This is a beautiful Märklin H64 13041 No. 1 gauge loco & tender (high voltage ca 1926) that came to me from the UK with major wiring problems. It's been on my bench for weeks.



When I got it I found that what was left of the original wiring was disconnected and hanging free inside the boiler. The Märklin 64 series reverser, which is very similar to a Lionel pendulum reverse unit, was also disconnected.



After disassembly and a lot of study, I found that the reverse unit is seriously damaged, perhaps beyond repair, unless I can find parts for it or a new replacement. I decided to bypass the reverser and hard wire the loco to run in forward.



I figured out the motor/lighting circuit with some experimentation. The loco runs on about 30 to 60 volts (for safety I use ONLY an ISOLATION variac) with headlamps wired in series with the motor but including a shunting resistance of 50 Ohms across the lamp circuit. For the resistance I used two 100 ohm wire wound resistors wired in parallel that offer excellent heat dissipation. Heat shrink tubing was applied to the original motor wiring.



Once I got it all wired up I put it on the track. It made one loop then ran only intermittently.



Back it went to the bench, and I took it all apart again.



After much investigation I found a broken connecting wire on one pole of the armature.



So I carefully repaired that with a needle point iron and stabilized all the armature connections with epoxy. I reassembled it and back to the track. Again, one pass and it sputtered.

So it went back on the bench and got disassembled once again. The armature tested out fine: no shorts and no open circuits.



But further bench tests of the motor under power revealed an intermittent open circuit in between the grounded brush tube and the frame! This baby was really being difficult! But I don't give up easily. Everything runs here. So the latest problem was fixed.







And now, here she is, this fine 85 year old lady strutting her stuff:

Hi, Jim,
you did a good Job on her: now you have a Replica and an original PLM Loco working ! And both are running nicely.

cheers joe