I'm getting ready to setup my dad's old Lionel train under the Christmas tree this year and was thinking of adding a Santa handcar to the layout. I found the Williams operating handcar (#23803) but the description on the site and in the catalog leave a lot to be desired (at least to me). Does anyone know if this handcar operates in a single direction or does it have forward and reverse? Does it auto-reverse?
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Like Lionel, K-Line, and the others, it is one direction only.
The only hand car I'm aware of that goes in both directions"Bumping" is an MTH hand car. MTH is good quality with roller pick ups.I can't speak for the Williams units and I don't know if they made any improvements over the old K-Line hand cars.
The MTH "bump and go" hand cars have a lever that reverses the direction. The lever is thrown when the car hits the end-of-track bumper. Internally, the lever reverses the polarity of the voltage applied to the motor.
Problem is the car needs to be moving fairly quickly to reliably bump and reverse. I ended up modifying my hand car (coincidentally the Santa version) to switch direction in response to track sensors so it didn't have to smash into bumpers which gave Santa whiplash and prevented him from completing his mission.
Thanks to all for the information.
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