My Santa Fe SD-90 quit yesterday, it just died. After checking everything I pulled the battery and put it on charge for 12 hours (according to the instructions with the charger). Now all seems to be fine. My question is will the battery discharge itself when operated at slow speed? I generally like to operate at 4 to 5 volts and my concern is that is not enough power to keep the battery charged.
I would replace the battery with a BCR and then you won’t have the dead battery problem. At the 5 year mark of all my PS-1 locos I replaced the batteries with BCR’s instead of another battery. These lightly used locos have been running for more than 5 years now without a hiccup. They may only see the tracks a couple times a year.