What am I doing wrong?

[Retiredandfree]

Running a Williams BL-2 diesel locomotive on a 40x80 layout of MTH  Fast Trax with a MTH Z controller and transformer.  Locomotive runs fine, but headlamp barely lights.  Adding any lighted cars (passenger, Lionel revolving light car, etc) = same result--lamps in lighted cars very dim, barely light.   If I increase throttle on Z controller, lights brighten somewhat, but locomotive runs too fast to take any curve.  I don't know what to do.

Martin

[rtraincollector]

First off Williams need to be rewired in serries that will give you lower speeds and able to get a little higher power so you can get a brighter light. You might also look into led lights to take the place of what you have in there now.

[Retiredandfree]

Thanks.  I'm setting this up with my young grandson and we are both neophytes.  Can you please explain "rewired in series?"

[rtraincollector]

If you take the shell off you will see 2 wires going to each engine you need to leave one wire going to the left side of the front motor then rune a wire from the right side to the left side of the rear engine ( disconnect the wires on this run that connect to the board( so now you should remove the wire going from board to front right and left rear motor. ( I recommend unsoldering them from the motor and putting tape on them so should you want to return them to original you can) then there should be a wire from your right side of the rear motor going to the board this will give you lower speeds and better realist take offs and you will get a little better lights as it will take a little more power to get to the speed you want. Now not sure how much more it will light them up. Thats why I came up with also led lights they take less power and are more bright.

[nickaix]

What he said. The idea is to make the electrical current flow through both motors before returning to its starting point. The way it is wired from the factory is called parallel:

+........O....... -      +........O....... -

(The "O" is the motor) What you want is series wiring:

+.........O.........O......... -

Two motors wired in series will take twice the voltage to operate as two wired in parallel. Electricity is funny!

[sir james I]

OR,,,,you can replace the bulbs with 12 or 14 volt ones. The easy fix.