Old Lionel guy with MTH questions

You can put these on the tracks and power up with the battery, just don't power down for at least 15-20 minutes to allow the battery to charge.  Of course, you can also charge the battery in an off-line charger, which is my preference.  I have the MTH Battery Charger, and I've added a 9V battery clip and the power connector so I can charge either the 9V or 3V battery packs.

I can only speak for the post war ZW. I run all my trains with a Post War LW and everything runs. A modern MTH transformer should also run everything plus be able to best use the features of your PS1 engines. To charge the battery you can just place the engines on the track and apply power. For PS1 don't do anything else until you are sure its charged or you can get a ni-cad charger and charge the batteries before you put them in, the latter method is probably best.

Pete

take the advise that John and Pete both said...........or you will have PS-0......trust me!...all these guys have helped me out a bunch!

Thanks again to everyone for their input.

Another question:  if I merely want to test a loco, can I put in a regular Duracel 9 volt battery?

I don't think that is a good idea, something about regular 9 volt batteries don't have enough voltage to operate the system or the fact that they are not rechargeable. ...not 100% sure ....but wait till one the mth factory guys or one the guys that knows a lot about them on here answers that for you....I could be wrong

It's acceptable for a brief test, but do NOT leave it in there!  The attempted charge will eventually damage the battery and likely the charging circuit.  If you just want to test operation, it won't hurt anything, the charging current is pretty low.

john, correct me if I'm wrong, but does he need to check the voltage of whatever battery he is gonna put in there for a minimum of 8.4v or something like that?...or is that not an issue?......I wanna learn something here too....

The rechargeable battery should be a 7-cell NiMh battery, they have a nominal voltage of 8.4 volts.  A new alkaline 9V battery has plenty of voltage, around 9.5 volts, it's just that they don't take to recharging and it'll eventually kill them and potentially the charging circuit.