Williams 4000 Hudson (cab 5405) Does this have a smoke unit?

I had one, and there wasn't a smoke unit - but a Seuthe can be fitted in easily. Any other make will probably take a little more work. It wasn't a great puller, and doesn't have the detail of later Hudsons, but it was affordable to me at the time. Williams used to sell a flywheel kit, I don't know where you might find one now.

As an extra appeal, the tender originally had no coal load. I used to load mine with coal via a Lionel coal loader. It always impressed people.

The Seuthe is a poor substitute for a real smoke unit. 

Rather than get a flywheel kit, best just replace the motor with a Pittman. Williams pretty much all use Mabuchi 550s in their engines. Stall currents over 10 amps!!!! There are many 12v and 15v 9334 and 9344 Pittmans on the auction sites, many under 30 bucks. 

Pete

I don't believe these had any kind of smoke, but there's plenty of room to add one and there are a lot of good choices today.

I would *definitely* add a flywheel if the loco doesn't have one.  Coasting is important, especially with four rubber tires and self-locking gears.

The factory motor is OK but it does draw a lot of current.  You might find a Pittman 9000-series motor to be too slow-turning by comparison.  The smaller 8x24-series has a no-load RPM closer to the factory motor and is still plenty powerful.  My $.02.

Originally it had no smoke or flywheel. There were some guys adding both when I got mine so I had it upgraded. Would a Pittman be a drop in or require some skills whereas I have none?

@petrifiedagg posted:

Originally it had no smoke or flywheel. There were some guys adding both when I got mine so I had it upgraded. Would a Pittman be a drop in or require some skills whereas I have none?

Not a horrible job to do a Pittman swap in one of these.....but, some skills are required, most importantly, being able to measure.....as mentioned above, the stock motor is a power hungry slob....these are geared awful, and the OE motor does have to spin to the moon, but a a Pittman will let you cruise very nicely, lots of torque, very smooth and low amp draws...I’d second a Pittman swap....

Pat

@petrifiedagg posted:

Originally it had no smoke or flywheel. There were some guys adding both when I got mine so I had it upgraded. Would a Pittman be a drop in or require some skills whereas I have none?

It would fit no problem. I think you just have drill a couple new mounting holes and maybe drill the coupling out to 4mm. Lionel has flywheels for Pittmans.

Far right is a Mabuchi 550, next to it is a Pittman 9344. A Pittman 9334 is the same diameter and length as the Mabuchi.

Pete

The gearing isn't awful, it's probably geared like a scale model.  Which is to say, not fast like so many toy trains being sold today.  Before you choose a replacement motor you should figure out the gear ratio.  It's a little hard to do without a flywheel.  But if you make a little mark on the drive shaft and pay close attention, you can turn the motor shaft by hand and count the number of turns required for one revolution of the driving wheels.

The stock Mabuchi RS-550 is rated for 12000 RPM.  The big 9000-series Pittmans are about a 7000 RPM motor.  So your top speed will be much reduced.  Meanwhile an 8x24-series Pittman is a 10000 RPM motor which is closer to your original, that's why I recommended it.

IMO the most important upgrade is a flywheel.  Without it, the loco will stop on the proverbial dime.  If you're going fast enough, it can cut a bur into the drive gear, or bend a rod.  It's hard on those $%^#*&% rubber tires, too.  Coasting, at least a little, is a good thing!

I believe that Hudson is one of the ones with 44:1 gearing.  That makes for great low speed performance, but by the time you get to around 40 scale MPH, the motor is buzzing like an angry bee!  I wouldn't have an issue with that top speed, but some might.

If it's like the two I recently upgraded, the Williams K4 and the Williams Niagara, the stock motor was only good for around 8,000 RPM, that gave you about 42 scale MPH.  Free running with around 15 volts on it, that's as good as it got.  Running at 12V (it's rated voltage), it was drawing more than an amp with no load, i.e. the wheels were suspended.  I didn't have a suitable Pittman at the time, so I used a better Mabuchi 555.  Same top end, but the motor was drawing around 250ma with the same 12V unloaded test.

I believe that Hudson is one of the ones with 44:1 gearing.  That makes for great low speed performance, but by the time you get to around 40 scale MPH, the motor is buzzing like an angry bee!  I wouldn't have an issue with that top speed, but some might.

agreed....I still haven’t figured why some of these fellas are so worried about going Mach III down the rails.....guess they got a point to prove?...🙄

Pat

Too many toy trains in their youth.

I was under the impression that the motors Williams used were rated for 12-30 volts.  Right-of-Way made a 400W transformer that went up to 24 volts, and Lionel's prewar Z transformer did, as well.  This kind of voltage and current are required to make these locos run at prototypical passenger speeds (IMO that only makes sense if you have a very long layout!)

Yes, things get noisy at high RPMs and the brass shell amplifies that sound.  There's a reason they don't make tubas out of die-cast metal!  I discovered that a piece of DynaXorb in the boiler shell quiets things down a lot.

Mike Wolf and Andy Edelman had a lot of experience selling Williams.  My theory is when MTH started making "scale" trains, they purposely chose a tall gear ratio to keep the RPMs down, because they didn't want to field complaints about NVH (noise, vibration, and harshness.)  Unfortunately, low-speed performance in the Proto-1 era left a LOT to be desired. 

@Ted S posted:

I was under the impression that the motors Williams used were rated for 12-30 volts.

Since there is no identification on the motors, it's hard to say.  Even at 12 VDC, the motors are drawing way more current than a decent Mabuchi 555 motor.

The motors in most of the Williams motors from this period are early Hong Kong Mabuchi motors look for the stylized M on the plastic end.  These motors should have never been used in a model train as they have a static resistance of about .8 ohms it is not the quality of the motor that is in question it is the armature winding. The stall current of this motor at 12v is   "15A" and "25A" at 20v WoW.  Kiss your eUnit or TMCC driver board goodbye.  If you are trying to run one of these TMCC one stall and you are going to wipe out your motor driver board. I am guessing that cost was the governing factor. Mabuchi makes this motor by the millions Half the cordless drills in the world use this motor.  I would not doubt that they bought up a bunch of mfg. overruns.  Just a wild aaa guess this 30,000 rpm motor forced the decision to use the ridiculous 42:1 gearbox.  Cost cutting run amuck.   Other things which make you go Hmmmmm I wish others would count the turns on their Williams locos I am wondering if what I have observed is correct.  At one time or another I have owned over twenty Williams locos and did count the turns on every one of them and as far as I can tell they used two gearboxes  The infamous 42:1 and a 21:1.  The irony here is that all the locos which should have  a high top speed had the 42:1 box and the models of slower prototype locos such as the PRR B6 switcher and the Camelback have the 21:1 box. I am down to four Williams Steamers the PRR B6  0-6-0,  Camelback 4-6-0,  PRR L1s 2-8-2  and a N&W J 4-8-4.  The first three have the 21:1 gearing and the N&W  J has 42:1 gearing.  I think we could all live with the 42:1 box in the first three locos but the  "J" ?   21:1 would be just about perfect in the  J and  42:1 would not be bad in the 0-6-0 a loco which spent ninety percent of it's life under thirty miles per hour.  Now if this is not enough to fry your brain forget the Williams flywheel they have a .128 hole in the center and the motor shaft is .125 that three thousandths out of concentric is responsible for the crazy vibration that is amplified in the thin brass body shell.  The D shaft on the motor even makes it worse you can see a pronounced flywheel wobble at low speeds I have shimmed them with .001" shim brass and it helps but they still wobble.  A flywheel which runs true is half the cure and a motor with about 2 ohms static resistance would be the other half. Certainly no lower than 1.7 ohms which the Mabuchi 545 that I am using is. I have 3A polyfuse inline with the motor driving with TMCC motor drivers. Most TMCC driver boards are capable of 15V or close and a stall would be almost 9A which is cutting it more than close however that is much better than the 18.7A stall at 15V which the original motor would pull at stall.    What ever you do the original motor has to go .  You could opt for a $40 Pittman or a $9 mabuchi depends on how much you love the locomotive.         Drummer, as for the smoke unit all the Williams steamers came with a Seuthe smoke unit I don't think much of them. Cramming a cigarette down the stack would be more effective.  I think Williams was out of the brass business by the time the fan smoke units were designed.                                             j          

Wow John.  Of course if the loco didn't have four (4) rubber tires  the wheels would spin a little when it was overloaded, so you would never see that kind of current draw in real life.  For years, a cardinal rule of locomotive building and re-powering is that you don't weight a loco so heavily that the wheels can't spin when it's overloaded.  Add rubber tires, especially four of them, and who knows!  With gearing that low, the wheels might spin even with the tires.  But the current draw will be higher than it would with just two, or no tires at all.

If the OP really wants to make a descent locomotive out if this for simple, reliable conventional operation, two simple things to do: stick a Pittman in it, and a MTH PS1 smoke unit......Both easy installs with minimum tools....I’d be willing to bet at a descent cruising voltage, it’ll make great smoke, and cruise for ever...no John A & Ted, it won’t do warp speed, but it’ll do 20-25 mph very nicely, which is moving along nicely for a toy train.....and with a 9XXXX Pittman it’ll be right in that motor’s power band, so it’ll hum along with out crying......the only thing I could possibly see need tweaking would be the smoke resistor in the PS1, if it’s too much smoke, knock the resistor back...

Pat

I know the old Williams draw a lot of power, I never figured out what the reason was, just knew it wasn't going to work with the command upgrades.  I dropped in a Mabuchi 555 into a couple of them, simply because it was a bolt-in fit, and it was a much better motor.  Not a Pittman, but easier to fit.  The Pittman would have required new mounting holes and drilling out the flywheel for the larger shaft, something that I wasn't keen on doing.   The specific 555 motors I was using had an 8,000 RPM top end, which for the 44:1 gearbox ended up being about 43 scale MPH.

@Ted S posted:

Wow John.  Of course if the loco didn't have four (4) rubber tires  the wheels would spin a little when it was overloaded, so you would never see that kind of current draw in real life.  For years, a cardinal rule of locomotive building and re-powering is that you don't weight a loco so heavily that the wheels can't spin when it's overloaded.  Add rubber tires, especially four of them, and who knows!  With gearing that low, the wheels might spin even with the tires.  But the current draw will be higher than it would with just two, or no tires at all.

Ted that 42:1 gear box will peal a rubber tire off, like you peal a potato, if it is not glued on. The motor is never really loaded up on any of these 42:1 Williams locos they could get along with a 385 motor just fine. I think the ultimate upgrade would be a Maxon coreless the size of a 385.  Pat I don't run trains very fast and I could live with 25mph on a freight loco especially on a switcher but a passenger loco should at least be able to run quietly at 50mph.  Pittman does make some motors which will twist fast enough to do that.  The closed case will keep the whine inside but the one thing that concerns me is the duty cycle with no vents to let the heat out.  Your going to need 14,000 rpm to get to 50mph with 1.5" drivers and 42:1. The only way I know to deal with the heat in a closed case is a coreless motor but your not supposed to twist them that fast not because of heat or current draw their problem is the cup shaped armatures at high RPM set up standing waves and it deforms possibly causing the armature to rub on the field. Knowing this I have tested one, running it without a load, for almost an hour at 20K so far no problems. I have a mabuchi 545 in my J chassis right now but think I will stick a Maxon in it and give it a test drive.  I need to work out the linkage to the gearbox.                            j

One little problem with the Maxon Coreless motor they detail in their literature.  Virtually all the command stuff uses PWM for the motor drive.  I imagine that back-EMF would be minimal, so forget about ERR Cruise.