601 Seaboard issues.

[Robert G5224]

Good afternoon all! New to the forum and new to model trains. I have been lugging these trains around with me since 1977 hoping i would have the opertunity to make these work again as they did when my older brother had them. Finally had some space and set up a small 6' oval track to see what was what. The 601 Seaboard i have just sat on the track and hummed with no motion front or back. Grabbed my Lionel book and went to the internet to see what i could find. I ultimatley removed the brush cover and cleand, grease, and oiled everything from top to bottom. I put the unit back on the track and it seemed to run pretty smooth going forward. When i hit the revurse button on the transformer, it goes to a loud hum but no movement for the most part. rocking the transformer up and down will sometimes make it move but when it does, it stops. If i give it a little nudge with my hand, it will go another couple feet. 

Any ideas what else i can do to fix the issue? I have ordered new brushes but not here yet. I also noticed that the back arm on the collector assembley doesn't have a lot of spring left in it. Definitely not near the spring the front arm has. Could this be the problem?

Also looking for a good source for new and used parts. If any one has a good source they are willing to share, I would greatly appriciate it. 

Thank you in advance

[El Fixes Things]

I definitely think the weak spring for the collector assembly could be contributing to your issues.
On some locomotives, new brushes make a very big difference- if there is a lot of vertical play in the armature, then in one direction, the commutator of the motor is much closer to the brush plate than it is when moving the other way- hard to explain, but the result is that if the commutator is further away, the tension of the brushes against the commutator is much weaker, so it may run poorly in one direction because of that. 

I have personally ordered parts from Jeff Kane aka The Train Tender, and it was a very pleasant experience, he has great prices too. Highly reccomended!

Good luck with the 601, I imagine once you identify exactly what the issue is, you'll be well on your way to having a nice runing loco.

One more thing to be wary of, because the 601 has magnetraction small steel and iron things can get stuck to the wheels and potentially wedge themselves between the drive gears, which would prevent the loco from running. Doesn't sound like this is the issue in this case though, based off your description of what the locomotive is doing.

-Ellie