the actors talk. It's a remarkable effect, because the actors don't miss a beat.

    She sure looks good - glossy for sure!

Either way. These things are so cheap one could have a dull one and a shiny one.  Hard to believe that shiny axles and tires would discourage a purchase.  Two minutes with a paint pen would fix that.

My friend and dealer called me up and convinced me to buy one at the old price.  He knew the price was crashing, but wanted me to take the loss, not him.  I think he had real guilt feelings afterwrd - let me select a couple hundred dollars of junk from his table at the next meet for free.  I still like the model, and I am an SP nut.

How do you balance the flywheels on these. Is there a simple home method?  G

Got the engine fully disassembled yesterday.  Lubricated the bearings and axles and it runs very smooth.  Flywheel has no wobble so I think I am in good shape.  I did notice it has a pretty low gear ratio.  About 40 plus flywheel turns to get one wheel revolution, so it does start off much slower than my MTH Premier PS-1 J.  So it must have a high RPM motor to match a low gear ratio.

It also has the QSI DCRU not the Williams reverse unit.

So now the conflict, whether to add the MTH PS-1 sounds and smoke and keep it conventional, or do a PS-2 upgrade.  Also, whether I should modify the Cab to include interior lights and fire box glow.  G

George,

Give us an update on your brass J.

Which sound file did you use?  Did you need to balance the flywheel?  What was the width of your tach stripes?  Can the flywheel be made larger?  How is the noise?

Bob,  Sitting disassembled.  I added fan driven smoke unit and have not reassembled or selected command unit.  Too many other projects.  Do you Need one?  It is a smooth runner when I tested with DCRU before taking apart.  I have a PS-1 set up, was thinking of the PS-1 with TMCC, or PS-2.  G

Do you Need one?

Not any longer...I just bought one, that's why I was wondering what you did to yours

There should be plenty of room in that tender for a PS2 system.  I prefer PS2 in steamers because there's no need for any cam or physical addition to the axles to create the chuff.

What diameter is the flywheel?  I made a brass sleeve for my Williams brass 4-6-2 to increase the diameter of that flywheel and it worked well, but I had to grind off a bit of the boiler underneath to enlarge the opening.  The enlarged opening is not noticeable.

My last 3 engine purchases have all been brass Williams engines (2-8-2, 4-6-2, and now 4-8-4).  They're cheaper initially and even after installation of PS2 are cheaper than comparable die-cast engines.  I never thought I'd see the day that I have 6 O scale steam engines (and also 6 diesels) but that day has arrived.  This stuff is addictive!!!

What's the part number for the fan-driven smoke unit?

I have been upgrading mine to Canon,Maxon or Faulhauber motors and NWSL flywheels. Also,I am converting all mine to wireless DCC operation using Li-ion batteries. 

Can someone post a photo of the Williams model with the blackened wheels and such?

Must be a beauty!

Sam,

Here's a photo of a model showing the blackened truck wheels:

And here's the real deal:

Blacken-It or NeoLube should do the trick.

I upgraded mine with a PS2 upgrade. I also removed the Suethe Smoke unit and installed an MTH PS2 smoke unit, now it smokes like its on fire. It was one of the easier conversions I have done. Not having much wiring in the loco itself. The giant lead weigh in the middle can be a pain to get back in f you take it out so maybe you might want to work around that. I used an MTH smoke unit bracket to mount mine and it worked out perfectly with just a slight mod.  Being that the gear ratio is different the chuff rate will be wrong but you can get it close eno0ugh with the DCS remote. I had mine pulling a 13 car set of MTH superliners on level track

Matt,

The 2-8-2 had a large weight in the front also, I know what you mean

Do you recall what you did to the smoke unit bracket?

I had one and got rid of it, the clear coat blistered on the entire engine, it was also a bit noisy and was not a great puller, seven K line Madison cars stalled it on a less then 1% grade. That was mine, who knows maybe your will have a better paint job.

John

I Dull-Coted the one I had at one time. I agree that a little more gloss would have been better, as well as some darkening of wheels and rods.

I used MTH IH-0000085 bracket for the smoke unit and if I remember correctly I just had to bend the 90 degree angle where it would mount to the boiler to face the front of the loco so it wouldn't hit the weight and I think that I had to cut off a pair of tabs. I really should take photos when I do all these upgrades but my ADD rules the show. Ive done some incredible N-scale sound upgrades just for fun that would make great magazine articles. but the minor modification with the brass cup put the smoke unit perfectly under the stack and a pair of mounting holes in the bottom of the boiler held it in place

Thanks Matt!

Jim P., Your engine must be the "Stealth" model

John P., it should arrive this week, I hope it's in great shape.  I wonder what could be done to make it quieter?  Is it the hollowness/emptiness of the boiler or is it the drive train?

Test it first before assuming you need mods.  Mine ran very nice and quiet.   G

Thanks George!

My 4-6-2 didn't have a weight in the front, both the 4-6-2- and 2-8-2 are quiet so I hope this J will follow suit.

Hopefully I'll get to play with it and my Atlas TT tomorrow!!!

Got the J via Moody Street Trains/Fedex (and an Atlas TT via Norm's O Scale/UPS) yesterday!!!

First thought...man that thing is heavy   Second thought...that has to be the most beautiful steam engine in the world

After 25 years of sitting the traction tires were shot, fortunately spares were in the box.  After installing the spare tires I placed it on the layout (glad I have a Wye, it won't fit on the Atlas TT) and gave her a spin.

It was a bit noisy, but after making sure the gearbox had good grease and all the joints were oiled I put it back into service, oiling made a big difference.

This thing is begging for PS2 to be installed, there's plenty of room in the tender and the flywheel is large enough to accommodate a tach tape without having to enlarge the diameter.

Here's a couple of photos:

This engine should satisfy my engine needs/wants (unless someone comes out with a SAL engine I just can't live without).

Now to install PS2 and blacken the wheels, then I'll look around for some passenger cars (GGD is tempting but I've spent enough for now).

I wonder if cutting down the lead weight would hurt the performance?  Seems like it's a bit of overkill.

Here's 2 photos I took of 611 when it was in Lambert's Point back in 1982, you can see the leading truck wheels are black:

That's my dad and daughter (4 yrs old at the time).  I just realized, my dad was 63 in 1982, same age I'll be on the 31st!

After reading all the comments about noise (and running mine around the layout) I decided to try something.

I put a 3x7 piece of felt with double-sided tape inside the boiler.  The skyline casing is a separate piece of brass from the main boiler and creates a "sound chamber" that amplifies any noise.

The felt did cut down on the "tinny" sound, but I still have some noise coming from the gearbox/motor/flywheel so I think the next step is to chuck the flywheel in my mini-lathe and see just how much out of round/off center it may be.  The drive train isn't perfectly straight from motor to gearbox and I don't think the bit of angle I see is making that much noise, but I can bend the motor mount a bit to get things inline.

For the heck of it I weighed the lead "ballast", a whooping 34 ounces , I may try running the engine without it just to see if that much weight is really needed, the engine is heavy as it is w/o all that lead in the nose.

Oh, not a great idea about putting the double sided tape inside the boiler.  It took me an hour to get it back out, it was stuck pretty good , sounded good at the time!

I did put the flywheel in my mini-lathe and it was out of round, about 1/32" on one side.  Cleaned up easily and hopefully that'll reduce the sound reverb enough I don't have to use anything inside to dampen it.

Hey bob nice looking engine you have there.I was on the last train she pulled out of spencer nc.I have always liked the look of her highspeed driver rods.Don,t know if you know this or not.The seaboard gave trackage right to n&w into durham nc.If you want another steamer thats a little closser to seaboard.Go for the mth or lionel mohawk there are pretty closse to seaboards m2s.They use coal and some use fueloil you could go ether way.The decales thats gonna be kinda hard to find.At least to me that is.

I know what you mean about decals, I think my days of heavy mods to existing engines is about over because of the difficulties getting the paint/decals/parts to complete a project.

I put some cloth athletic tape inside the boiler in place of the felt, but it didn't cut down the noise.  Now I'm thinking a piece of sticky-backed 2mm thick foam, they sell it at Walmart.

I ran the engine without the lead weight and it pulled 3 MTH 18" Premier passenger cars around with ease.  I'll have a 5-car train and think I'll leave the weight out for now.

Hey George, did you ever decide which sound file you'll use?

The box says it operates on 0-72 curves but what is the minimum recommended curve on this engine? From the naked eye it looks like it's an 0-54 engine. 

It's not the engine only that requires 0-72 curves. It's the tender and the swing out of the cab and drawbar.

I couldn't get it to stay on 054 curves, I have a heck of a time placing it on 072 curves, too many wheels to keep lined up but it will negotiate 072 fine.

Will it work on 0-60 and 0-63 or will the front wheels bounce off the track every time? 

Well lining up on wider radius is easier then smaller radius Bob!  You get closer to a straight line with wider radius  G