I have had a fair number of Lionel fields with melted coil forms on my bench. In most cases the coil was fine.
Your coil looks clean, and the insulation on what is visible looks healthy. As John recommended, check the coil with an ohmmeter. The resistance should be between 0.8 and 0.9 ohms.
One time I decided it would be a good idea to use a low oven to dry out a 736 field that I had just carefully washed. Didn't turn out to be such a good idea. The coil form melted.
Fortunately the coil still worked fine, the operation of the engine was unaffected.
I wonder if that is what happened to your field. Or maybe a chemical reaction from some cleaner.
That does not really look like heat damage from a hot coil to me.
In my experience, when a coil gets hot enough to melt the coil form, the insulation on the windings is usually discolored or burnt.
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