Recently I bought some Marx trains. Included in my purchases was a pair of Santa Fe 21 diesels and the 801 Illinois Central Gulf switcher. I've tested out both engines and they run pretty good...however, after about 15-20 minutes of running, they start to smell and smoke starts rolling out from underneath! It almost looks as if these engines have a smoke unit in them...
Both times this has occurred I quickly stopped the train and examined the engines. Nothing appears out of the ordinary except the wheels and body are hot for several minutes afterwards. I opened up and cleaned the motor brushes on the 801, greased the axles, oiled joints, etc. I even got the e-unit to briefly function before getting stuck in forward again, lol. This seemed to fix its smoke problem, but when I put the shell back on and added 4 freight cars it did the same thing after 15 or so minutes of running. It would also slow down somewhat.
I'm guessing this is the motor overheating for some reason. It seems kind of strange since both the 801 and 21 do the exact same thing - yet all my recently purchased steam engines (stack smoking 1666, 333, and 490) run perfectly with no issues whatsoever. I didn't think there was that much difference in Marx motors. Does anybody have any thoughts at what this might be, and what could be done to correct it?
