Regarding PMDC motors attached to two different gear boxes
All the current ratings, no load, rated, max, of motor 2 are about 2x that of motor 1. The fact that it's taking twice the current of motor 1 when driving a load sounds consistent with all it's trying to tell you on the data sheet.

Note that motor 1 has about half the speed at the same voltage, which means its torque constant is about 2x that of motor 2. So you would expect half the current in motor 1 for the same torque.

Sounds like motor 1 is the one for the job.

So now the most difficult part is political. Having chosen motor 2 for the wrong reasons, does anybody have to lose face to choose motor 1 instead? I do not lie, after 4 decades of lab politics, this is often the most difficult part of any project, when you're halfway through and it suddenly dawns on the team that someone's made a wrong choice. Can you swallow pride and fix it, or do you do a Trump (other politicians are available), say nothing's wrong, and soldier on? Perhaps sneak into the workshop in the middle of the night and remove one of the brushes of motor 2, 'oh look, it's stopped working, now we'll have to use motor 1!'