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I have an engine with Williams True-Sounds to repair, and I'd like to get some information about triggering the sounds.  The horn works, and I get prime mover sounds, but I don't get the bell or the crew-talk.  Also, does anyone have the manual for this system?  I'm curious how you triggered the crew-talk or is it just timed?

 

 

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John,

 

Can you take the shell off your engine and tell me does it have QSI on it?

If so the QSI system for the Crown Edition diesel engines has engine sounds(engine revving goes up as more voltage is applied to the track, decreases accordingly too). To get the bell you must be near 8 volts or less, also the bell quits if you exceed a certain voltage but comes back on when you decrease to a certain voltage, the horn sounds as you have more voltage applied, must press horn or whistle control at higher speed to get the horn. Forgot to mention this, try using a low voltage to start out with as this triggers the announcement of "Leaving on track ten."

As far as I know there was no crew talk, crew talk is either Lionel or MTH feature, unless an owner had it upgraded, not a Williams factory option.

FYI; I knew a former independant Williams dealer back when it was Williams only.

 

I don't have a manual for Williams trains, usually it was provided with the engine when bought brand new, if it had one.

From my experiance with Williams they do best on an MTH Z-1000 transformer.

 

The new WBB has a new poly-morphic sound circuit, allows two sounds at one time if you have dual controls for bell and horn on your transformer.

 

Lee Fritz

Last edited by phillyreading

The box it came in says "Live sound recordings of engineer requesting clearance from dispatcher".

 

I assumed that would have to be triggered.  I've never tinkered with the True-Sounds stuff, it appears it's about 20 years old, maybe died of old age?

 

I'll take the shell off and post back.  This was a secondary issue, the powered unit is overheating it's board, no binding of motors, so I am looking into that first.

The worst that happened to me with any Williams engine, the reverse board would stay locked in the direction I wanted, so I replaced it with a bridge rectifier.

John, take out the circuit boar and bypass with a bridge rectifier to see if the board is good or not. The bridge rectifier, 6 amp 50 volt, only costs around $6.00 to $8.50 at Radio Shack and is the cheapest way to test the motors without hurting them. The bridge rectifier supplies DC voltage to the motors, that is what the circuit board does as well except it has forwardand reverse and nuetral.

 

Lee Fritz

Originally Posted by SRChris:

I also have one of the Engines with the true sounds that Lee described. it seam to be hit or miss with the Clearance form the Dispatcher. i would love to find out more about how to trigger it if possible.

 

You need to have a low voltage(five volts to seven volts delivered to the track to activate the sounds; "Clear to leave on track ten." Try an MTH Z-1000 transformer or command control using track voltage setting to get a lower voltage when starting out and wait up to 15 seconds, the announcement will play at a lower voltage only!

 

Lee Fritz

 

I think I sort of figured it all out.  The bell rings with the whistle switch at low voltage, at higher voltages the prime mover ramps up and the horn blows with the whistle switch.  The announcement seems to just happen at low voltage with no apparent trigger, and it is flaky.  I don't know what, if anything, would positively trigger it.  However, it did ring the bell, toot the horn, and do the announcements, so I suspect that's as good as it gets.  This one also has the sound in the unpowered unit.

 

As far as the major issue, the reverse board was cooked because one of the motor leads was shorted to the motor case (frame ground).  A new reverse board fixed that.

 

The way I test motors is put it up on my JAX blocks and connect DC directly to the motor from a bench supply (after lifting one lead from the motor).  If they run fine in both directions that way, I figure the motor is probably not the issue.

 

Thanks for the insights folks.  I was really hoping to get the instructions so I could give them to the owner, but I have to first convince him to not run it with the CW-80, that was wacky here as far as operation.  It also hated the variable channel of my TIU, but the MRC PurePower 270 worked fine, as I expected it would.  Obviously, this was designed in the days of pure sine wave transformers.

 

Marty, if you have the instruction sheet, I'd sure appreciate a scan of it.

I test the motors on JAK blocks wired directly to a bench supply where I can measure current and voltage.  If the two work in both directions with the same relative currents, I'm pretty sure the motors are not bad.  Combine that with checking for any binding, and you've 99% eliminated a motor or mechanical issue for this kind of problem.  Turns out that one of the motor leads was shorted to the motor case, and I suspect that took out one of the driver transistors.  The reverse board drivers were running hot even in neutral, that's certainly not normal.   A new reverse board and the engine is happy again.

 

I agree that if an unloaded motor is pulling anything more than a couple hundred MA, it's most likely bad.

I have not heard the Crew Talk version of the older Williams engines. Does it have the QSI sound board?

 

The one that has the announcement "leaving on track ten" is a start-up only feature, and will only work at low start-up voltage. It has the QSI sound board. This is part of an F-7 ABA set of three diesels that I have, the unpowered B unit has the QSI sound circuit board inside and center rail pick-up rollers. These are from the Crown Edition era that I have.

 

Lee Fritz

Last edited by phillyreading
Originally Posted by prrhorseshoecurve:

I have some older Williams F7's made by Samhongsa with the "true sounds" in it. I beielve the crew talk happened at prime mover sounds being "idle" for about 10-15 seconds. The crew talk activated aoutomatically. I still love the "true Sounds today and would by another if it came across da bay or in this buy/sell forum!

I will have to check my older F-7's to see if they do that, I know that on start up there is the leaving on track ten announcement, but did not know if there was crew talk when it sat idle for 15 seconds or longer. I have two complete sets of ABA F-7 diesels, with the station announcements and engine revving feature and swiped a sound set-up from another set that I traded for some passenger cars.

Lee Fritz

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