About half a year ago I attempted to rewire my 253 which had all the original wiring with barely any insulation to prevent a short. As I replaced the old wiring, there was one wire that went from the motor to the pickup roller assembly that I Just couldn't remove because of how the wire is sandwiched between the bottom of the motor and the top of the pickup roller assembly. At the time I didn't want to accidently break the Bakelite piece that holds the pickup roller assembly together, so I got some shrinkwrap tubing and slided it onto that wire, hoping that would act as a short term solution to the problem. Then I finished rewiring and put the 253 back together and put it on the track for a test run. I decided to have it pull an early 603 and 604 passenger cars and about 5 mins in the 253 running near full throttle the 253 caught on FIRE! I carefully took it off the track and blew the fire out, then took it apart to see what i did wrong. Other than the armature and brushes turned black, I didn't see why it caught fire. The wheels spun without any resistance and the shrink wrap tubing was perfectly intact so I cleaned the armature and brushes and applied lube and grease. I run it without the passenger cars the next day, again within 5 min it caught fire again! So after that experience, I have as a display piece on my shelf in my room on my dresser s since then. I would like to know what motor I need to get my 253 running again. The couplers are a transitionsal type that accept latch and slot couplers and the headlights are cast and the 253 has a manual reverse which i find really awesome
I'd double check that all the wiring is routed where it's supposed to go, and that you're using wire of an apropriate gauge for the current that the motor is drawing. It sounds like you did clean out any dust, debris, and excess oil in the motor, which could have been another source of the problem. My best guess is that somewhere in the loco, there's either a loose connection that's getting hot, a wire that's overheating from having too much current pass through it, or perhaps there's some sort of short circuit. Without being able to give it a visual inspection, I'm really just guessing based off of what I know about the internals of a 253.
-Ellie
El Fixes Things I'd double check that all the wiring is routed where it's supposed to go, and that you're using wire of an apropriate gauge for the current that the motor is drawing. It sounds like you did clean out any dust, debris, and excess oil in the motor, which could have been another source of the problem. My best guess is that somewhere in the loco, there's either a loose connection that's getting hot, a wire that's overheating from having too much current pass through it, or perhaps there's some sort of short circuit. Without being able to give it a visual inspection, I'm really just guessing based off of what I know about the internals of a 253. -Ellie
As far as the gauge wire I used I used 18 gauge. When I first purchased the 253 at a local trainshow a year ago the previous owner said that it did have a short somewhere but he couldn't pinpoint what was causing the short however, when I ran it at home the 253 ran perfectly fine so I just shrugged it off until 6 months later I remembered what he said about a short and then proceeded to take it apart and rewire the 253 and just to clarify, the one wire I couldn't remove that had none of its insulation left was what I believe was what the previous owner was talking about and the 253 was running fine before I disassembled it to rewire it.
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