I sat down today and took apart the Maerklin crane from last year's surprise box. After tossing out the original 110V transformer and hooking up real 16V AC, one motor didn't make a beep and the other one sounded just sick.
It turned out that both motors mostly needed outside cleaning and some gear lubricant. Easy. The flat armature commutator on each motor was clean and the brushes in good condition.
With the motors running, I found that the hook cable would not retract and something sounded stuck. When I popped off the cab roof the problem was obvious:
I untied the knot on the cable drum, pulled the string out, and retied the string using tweezers since the space is just to tight for normal fingers.
Soon after I connected the cables to the control box, Pascal came by and tried out the electro-magnet shuffling screws around my work space.
Load and unload scrap metal from flat cars in a train!
This crane is easily 30 years old and after some light maintenance performs just fine. Fun on a Sunday evening.
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