Have you lubricated the gears on the Williams engine?
Another thing to look for is a loose wire or plug-in connector that heats up after a few minutes.
Being that the MTH engine runs good on the track, I would suggest having your Williams engine looked at.
What you could do to see if it is a power issue is to measure the voltage at the track connector with a digital multimeter(AC range at or above 50 volt setting) and see if your track voltage drops when your Williams engine slows down, if the voltage stays the same your engine is at fault.

Lee F.

I have an MTH Z-1000 that I run a lot of engines with and the Williams do very good with it, has both bell & horn/whistle features.
Sometimes you can pick-up a nearly new transformer at a train show for almost half of what a hobby shop sells them for.

Lee F.

Something I was told about DCC, if it says DCC equipped it usually has DCC in the locomotive, if it says DCC ready it has the wire connectors for the DCC stuff to hook up to.
Not sure but I think that if you use DCC you may need a little powerful transformer than the one that comes with a starter set.

Lee F.

I was on the Classic Toy Train forum and there is a topic; "Lionel & Marx," that concerns Bachmann and a company called Sanda Kan.
In it some people are starting up a rumor that Bachmann may produce Marx Train items and or K-Line items.

Lee F.

What do you mean by various Amtrac liveries?
The other initials are for various companies that Amtrac leases the right of way from, in other words Amtrac pays those companies money to travel on their tracks.
News from Florida about Amtrac traveling on the east coast. Amtrac & the U.S. government need to come up with the required money before Amtrac will travel down the east Coast of Florida or run on Florida East Coast railway. The cost used to be near $700.00 a train to run on FEC tracks, about seven years ago.

Lee F.

Quote from: phillyreading on November 03, 2009, 02:38:31 PM
I have about 12 Williams engines ( three GP-9's, four SD-45's, six F-7's[four A units and two B units]) and would not trade them for other brands. Williams have great features for the money, ok so you don't have cruise control or able to uncouple an engine any where you want, in my opion it is just something else to go wrong. Most of my Williams engines will out perform brand L in pulling power.
I have noticed that in the new catalog for Williams, there are sets that come with both track & transformer, that was something I was hoping that Williams would have done before being sold to Bachmann, and I think that it is a great idea to sell more train sets.
Something that I noticed in the most recent issue of Classic Toy Trains is that the Williams set is selling for almost half the price of their compitition.
Also some people on  here may know me from the CTT forum site.

Lee F.

Quote from: mikemarxs on November 27, 2009, 01:19:32 PM
Is it possible to replace the bell in the diesel switcher engine with a horn/bell combination? Is it an easy replacement or is soldering, etc involved?

I know that you can order a new True Blast 2 horn unit that has both horn & bell features, it comes with a small two pin plug-in to fit into circuit boards.
I just got a new True Blast 2 horn unit for one of my Lionel diesels that didn't have a good horn unit. The price went up from the last time I ordered a T. B. 2 horn unit, but then that was before Bachmann bought out Williams.

Lee F.

Quote from: J. S. Bach on November 26, 2009, 02:17:47 AM

Quote from: phillyreading on November 19, 2009, 12:30:17 PM
If it is like the older Williams(about five years ago, maybe longer) sound systems by QSI in the F-7 diesels sets it will have a "Leaving station on track ten" announcement & bell & regular horn(not TB-2) along with motor revving sounds that are in proportion to the power supplied to the track. The horn does not work in the low power range and the bell don't work in the higher than idle speed.
Hope this helps you!

Lee F.

Thank you for that information; I recently got a Williams scale GG1 that has that board installed. Diesel sounds from a GG1?  At least the horn sounds good.  I wonder if there is there a way to disable all but the horn.

As far as disableing all but the horn, I don't know of any way except to disconnect the QSI sound board and install a True Blast 2 horn & bell system. Maybe somebody at Bachmann will know what to do.

Also checked into adding PS-2 to my Williams engines and I don't think that I will be doing this anytime soon. The price per engine was $250.00 plus costs of shipping both ways, or over $300.00, and that was about a year ago or better.

Lee F.

Another thing that I have experianced is that you need to hold the horn activation button for three or four seconds to get the bell to work on the first generation True Blast 2 sound systems, same thing to turn off the bell.

The Lionel horn button(cheaper than making your own) is the best way to go for getting the bell feature to work, I did the sound activation project mentioned in CTT and it worked less than half the time. If your transformer don't have a horn or bell feature buy two Lionel horn buttons and hook one up the regular way and the other hook-up the wires in reverse order.

Lee F.

This is what a friend of mine in Stuart FL did with his layout, I think that it is overkill but will definetely solve all power issues with track, he soldered wires to every track(he was using GarGraves track with 072 curves) and fed them through to the bottom and then wired them into a bus connection.

Lee F.

What it sounds to me is that you have lost some power to the track! Either try cleaning the track in the area where this happens or add adition power wires to the affected area to resolve this problem. This will happen with electronic horn units when you have a bad electrical connection or the electronic horn unit don't like your track for some reason.
Electronic horn units are more sensitve to power issues than whistling horn motors of the past.

Lee F.

If it is like the older Williams(about five years ago, maybe longer) sound systems by QSI in the F-7 diesels sets it will have a "Leaving station on track ten" announcement & bell & regular horn(not TB-2) along with motor revving sounds that are in proportion to the power supplied to the track. The horn does not work in the low power range and the bell don't work in the higher than idle speed.
Hope this helps you!

Lee F.

I just added a motor kit to an unpowered F-7 A unit and all I did was reverse the motor leads, the two wire plug-in connectors. In my kit the only problem was that the motor was missing it's red dot, so I had to see which way to wire it was forward or reverse.
If you get the motor kit for an upgrade, the new motors run faster than the old Williams F-7 motors, even wired straight(the old motors) from a bridge rectifier.
My problem with the older Williams F-7 diesels is that after sitting for over 45 minutes the F-7 would start in reverse, even when locked into forward, so I did as somebody on CTT said to do & that was to wire the motors straight to a bridge rectifier because the motors are DC(direct current) not AC.

Lee F.

If Bachmann could put a true Blast 2 horn in the SD-45's.
My SD-45's by Williams never had a factory horn in them, or ditch lights.

Lee F.

Thanks for the warning about using capacitors that way.
What I am using is called 'radial leads' rated at 4.7 MF @ 100 volts.

Lee F.