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Maintaining Your Lionel Trains
Below you will see two views (top and bottom) of an actual brush
plate from an early 671 Turbine. In most cases you will be cleaning a
brush plate that still has wires soldered to it. Unless it is
exceedingly dirty and grimy, there's no need to unsolder it and dip it
into a solvent to clean it, you can use the swab sticks. Nonetheless we
will run through a couple of scenarios with you.
Let's presume for the purposes of this discussion that you are
performing maintenance on a motor that is oil soaked and grimy. Nothing
new, it happens frequently! Our recommendation would be to unsolder the
wires from the brush plate (tag them if you are unsure where to
re-solder them) and then remove the motor from the engine. Now remove
the brush plate and remove the brushes and springs from the brush tubes.
Lionel refers to these tubes as brush wells in the picture shown in the
previous page.
Next, pour some mineral spirits into a small plastic container. Ideally
the container should be about 6 inches or so, round or square, and about
1 1/2 inches deep with a tight fitting lid. Hold the brush plate over
the container and dip one of the solder paste brushes into the Mineral
Spirits and clean the inside and outside of the brush plate. Next, dip
one of the cotton swabs in the Mineral Spirits and clean the inside of
the brush tubes. Use as many swabs as is necessary to get the brush
tubes clean. Now dry the brush plate of excess cleaner and set it aside
to dry.
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Now take a look at the motor housing and armature.
There are a couple of ways to approach an oily,
grimy motor housing, especially when it is really
filthy. One would be to remove the armature from the
housing and clean both the housing and armature in
the Mineral Spirits, remove the excess cleaner and
set them aside to dry. Some of Lionel motors have a
pinion gear pressed onto the armature shaft such as
the example we have used here, the early 671
Turbine, or the 1946 version of the 726 Berkshire.
If you are lacking the necessary tools to remove and
reinstall the pinion gear, we have to work around
the problem.
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