Broken engine wire

Mike=A0G. wrote: I have a Lionel 50 Gang car that while cleaning I broke the wire that leads from the field assembly to the brush plate. The wire is about the size of a hair or single strand of wire. It is wrapped around the engine a zillion times and then connects. It just barely reaches the contact, it may not once I heat things up. Is there some way to add a length of wire to this? (Can I unwrap a length?) Any suggestions welcome.

------------------------------------------------------

Christopher Coleman's Tinplate Trains FAQ site might have an answer:

Here's the electrical page:

Bill Bill's Railroad Empire N Scale Model Railroad: History of N Scale: Links to over 700 helpful sites:

I repaired a Dremel Motor tool that had a similar problem many years ago. I had to work with tweezers, a sharp x acto blade and a good hot soldering iron with flux.

If you are manage to make the repair you should consider becoming a micro vasculature surgeon or limb reattachment specialist because it will require that type of skill.

First off, you will have to scrape off the enamel coating that is on the magnet wire which lead to the soldered point of the contact point of the armature. Find a similar guage magnet wire from a junk motor and scrape off the enamel coating (do this for a long length...about an inch or so). When both pieces of wire are clean and free of enamel coating, attempt to spirally wrap both ends together...this is where two good pointy sharp tweezers come into play. Once they are snuggly wrapped together, dab the wrapping with some soldering paste flux made for electrical use. With a hot, cleaned tip pencil point soldering iron that has been fluxed and dabbed with a thin rosin core solder bead, touch the tip of the soldering iron to the wire junction and the solder should flow instantaneously.

If you are successful, you will now have a longer wire extension from the armature that you can navigate to the contact point from which it originally was attached. Follow the original, wrapping, fluxing, and soldering at the contact point and you should be up and running again.

Practice with some scrap magnet wire until you have the soldering technique down to a science and you will be ready for micro surgery on the motor.

Good luck and be patient.

Ed