Bill Cahill informed me that someone in the past used a cheap and wrong replacement transformer on this set. He's seen this happen before. Whoever it was, didn't snip the jumper on the damper tube (which is mandated when even attempting this), and that basically, a cascade failure must have happened the last time this set was tried back in the late 60s or so.
He told me that basically, the chassis is junk. Fortunately, I've got another chassis to swap components and tubes to.
(sigh)....all that work
