Hey Greg, I just put together this Thomas loco for my grandson for Christmas. I bought the basic Thomas, Annie and Clarabelle set and then added the Bachmann #44958 DCC Sound Module. I used a 14.8 volt, 3350mAh Lithium Ion 4x1 cell battery to power an Airwire CONVRTR-60X. I was also able to add a small oval 8 ohm speaker. I installed two switches. One to switch from a conventional DC track controller or to battery and the other to switch from battery-off-charge. I added a warm white led for the headlight, a red led for backlight and a small led to let me know that the battery was turned on. This was all very tight, but it did fit.
The DCC Sound Module manual says not to “exceed the decoder’s input voltage rating of 26 volts. When your track voltage exceeds 28 Volts, the decoder will automatically shut off the sound and motor”. so it looks like it would operate ok on a 24 volt system. I could not go 24 volts because my Airwire receiver is rated 22 volts max. I ran the engine and two cars at max throttle around a small loop of track as my grandson would probably do at 16 volts DC and it fell off the curve rather quickly. So that is one of the reasons why I chose the lesser of 14.8 volts. The battery was also small enough to fit.
I was able to adjust the cv values easily for the lighting, acceleration and deceleration.
That’s what I can offer from my experience with it. I am very happy with it and more importantly so is my grandson. We can’t wait for the snow to melt (yeah, I know, Carlsbad, CA doesn’t have the snow) and run it out in the yard. As for the manufacturer of the decoder I have no clue. I’ll try to send a pic of the finished loco before I closed it up. Mark