I've seen lots of dried out wiring which kept working just fine. Some folks would gripe because I replaced the dried out stuff. ZW's and KW's were famous for dried out power cords.
I guess those folks who wanted the dried out power cords on transformers were either going to change the cords themselves or were just going to put the transformer on a shelf.
I think it would be unwise to use a transformer with a bad (dried out) cord.
The loco was the "best smoker" I had ever seen.... a few minutes later I had a 4 inch stack fire! Far Too Much Realism.
In the early to mid 1970's Lionel released a bulletin describing a problem with flames coming out of the smokestack on certain engines when they were operated at higher voltages with Postwar transformers. They wrote that the engines were not designed to be run at those voltages, and described the issue as harmless. I forget whether there was a fix. I'd have to find the bulletin.
