Hi all friends!

Today I´ve solved something that´s been bothering me for a few years. I´ve solved the problem (temporary) and that has saved me some money. and I don´t think I´m the only one who´ve had problems with motors.

I´ve got quite an collection, but not any real layout to run my trains on so I change trains alot. During the years I´ve had some problems with 3 of my engines. The problems were just mechanical and here are the following problems:

37624 F7 Pennsylvania

Problem: The train was running very bad and I found out only one of the loco was pulling. When I stopped the wheels on the running A unit with my fingers, the other A unit started to run. I noted that the magnet on the bad A-unit was misaligned.

Solution: I changed the misaligned magnet with another loco. The problem is that 37624 is designed in a way that if one motor meets to much resistance, the other motor will give more pulling power. As there was too much resistance in the problem A-unit, the other A-unit pulled both itself and the A and B-units.
The loco which I gave the misaligned magnet runs without problems.

26727 Tågkompaniet / 37415 Green Cargo

Problem: The engines were showing strange behaviours. When running they would reach some of their max speed and then slow down and stop. The 37415 didn´t even start. Also the decoders became very hot in just a few minutes. I´ve done some expansive tests and changed decoders with other locos and motor parts to see what affected the engines and I´ve found out what the problem was. You can also notice this problem by putting a screwdriver to one of the brushes and you´ll notice that it jumps.

Solution: The anchor has got some misaligned copperplates. My anchors had one each. If you hold the anchor to the light and start spinning it with your fingers you can see if one copperplate is higher than the other. This will create alot of resistance and the decoder will turn of the motor outputs. I used a tweezer to lower the faulty copperplate. You can also hold your fingers on the plates where the brushes will rotate and you will feel if there´s any problems.
It doesn´t take much misalignment on the anchor to cause a problem. The problem copperplate was about ½ mm. above the others and I could barely see it. This has caused engines to stop after just seconds when running. On the 37415 the problem copperplate was about 1½ mm. above the others and was clearly visible. The symptoms were that the engine didn´t run at all and was just making a clicking sound.


If you look on the picture, I´ve illustrated the problem with the anchor. One of the 5 small plates are a little bit higher. It hits the brushes very uneven and creates problems.

Now I´ll only have to find out how long this solution will work and what creates this problem?

I presume this can happen with any loco with 5-pole HEP, not just these models.

Thanks, David, information may be useful one day.