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Hello,

I'm Ricky, and I am new to the forum. I recently bought a Williams switcher diesel engine at a train show, and I wanted to know if I can upgrade it to Proto Sound 3. There are motors under the shell, inside the trucks. I was wondering if it would be possible to take those out and put a single flywheel motor inside the cab. Can this be possible? Thank you for your help.

Ricky 

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There is no practical way to do a DCS upgrade of that locomotive.  You are not going to fit a flywheel in there, and to change the motor to a vertical motor with a flywheel would require replacing the power truck(s).  That will require significant mechanical alterations to accommodate the new truck(S).

Again, you are trying to push toothpaste back into the tube, it's simply not worth the effort or expense.

Why are you "committed" to doing the next to impossible?

I have one of these Kline switchers (MP15AC).  It is a pretty good runner in conventional.  I thought about converting it with ERR parts but then I thought about it again.  It will cost about $200 for parts and, at the end of the day, I’m not sure that it would perform at the level of other, as built, PS2/PS3 or TMCC locos.  Also, if you compare your locomotive to prototype pictures you will see it is seriously lacking in details, particularly the pilot and end walkways.

In my opinion, you would be better off saving your money and search local shows or the bay for a used PS2/PS3 loco.  Just my opinion.

He's wanting PS/3 Dan, that's a non-starter with this engine.  Also, depending on the motor used, some of the K-Line truck mounted motors exhibit a lot of magnetic "cogging" and will perform very poorly with back-EMF cruise, it's kinda' the luck of the draw.

One thing is for sure, if you want command operation of this one, the only practical way to go is TMCC with ERR or perhaps the BlueTooth solutions that are slowly coming available.

Hello all. Thank you for your inputs. I am committed to doing this because I want to see how to do this procedure. I also am into electronics and mechanical things. After reading your comments, being that there are "cheap" parts being used in this locomotive, design, and physical space, I have decided to not do this. I might go to TMCC. Thanks again. 

Ricky

The first Williams Trainmasters came with Pittman motors and no flywheels. They are good runners, pull well, and will creep along at slow speeds quite well.  I recently added an early TMCC DC-LCRU board and the loco still runs good at any speed above a creep. It's low speed ability to creep along is ok but not as good as before. It will still go very slow but has some slight jerkiness about it.   These Pittman motors have seven poles and I can imagine that if they were three pole motors the slight jerkiness at creeping speeds would be a much more pronounced jerkiness. Probably not acceptable to most people.

TMCC can be done to these.  If the motors have pronounced "cogging", you'll want to forget about the back-EMF cruise and use the ERR DC Commander.  "Cogging" can be detected by just turning the wheels and seeing if you can feel pronounced magnetic detents as the motor rotates.  The stronger those detents feel, the worse the low speed performance of back-EMF cruise will be.

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