I will assume that the sound decoder and speaker will not be made available.

I guess no response to my Norfolk and Western question means "no".

Is there any chance the sound decoder and speaker parts will become available soon?

Are these cars as detailed as the Spectrum cars of a few years ago and any chance some Norfolk and Western cars will be done?

If you know someone with JMRI and a program track you might be able to change some of the decoder settings for analog operations. You will not be able to randomly activate sounds but it may be possible for the bell, whistle/horn, and other sounds to active automatically.

You may just need to flush the addresses from the Super Chief. I think our club has had that problem on the HO layout. I had an issue with one of my pre-programmed consists on Saturday, the train would be moving along fine and then would suddenly stop. If I moved the throttle it would go again and stop again. This happened with two throttles. I flushed the address from the Zephyr base unit and the problem went away.

I haven't seen anything show up on the parts page yet, it might be a while. It may just be this Soundtrax decoder and 1/2 inch speaker: http://www.soundtraxx.com/dsd/tsunami/showwistle.php?s=emd645t
Since you have one, maybe you could verify that if you want to look inside.

Every decoder I have seen has color coded wires. Since it seems the one you have does not, I would suggest carefully removing the heat shrink and see if the board has markings where the wires are attached. It may only be a number that would match the number position on the board you are soldering to. If there are no markings, I am not sure how the part could have been built in the first place. If this is successful, I would put heat shrink or electrical tape around the board when you are done.

Barry

Jet,
If you are on Facebook, there is a Chessie Modelers Group. Western Maryland became part of the Chessie System. There are some knowledgeable guys in that group that may be able to answer some of your questions.

Barry

Not sure yet, I haven't seen any of the parts show up for sale yet from Bachmann. I have one I bought a year ago and Bachmann must have been planning for sound, there are already holes in the bottom of the tank for the speaker. On paper it looks like just a swap of the decoder and replacing the weight in the tank with the speaker. The other option would be to use another brand decoder and speaker that fits. Soldering will be required for the decoder swap.

Barry

I would like to see a FEF-3 for N scale, do one for UP 844 

Decoder info here:
http://www.bachmanntrains.com/home-usa/ez_content/1_Amp_Decoder_Instr.pdf

I have never setup decoders by going directly to the CV's, I use JMRI to set the values. I did a EM-1 for one of the guys in the club, as I recall the default setting was dimmed always. I guess Bachmann thought the full brightness was too bright to be realistic on a steamer.
To use JMRI you will need an interface between the computer and your DCC system. I used a Digitrax PR3 wired directly to some HO and N track on a piece of 1x6 board. It makes for a portable programming track I can use at home or take to the club with my laptop.

I think most if not all of the old Rapido hook couplers had t-shanks. As far as I know Bachmann has not made the newer knuckle couplers to replace them. Go to the following site and see if you can find the conversion for your cars:
http://www.micro-trains.com/ConversionsN.php
They are good couplers but can be hard to put together and install.
The other option is checking with the manufacturer of the cars, sometimes you can get a complete truck assembly with a knuckle coupler already installed.
You really only need to do one end of a car if you always hook that one to the engine first.

Lou,
If Bachmann no longer has the gears you need, check the following link. I hear they are not cheap but they may haves the gears you need if you can't get them anywhere else.

http://www.nwsl.com/

Check this site for number boards. I bought some HO scale ones and they worked fine, it might be a bit harder for the N scale ones though. The back ground is one decal and the numbers are separate decals. Just a note, the black background with white numbers will not show light through them.

http://www.shellscale.com/numberboard%20page.htm