Is it possible to burn out a Lionel pullmor?

[trigtrax]

Your coil has overheated to the point of melting the coil form. This may or may not indicate real damage to the coil itself.
When coil insulation breaks down and a turn or two short what you create is a shorted stepdown transformer. The current in the shorted turns skyrockets and the heat generated is usually enough to melt and burnout the wires. That's what will kill your motor. If you clean it up, lubricate it and it runs more than likely your coil isn't shot.
If your running Postwar Cars with this engine you also want to service the wheels. Clean out all the gunk that's built up between wheels and axles and lubricate sparingly. If done right you'll see a great difference if you spin a wheel with your finger. You want to keep friction at a minimum for older trains.

[3railguy]

It's hard to tell without seeing it. The motor and gear train in that series of Alco was cheapened considerably. From sloppy mechanicals that cause excessive heat when worn to cheap plastic used in the motors that distort from excessive heat. I'm not sure what to say about the premature brush wear. My advice is to clean, re-lubricate everything, and install new brushes. Keep running it but watch for excessive heat and brush wear. If the problem persists, your best option may be to replace the motor and power truck with a good used one or replace the entire engine. Replacing the bearings, bushings, and armature is an option too but that often costs as much as replacing the entire engine since 218's don't command a lot of money.

[msacco]

For the past few months I've been running my postwar alco 218 single motored magnetraction engine pulling 4 cars up and down my loop that includes the insane lionel testle set. This loop is divided so that there is an increase in voltage going up and a decrease going down.
Well, I opened the alco just to take a look see and saw graphite powder everywhere with brushes that obviously have been worn down quite a bit
. Okay I can just replace them but that was pretty fast. I also noted that the copper colored winding on the pullmor has a distorted side. By this i mean the plastic flange on the end of the spool. It looks like it heated up on one side and melted a bit.
Wow, could this kind of wear and tear really burn out this unit?

Mike Sacco