These folks should be able to help you with the suitable small charger - they build them:

http://quickcharge.com/contact-us.html

However you will need a charger that has sufficient capacity for your battery rating. So if you have smaller batteries, you are set. Larger battery ratings will need a larger charger that probably requires 208V or more in order to deliver enough current. So one of these charges won't help you all that much if you have 800 amp hour batteries.

You need to deliver the volts per cell specified by the battery manufacturer and corrected for temperature. (Order temperature compensation if offered). Do this and your batteries have a much better chance of lasting a long time!

Richard R. Anderson
Northwest Railway Museum

I'm not looking for a charger capable of recharging depleted batteries. I am in need of a float charger to maintain already charged batteries in a charged condition. I will contact Quick Charge and see what they recommend.

Thanks.

Even a small 1 amp charger will charge and maintain even locomotive batteries. 1 amp will recharge an 800 amp hour bank in theory 800 hours, I always double the time allowed for inefficiencies. 1600 hour, 2 months. That may sound crazy long, but heck half the reason units batteries go dead is they sit for months at a time. Even a weekend excursion operation with a dead battery charge circuit on board could probably survive on a 1 amp charger.

Locomotive starting batteries are well served with a good float voltage (bubbles in the jars) when charging after being "worked" by starting the prime mover. Never hang on the layshaft for a quick start... let the batteries "feel" a good starting load so that they may recover. The bubbles will help agitate the electrolyte, but most importantly, keep the plates from "scaling". Service batteries with distilled water at every 92 day... you will lose water as the batteries gas... but you will have a set of batteries last you 15-20 years.

A little over a year ago, we purchased one of the select-a-charge units: http://quickcharge.com/select-a-charge- ... rgers.html

To help with desulfication like rcw7585 mentioned, definitely get one of these units with the built-in "energizer" feature.

In the long-distant past, I once revived a set of 20 year-old locomotive batteries by dosing the electrolyte with EDTA, and overcharging the one battery with the weak cell using a homemade external charger we had in our sandhouse.

After a day on charge, bubbling away "enthusiasticly", I would then slowly discharge the battery to dead status with a resistive load (lightbulb bank). I repeated this for a few weeks, and then attempted to "wash out" the weak cell with high pressure water to stir up what settled out in the bottom.

After washing all the sediment I could from the bad cells, I dosed the new electrolyte with EDTA as a prophylactic of sorts and to dissolve any crystals I could not free by rinsing the jar (I did not remove the jar from the battery, or remove the top of the jar.

Your mileage may vary.

http://members.shaw.ca/Craig-C/Na2SO4.html

Sodium Sulfate is better than the often used Epsom Salts methods. EDTA is a good choice but should be used along with any chemical solution as a last resort. Using a good electronic desulfator pulser is considered the first course of action.

We do this alot in home energy projects and there is alot of information on the web on such websites and forums.

I use old car batteries for my setup and have had mixed results with trying to recover old junk batteries.

Robert

Ironically, Randy, you have the biggest battery factory in the world an hour from you, the Tesla Gigafactory just east of Sparks. Shipping batteries to west central Nevada is like shipping sand to Arabia.

The real experts on mixing and matching batteries are the home-power off-grid* types. Generally the advice is "don't".**. Generally you want them to be the same type and size and roughly the same age. I don't like the idea of mixing 8 and 12 volt batteries unless they are designed to do so.

One of the problems is charging. It's important that the entire pack be used and charged uniformly. If you don't, then some cells will bottom out before others (mind you bottoming any lead battery is rather bad for it). Also, they will charge unevenly, with some cells topping up before others. Now the saving grace is that lead-acid batteries are dreadfully inefficient as they near full charge***. And so, your fullest cells will tend to charge inefficiently while your weaker cells catch up. This kind of overcharging can balance the pack.

The energy lost to inefficiency either makes heat or electrolyzes water into hydrogen and oxygen. That's why you need to keep an eye on your water. On a balanced battery with a modern 3-stage charge controller, water loss can be kept so low that sealed lead-acid batteries are possible.

The Quick-Charge units people have linked are 3-stage chargers.


* off-grid in the "effectively running on wind/solar" sense, not in the "fighting the government for the right to live in squalor" sense.
** Nickel family batteries are a notable exception.
*** other chemistries of battery, notably nickel-iron, get a bad rap for charging inefficiently. B the fact is, lead-acid is only efficient at charging in the midrange - over 80% state-of-charge, efficeincy gets positively awful, and a well-designed lead-acid system keeps the battery over 70% SOC, so a well used lead-acid is terribly inefficient most of the time.

What about having a couple of solar panels trickle charging the batteries when the locos sit for long periods of inactivity? Something going in to those bats are better than no charge at all.

Robert

Interesting thoughts.

But, Nevada has two state railroad museum sites. The one that most people think about is the one in Carson City and the older of the two. This is the one that is near Reno and Sparks.

Randy is Executive Director of the Southern Nevada State Railroad Museum located at Boulder City near both Las Vegas and Hoover Dam.

The principal location for obtaining the lithium in the United States for batteries is at Silver Peak about halfway between Las Vegas and Reno. Silver Peak takes its name from the silver that was mined there 150 years ago. More at: Silver Peak, Nevada This is probably one reason why Tesla decided on a manufacturing site near Sparks.

They haven't made any batteries yet, and they will be making Lith-ion only. That's all assuming that Tesla sticks around....

The problem that I see is finding a 64 volt charge controller that works off the variable DC input from solar panels. The idea of charging with solar would work quite well otherwise. Each 2x4 panel is rated at 200 watts and two of them would put out about 5 amps in good sun. This is enough for a trickle charger. Every sunny day would see the batteries get 4 to 5 amps for a few hours. Enough to keep them up to charge. But since 64 volt batteries are only used in a few applications and not at all in traditional solar installations nobody makes a 64 volt solar charge controller.

About the only locomotive that I know of that uses solar to charge its starting batteries is our GE 70 tonner centercab. It is on static display, but in the cab are four batteries, a charge controller and inverter setup. Five panels are mounted on an adjacent building and feed power to the charge controller. This setup provides our electrical power at Youngstown Steel Heritage. One of the locomotive's engines uses the battery power to start, and that engine provides 250 VDC power to the site as well as compressed air. The loco was built with a 32 volt system but the engine starts just fine on 24 volts.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uUb3FT_AqYg

Oh, so you're at that one Randy! I hope you continue their policy of leaving the bathrooms unlocked, that was a respite amidst a long transit from Flagstaff to Bakersfield. The static museum was perfectly enjoyable despite absence of staff.

Now I know which GP30 you're talking about. You won't have any trouble getting funding if you mention the unit in question is Union Pacific 844!

For 64V charge controllers look at MidNite Solar or possibly Morningstar. You'll need the higher end controllers that support a multitude of voltages, but on the upside they have MPPT and dump. MPPT manages the solar panel for better yield. Any energy that won't fit in the battery is sent out the "dump" terminals and can be used for fun things like lighting the running lights.

I appreciate the discussion.

In our case, we moved one battery from our NW2 (out of service due to a bad traction motor, new motor on hand, to be installed next week) to 844, our GP30... this allowed us to better test the batteries showing only one of the 8 volt batteries have failed. Of course while the GP30 started, it has developed an electrical issue, and will not move... We are trouble shooting that issue... Live with a 53 year old locomotive is always exciting, sometimes not in a good way... Of course our NW2 is 78 years old, built by EMC rather than EMD, but its electrical issues seem to be simpler..

I have located 2 take-out batteries (one for the GP30, one for the NW2) in California and will pick them up this weekend... at 400+ lbs each, freight on "cheap" batteries will soon make "cheap" batteries expensive... but by picking them up I control the cost, and installing them they give me time to source a new set... We are leaning towards buying a full set of new batteries. We take good care of them (there is 15 gallons of distilled water under a work bench in the shop, and we check them quarterly) and are looking into a solar powered float charger. We have received off list advice from Orange Empire, suggesting that we need to limit the time the batteries are on the float charger. They have similar weather issues, and using solar addresses both the lack of power where we park some locomotives, and the time the charging time... no sun, no charge...

We have identified 4 companies that make this battery (at least a couple via leads from this board), and have identified local dealers for 3 of them. Buying them locally will hold the price down. We hope one is a state vendor, but with the take outs installed I have the time to get them qualified as state vendors.

Thanks, Randy