I had a great success this week – at least for me. I have an E41 loco which I was given as a second hand Christmas present in around 1965. It was always a good runner and I was very proud of it in my youth. It spent about 25 years in its box while I took a break from modelling (career, divorce, falling in love again). Over the last year I have built a new M Track layout. When I tried my E41 it ran slowly at first but would then speed up. I gave it some lubrication. This did not help and progressively it got slower. Under test conditions with the body off I noted smoke. It was running hot. This week I stripped it down. Opened the motor and took the rotor out. The gears were free. Put the rotor in. Everything spun nicely. Reassembled the motor and bench tested it. After a while it got hot again. Took the motor apart again and realised the rotor was the hot part. What had happened was that, over time the gaps between the commutator elements on the rotor had got choked with carbon and were conducting. So all three lobes were energised to a degree all of the time. I used my finest precision screw driver to scrape the deposit out of what should have been a gap, reassembled the motor and my loco was back to its old self. So for those of you still running old analogue locos – if your loco starts running slow and hot check the rotor.

Toothpicks & Q-tips should be in every marklin-users toolbox...

Hi!
Also an potential problem for those running digital. And even worse: a dirty collector might kill decoders without overload protection.