Lionel LTI Berkshire Chassis Northern Problem?

The problem with the Northerns (mostly the Rock Island from 1987 and Lackawanna from 1988) was that their armatures easily burnt out, and had to be replaced, which was rather tricky. I forgot which magazine had an article to fix it, but Lionel hasn't really repeated the semi-scale unstreamlined Northern since the Northern Pacific model of 1992, which is a shame.

All of the Berkshire models (including the offshoot Mikado like yours) were pretty much trouble free.

Interesting observations so far; I have the Rock Island and it is one of my best runners. I've not had the well documented bearing issues with mine.

I also had the Southern Mikado mentioned above that pulled the FARR IV set. It always sounded like a coffee grinder and nothing I could do to it EVER changed that issue with mine.