MTH PS2 engine battery problems

Yes. I bet it would. I've seen all sorts of stuff happen. Engines get scrambled. A weak battery is bad but a dead one seems to be a killer.

What version of PS2 is it? 5 volt or 3 volt.

Having so many MTH engines I have spares on hand to swap out for troubleshooting. Yet I still have to work out what's actually wrong. I only run some of my G scale in the summer and my 2 rail mainly in the winter. Some engines don't even get used in a season. It keeps me on my toes.

@yardtrain posted:

We just got a PS2 engine that was supposed to work. We tested the engine and got no sound. It just went in reverse when the power hit the track.

We tested with another engine to make sure it was all hooked up correctly and it turned on fine in DCS  

We ended up opening the tender and found it had a BCR replacement. Once we got the BCR to somewhat hold a charge by hooking it up to a transformer. We turned on the track power again and we’re able to get sound in conventional mode. It looks like the BCR is defective or dead. The voltage drops dramatically after charging it. It won’t hold a charge.

Would a dead battery or capacitor prevent it from going into command mode?

BCR's have little capacity to begin with so when the engine goes through a shutdown sequence the voltage drops pretty quickly. My experience is that a fully charged BCR will have enough capacity to complete about one or two shutdown sequences when dropping the track voltage with the sounds on.

Most of my 5 volt PS2 engine will power up in DCS mode and make sounds but won't go into forward or reverse when the battery is dead.  I've never had a dead or weak battery kill an engine. Even with no battery or BCR installed the engine should still respond to DCS in some capacity.

you are probably better with no battery than a dead one in a MTH engine.

The sounds can be killed or other weird occurrences.

@Engineer-Joe posted:

Yes. I bet it would. I've seen all sorts of stuff happen. Engines get scrambled. A weak battery is bad but a dead one seems to be a killer.

What version of PS2 is it? 5 volt or 3 volt.

Having so many MTH engines I have spares on hand to swap out for troubleshooting. Yet I still have to work out what's actually wrong. I only run some of my G scale in the summer and my 2 rail mainly in the winter. Some engines don't even get used in a season. It keeps me on my toes.

I mostly run MTH g scale. So I have replaced many batteries with capacitors. I am fairly new to O scale- and never seen such an odd behavior before with an MTH engine. I am waiting for a capacitor in the mail to replace it with

If it's a 5 volt board, don't run it again until you swap out the battery. You should verify the speaker is good on any engine with this issue. A shorted speaker can wipe out any board.

Can you give us a model number?