I swapped out the boards for both K-4's and the previously bad engine with the good board worked fine after reprogramming. Just to keep everything copistetic I put the bad board back in the original "bad" engine. Just to be sure that I did not go backwards, I put the good engine back on the track and reprogramming it worked fine. Just for a test I put the bad engine on the track and low and behold it started working as expected. So all this time it appears that it was a board reseating issue. I had a GG1 that was experiencing like issues and I proceeded to reseat the boards and it is now working as expected.
I thank you Richard and GRJ for all your help.