Williams Brass Pickup Rollers

I can only imagine that the rollers had more rolling resistance for some reason.  The other reason might be a different type of track, are they running on the say layout for Christmas?

A picture of the rollers might help here to see what would fit for those of us that don't have those two particular locomotives.

@gunrunnerjohn posted:

I can only imagine that the rollers had more rolling resistance for some reason.  The other reason might be a different type of track, are they running on the say layout for Christmas?

A picture of the rollers might help here to see what would fit for those of us that don't have those two particular locomotives.

Front roller is the worst but rear roller has a noticeable cup as well. You can feel it with your finger but doesn't photograph well. E6 has the same rollers but for whatever reason the wear pattern is reversed with cup on front roller and groove on rear.

Only difference in track between normal layout and Christmas layout is that the Christmas layout uses more vintage lionel 072 track whereas the smaller layout I have up the rest of the year is modern lionel/kline/menards tubular.

They look pretty generic, I suspect you can find replacements.  I had an oddball roller set and Pat @harmonyards was able to replace just the rollers and rivets and made them like new.  If you can't find rollers that fit, that's another option.

@MillersburgRR posted:

Also, does anyone know why these would suddenly deteriorate? They've run regularly for 10+ years without notable wear and suddenly over 2 months they developed significant grooves in the rollers. The rollers appear to roll freely. I have a lot of other Williams and Weaver brass so I'd like to avoid this happening again if I can.

I can explain this very simply- the electric motor Williams chose can fail and over time begin to draw high current. I found this out from a recent purchase of a used Weaver brass M1- that came out of the same factory as your Williams. Point being, that motor in mine is drawing North of 2A just to spin not attached to any drive train. I lubed the bushings but it appears the motor internally is just drawing massive current compared to normal specs. One thought is the conductive brush dust builds up in the slots of the commutator thus shorting out the segments. This results in a ton of heat in the brushes and commutator, and since the brass bar contacts are bonded to an insulator- if that gets hot and fails- you get quite the failure mode in a shower of sparks.

So what is causing your massive roller wear is likely spark erosion- where the higher than normal amperage draw of your motor likely is causing sparking at the rollers, and this sparking- like EDM (Electro Discharge Machining) is just arcing away the metal at the rollers.

And of course like so many people here in the forum- you probably are not running with a transformer with a current meter and likely had no idea of historical data of what the engine used to draw VS what it is drawing now.

And if you don't fix the amperage draw- you both eventually cook the motor but also end up cooking the reverse unit and the rollers.

Again, my advice- get yourself a Pittman motor upgrade over that stock RS style stock motor- that again even when new drew high amperage compared to modern model train electric motors. The difference in amperage is just a real eye opener.

https://ogrforum.com/topic/my-...-harmon-shops?page=1

Otherwise, you might be trying to clean that armature to reduce the amperage draw

@Vernon Barry posted:

I can explain this very simply- the electric motor Williams chose can fail and over time begin to draw high current. I found this out from a recent purchase of a used Weaver brass M1- that came out of the same factory as your Williams. Point being, that motor in mine is drawing North of 2A just to spin not attached to any drive train. I lubed the bushings but it appears the motor internally is just drawing massive current compared to normal specs. One thought is the conductive brush dust builds up in the slots of the commutator thus shorting out the segments. This results in a ton of heat in the brushes and commutator, and since the brass bar contacts are bonded to an insulator- if that gets hot and fails- you get quite the failure mode in a shower of sparks.

So what is causing your massive roller wear is likely spark erosion- where the higher than normal amperage draw of your motor likely is causing sparking at the rollers, and this sparking- like EDM (Electro Discharge Machining) is just arcing away the metal at the rollers.

And of course like so many people here in the forum- you probably are not running with a transformer with a current meter and likely had no idea of historical data of what the engine used to draw VS what it is drawing now.

And if you don't fix the amperage draw- you both eventually cook the motor but also end up cooking the reverse unit and the rollers.

Vernon,

You are spot on. I just never put the roller wear and motor issues together. I actually replaced the motor in the K4 with a Pittman a few weeks ago as it had been struggling to pull 5 passenger cars. Won't go through switches nicely with the worn roller but runs fine on a pure loop. It was clearly worn out - the motor shaft on the old Mabuchi was moving 1/4in back and forth. It never occurred to me that the roller wear would be related to the worn out motor. I guess I'll be ordering another Pittman for the E6 -- it was pulling just fine last time it was on the track, but from what you say the motor is probably going bad as well.

The motor swap on the K4 was fairly easy--I just had to open up the holes in the original motor mount with a jeweler's file to fit the larger mounting screws of the Pittman, and was able to reuse the rest of the stock drive train. E6 might be a bit trickier with less room under the shell, not sure of the larger Pittman can I used on the K4 will fit.

@MillersburgRR posted:

Vernon,

You are spot on. I just never put the roller wear and motor issues together. I actually replaced the motor in the K4 with a Pittman a few weeks ago as it had been struggling to pull 5 passenger cars. Won't go through switches nicely with the worn roller but runs fine on a pure loop. It was clearly worn out - the motor shaft on the old Mabuchi was moving 1/4in back and forth. It never occurred to me that the roller wear would be related to the worn out motor. I guess I'll be ordering another Pittman for the E6 -- it was pulling just fine last time it was on the track, but from what you say the motor is probably going bad as well.

Again, the other lesson- get yourself a meter- an ammeter in your power source (transformer).

This is a huge reason at the local club I switched out to no less than 4 Z4000 transformers so that all 8 of our loops have an individual voltage and current meter so we can quickly diagnose of the health of any train running. I know what all my trains should draw, and then they creep up in current draw, I know something is wrong.

@Vernon Barry posted:

Again, the other lesson- get yourself a meter- an ammeter in your power source (transformer).

This is a huge reason at the local club I switched out to no less than 4 Z4000 transformers so that all 8 of our loops have an individual voltage and current meter so we can quickly diagnose of the health of any train running. I know what all my trains should draw, and then they creep up in current draw, I know something is wrong.

Do you have a suggestion for a good ammeter that can be wired to the outputs of postwar transformers? As a conventional-only operator I'm quite happy performance and control-wise with ZWs, KWs, LWs etc. to run my collection, and I don't think I could justify buying several Z4000s just for the ammeter built in.

@MillersburgRR posted:

Front roller is the worst but rear roller has a noticeable cup as well. You can feel it with your finger but doesn't photograph well. E6 has the same rollers but for whatever reason the wear pattern is reversed with cup on front roller and groove on rear.

Only difference in track between normal layout and Christmas layout is that the Christmas layout uses more vintage lionel 072 track whereas the smaller layout I have up the rest of the year is modern lionel/kline/menards tubular.

I had an  issue with my Williams J and Marty Fitzhenry advised me to get replacement rollers. There’s a fella that comes to York or he used to his name is Frank. I can’t think was last name he had the Williams parts if I find his name and number, I’ll send it to you.

410-465-3782 Frank Vacek

I suspect that you may not need a "Williams" brass roller. From the picture your loco's rollers look very genetic. If it fits it's "good to go."

Maybe someone else can be more specific regarding a specific replacement.

@MillersburgRR posted:

Do you have a suggestion for a good ammeter that can be wired to the outputs of postwar transformers? As a conventional-only operator I'm quite happy performance and control-wise with ZWs, KWs, LWs etc. to run my collection, and I don't think I could justify buying several Z4000s just for the ammeter built in.

https://ogrforum.com/topic/mod...mmeter-for-my-layout

https://ogrforum.com/topic/amm...-transformer-current

https://ogrforum.com/topic/led...tmeters-and-ammeters

https://ogrforum.com/topic/met...ircuit-configuration