IIRC "Empire Green" was what New York Central called the jade green it used in the 1960's. The GN "Empire Builder" colors (which were applied to diesel locomotives for about 6 years before the colors were used on the Empire Builder's cars) are Omaha Orange and Pullman Green.

Tsunami sound decoders can be bought and easily installed (just unplug the installed non-sound decoder, or the 'dummy plug' on non-DCC engines, and plug in the sound decoder). Digitrax, ESU, QSI and other companies also make sound decoders that can be easily installed.

All sound decoders will come with at least one whistle (for steam) or horn (for diesels) and one bell sound. Most offer a choice, from 3 up to 15-16. About the only exception I can think of is that at least at one time QSI diesel sound decoders only came loaded with one horn. They made several different horn sounds, but their decoders only had one on them, so you had to specify that you wanted say a 1st generation EMD sound decoder with a "blat" single chime horn, or Nathan P3, etc.

Why not pick up some cheap freight cars, like at a model railroad flea market, and try painting those before trying to tackle an engine?? Practice makes perfect!!

Whenever possible, I paint with Tamiya spray can paints. They're military colors, but there often are colors that work for railroading too. Their cans spray a much finer spray than the typical can of spray paint, and you can get results as good as an airbrush at least when doing overall coverage (it doesn't work as well if trying to do weathering, but I don't really use paint to weather with anyway.)

Today a big chunk of today's Lionel, MTH and other 'three rail' trains are products built to 1:48 scale. Some the large engines and passenger cars require 0-54 or larger curves, but a lot will go around O-36.

There are many really nice "high rail" layouts - folks who are building 'scale' layouts with three-rail track. Norm Charboneau's layout is outstanding, click on the link and scroll down to the links to weathered train pics and videos.

http://norm.beesky.com/

BTW you can switch the board out pretty easily. There are just two wires connected to the trucks of the tender. If you disconnect them, you can put the board from the first engine's tender into the new tender, replacing the one that's already there. That way you don't have to worry about rewiring the harness or other problems.

If it isn't a powder, but more like small bits of black stuff, it's meant to represent coal. You can use it on the tender deck or cab to represent a few pieces of loose coal lying about. Put down a light coat of white glue with a small brush, or matte medium, or Woodland Scenics "scenic cement", then sprinkle some of the coal on that area. The glue/adhesive will look white, but will dry clear. You can also add some coal to the coal piled up in the tender, so it doesn't look the same as everyone else's engine.

On many Bachmann / Spectrum coal tenders, the coal load is a separate piece that you can just pop out. I drilled a small hole to run the wires into the main body of the tender where the decoder went.

Indeed, the drivers on compound or simple articulateds would tend to go in and out of phase with each other. But note that in a compound Mallet, only the exhaust from the front cylinders go up the stack, creating a "chuff" sound. So even if the drivers weren't in synch, you'd still hear one set of chuffs.

IIRC there is still one of those 0-10-2s on display somewhere, lettered for the Union RR on one side and the Missabe on the other.

You can also remove the coal load in the tender and put a 1" round speaker in there. I did that with my 2-6-6-2.

Well the "chuff" is the sound of the steam from the cylinder exhausting up the stack, so you don't really hear left-right-left-right, just chuff-chuff-chuff from the stack.

On a compound Mallet, the steam exhausting from the high-pressure rear cylinders to the low-pressure front cylinders doesn't create a chuff. The chuff only occurs when the steam exhausts out the stack. So a Mallet like the Spectrum 2-6-6-2 would just have the same four chuffs per revolution of any other engine.

On a simplified engine, where all four cylinders get steam directly from the boiler, the steam from all four cylinders exhaust directly up the stack, so the exhausts can be in or out of phase (chuff-chuff...chuff-chuff...)

Yes, the light Mountain has an eight-pin plug. You just need the above 9-pin to 8-pin harness to plug it right in. If it's a relatively newer production run, it will have a speaker opening in the floor of the tender. Not much to it!! 

It could be something more hard to remove, like paint or glue, has gotten on the track. You might try a 'brightboy' to clean the rails. Also don't forget to clean the wheels.

However, it's very true that if the track can move up or down a little it can cause the joiners to lose connection. Maybe try replacing the straight tracks in question with power-feeder tracks and see what happens??

The Missabe road also had 0-10-0 switchers used in ore yard work and some transfer runs.

BTW the DMIR also had some second hand 0-10-2 engines that were basically fairly standard 2-10-2 engines but built without the front wheels, to allow it to fit on the railroad's existing turntables.