What does the Marklin part 600780 kondensator ( condenser) do ? Does this separate the brushes ? Any help would be much appreciated. My Marklin 8800 0-6-0 didn't have one when I pulled it apart for cleaning . Is this a critical part ? willc. :question:
It is a small capacitor that is sandwiched between two metal contacts. It is there to store a small amount of energy help with any small intermittent loss of contact with the rails, but practically speaking it's so small that it is useless. You can run without this part, but if the metal contacts for the capacitor are there, you will need to insert a small piece of plastic in its place to avoid a short. I have run a few of mine without this part without any problems or noticeable loss in performance. It's the round thing in this image: http://zscale.org/articles/pictures/fivepole_gearpuller0.jpg You can also go to Radio Shack, buy one of those brown disk capacitors, cut the leads off, scrape the paint off to expose the contacts, Then shove that in there. The Marklin part is the same thing without the protective coating.
I believe it is a capacitor used for brush arcing. If you can find one I'd put it in. I believe it helps prolong the life brushes.
The capacitor was a requirement in in Germany and later all CE countries as an RFI suppressor, the spinning motor armature and brushes when making and breaking contact act like or simulate a small spark cap transmitter, the capacitor is there to suppress those spurious emissions that could put lines across your TV and a buzz on your radio, This is from the days of open ganged tuning capacitors in our TV tuners and tuning circuits of our radios, it is not as big a problem today with the digital tuners in our TV's and radios and much tighter engineering specs to suppress these spurious bits of noise/interference from all sorts of household electric appliances.
