@GG1 4877 posted:My father does a lot of my repairs as he has the interest, the skills, and the time to do it in his retirement and he has replaced the tubing on a number of HO brass locomotives with fishtank tubing with good success. I have this locomotive I bought second hand also and have the same issue. It was a long time ago and it went on the shelf without much further inspection and then I transitioned my PRR to 2 rail. I might look into this solution as well to at least get it running well and then convert it to 2 rail so it can keep a spot on my PRR roster.
I think that I would sell that one and get a used Max Gray one instead.