williams by bachman

[choochoo63]

Will the whistle work on the Williams alco & f3's locomotives, using the lionel 80 watt transformer?  Their was that problem years ago.

choochoo63

[DominicMazoch]

There are 3 generations of the CW-80's out there.  You might want to try it.  But mosr W/WBB prfer 90 wants.

[Joe Satnik]

Dear CC63,

I think the problem you are referring to is old "Pure AC" vs. newer "Chopped AC" power going to the rails.   

The old style pure AC transformer is heavier and more expensive to make than the newer, lighter and cheaper "Chopped AC" transformers. 

The newer technology is similar to the wall mounted light dimmers that use triacs to chop the (120 Vrms-house electrical) AC waveform.     

The chopped (distorted) AC confuses the Williams sound board.

I'll bet that your horn and bell (TBII) would work flawlessly with only 45 watts of pure AC.

The recommendation of 90 watts minimum is probably to steer you away from the newer 80 watt choppers.   

Hope this helps.

Sincerely,

Joe Satnik

[DominicMazoch]

The 90 W recommendation was there under Jerry Williams before the CW's came out.  UHMMM, cw = Chopped wave?  Did not think it = continuous wave, IE, Morse Code!

[Neo Fender]

I am by no means an expert but I've seen some (non-train related) DC to AC inverters produce a "stepped" AC output, vs. a true sine wave.  Maybe that's what's meant by "Chopped AC".

  UHMMM, cw = Chopped wave?  Did not think it = continuous wave, IE, Morse Code!

[Joe Satnik]

Dear All,

"Chopped" was a poor word to use, considering there is an "official" use of the word that means something different.     

I was looking for a non-technical word to describe a "distorted", or "cut up" AC sine wave form.

Sorry for the confusion. 

There are some triac waveforms at this site:

http://www.ubasics.com/adam/electronics/doc/phasecon.shtml

Hope this helps. 

Sincerely,

Joe Satnik     

[CandO]

This may or may not help.

I have a Lionel CW-80 that came with my North Pole Central.
I now use it as a testing unit in my work room.

I own a WBB E7.  I have ran it on my track with my CW-80.  The only thing I have encountered is when I push the bell button there is a delay. I push it...wait a few seconds...then the dinging starts.  There is also a delay when turning off the bell.
You just don't want to keep pushing the button.

The horn responds just fine.

Here is the info. on the bottom of my transformer:
   MODEL: cW-80
   I/P: 120VAC,60Hz
   O/P: 18VAC/80W
   P/N: 6-14198

and in the bottom right corner it says  G0906

I hope this helps.

[lennyski]

I recently bought the o-27 Hudson and the reverse unit will NOT work on my CW-80 transformer. I also have a Willimas Turbine that the reverse unit does work. Not sure what the problem is but when I use an old KW they both work fine. I am just hoping the Hudson works with my MRC Dual transformer since that is what I use on my Christmas layout.

[Len]

The problem is Lionel put a soft start "feature" into the CW-80 a while back. On other transformers, when you hit the reverse button the power to the track is cut of, when you release it the voltage pops back to where it was. So you get a nice clean transition for the reversing unit to see.

On the CW-80 pushing the reverse button cuts off the track voltage, same as everyone else. But when you release it, the voltage comes up very slowly from zero to where it was. You can see this by hooking a light across the track outputs. Some electro/mechanical reversing units do not like this because they are looking for a hard transition from the On-to-Off-to_On state to cycle. Sometimes putting a 12V tail light across the output helps for some reason, but not always.

Len