I get a lot of inquiries about “the copper piece on a locomotive.” They mean a toy train locomotive. Depending on the make of the train, there may be one copper piece on the motor, or there may be two.
Here’s what those pieces are called, how to find them, and how to care for them.
Marx locomotives and some older American Flyer and Ives locomotives have two copper pieces. On the underside of the locomotive there will be a copper pickup shoe that rides on the third rail of the track. Sometimes people call this a trolley pickup shoe or a trolley shoe. When this piece wears out, you need to either fix or replace it. You can replace the shoe or the whole pickup assembly. I prefer to just replace the shoe unless the assembly’s fiber board shows damage.
A well-worn Marx locomotive I picked up at a train show had a clever basement repair. Someone fashioned a replacement out of a piece of scrap copper and soldered it in place. It’s not the most elegant looking repair but it works fine. Before the Internet and Ebay, it was hard to find these parts, so someone improvised. If you have a Marx locomotive with a damaged fiber board, you could copy this approach to get it working again cheaply.
Most Lionel locomotives use rollers instead of shoes. Rollers create less drag, but shoes cost less and they clean the center rail nicely.
All electric motors have a copper piece called a commutator. Over time the commutator gets dirty and needs a good cleaning. Here’s a commutator cleaning job I did on a Lionel 2034, and a more thorough writeup of a Marx 999. Other makes of motors will vary slightly but the overall process is very similar.
David Farquhar is a computer security professional, entrepreneur, and author. He started his career as a part-time computer technician in 1994, worked his way up to system administrator by 1997, and has specialized in vulnerability management since 2013. He invests in real estate on the side and his hobbies include O gauge trains, baseball cards, and retro computers and video games. A University of Missouri graduate, he holds CISSP and Security+ certifications. He lives in St. Louis with his family.