New to the hobby, trying to restore my father's pre-WWII Lionel-Ives locomotive. I disassembled what is left of the loco and have carefully cleaned everything and placed the order for a few misc replacement parts, like drive wheels. I'm starting to put it all together to be ready when the wheels get here. I'm good at gears, axles, etc but know just about nothing of AC motors and "e-units". I am replacing all the wires inside the loco because every wire had serious breaches in the insulation, if there was any insulation left. I don't know if this is due to some over voltage/current condition or if the insulation just breaks down, this particular loco hasn't run in at least 30 years. My questions:
- Some of the wires I am replacing are single conductor, some are stranded. Can I replace all with stranded? What difference does it make?
- What is the level of current transferred around inside the train? All the wires in there when I started seem to be 22 or 24 AWG which seems small to me. I realize there are no wires more than half a foot long, but really! The transformers I read about are 200W or 300W. If the train is running at less than 20 V and 200 W, that is a lot of current for a 24 AWG wire.
Any remedial electricity/electronics resources out there?
TIA,
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