The problem with chopped sine wave is not the motor, but rather the electronic E-units. Some of them don't like it. Some vintages of MTH Proto One do not like to start/boot up with chopped wave power, but once thay are started/booted they are happy and run fine.
I do not know the technical reasons for this, but always suspected some poor/short sighted design engineering or maybe just malice on the part of the designer.