Thought I’d share my father’s email reply to the news that a stepdown fixed the issue.
All I got back was:

“You had got onto a wrong track and kept plodding on to a nothing answer.”

“What goes on in your Cowboy Country I know not, but simple Ohms Laws and expansions from them are without question the foundations of Electricity theory.”

Take it he’s not a fan of wiring transformers in series then.