Williams GP30 Work

Rewiring the motors to suit your needs is good, however did you think about the warranty being being voided when you did that? That would be my only concern. These are now your engines and you can do what you want to them.

A suggestion about headlight brightness, use a higher voltage bulb like an 18 volt instead of the 14 volt bulb that WBB installs.

I found a transformer that works really well with my Williams engines at a flea market where I live, bought a box of used 027 track and there was a transformer in with it. The transformer is a brand name Troller and has 2 output selections for voltage; 0 to 9 and 0 to 18 volts, just flip a switch. That is how I slowed down my Williams engines. Most of my Williams engines don't need any speed reduction rather they need more pulling power, as I have a set of ABA F-7's that I added a second set of motors to and it works much better and can pull about 10 Williams passenger cars.

I can wire any 2 motor engine in series but that is not what I need, mainly I am looking for power and not turtle speed. That's why I will put 2 or 3 powered SD-45's together on one train and haul some quad hoppers.

Lee Fritz

Lee, you do have some valid points here, but they are not of too much concern for what I am using the engine for. The -fastest- speed I use them on my layout is right at 14 volts, not exceed their limit. These engines are conventional, so I'm not too concerned about voiding their warranty, very easy to fix. As I said, the reason I wired them in series is to get the brightness and RPM up, they were only running at around 7 or 8 volts. Thanks for reading.

Wiring a Williams engine in series is not going to hurt it at all.  I have about 15 Williams engines all wired in series, some for over 15 years.

Lee you are the first person I have ever heard say that a Williams engine needs more pulling power.  I routinely pull 30 to 40 cars behind one Williams engine wired in series, with a couple of dummies.  All of my Williams engines are stump pullers, and bullet proof.

Karl

Karl Reichenbach posted:

Wiring a Williams engine in series is not going to hurt it at all.  I have about 15 Williams engines all wired in series, some for over 15 years.

Lee you are the first person I have ever heard say that a Williams engine needs more pulling power.  I routinely pull 30 to 40 cars behind one Williams engine wired in series, with a couple of dummies.  All of my Williams engines are stump pullers, and bullet proof.

Karl

 

 

Karl,

I am telling what my experiences with Williams are. The set of ABA F-7 engines were from the Crown Edition era, I took out the circuit boards and installed bridge rectifier in each powered A unit, I lost direction control but have the engines go the direction I want. Now I have a very powerful set of ABA diesels and I am able to pull the 6 car passenger set. Before adding the second set of motors it took almost 6 minutes to go around my layout,  8 by 10 foot.

FYI, I just bought a WBB FM Trainmaster engine and it runs good but the detail compared to an MTH FM Trainmaster is not as detailed as the MTH engine.

Lee Fritz

From what my dad tells me, new Williams engines pull a million times better than older ones. He has a custom painted set of Williams PRR F units, (both motors moved to a single A unit, you'd have to ask him what changes were made to the electronics because I have no idea) but never runs them because they just don't pull.

Steve,

I just got my new Williams by Bachmann FM Trainmaster engine, Reading Lines, and have been able to test it's pulling ability as I have to wait for my larger layout to be built.

I agree that some of the older Williams engines need more power to run.

What I have noticed with the engines I have; the GP-9's start at a lower voltage then the SD-45's. I have MTH DCS and tried running my Williams with track power setting and saw that the smaller engines started out at a lower voltage then the larger engines. This is from 4 years ago or better.

Don't know how my GP-38 will do. I have one powered and one non-powered GP-38, the unpowered one got an upgrade to Station Sounds(I think that is what it is called, it's the older QSI sound system for a Williams diesel).

Lee Fritz