Thanks for the suggestion! Dissolving the merged audio parts did work to re-establish volume and fade handles--but I don't understand what is going on at all. Here's what I'm doing in process order:
01) I cut up an audio take into three segments
02) I apply fade in / fade out to each segment and re-order them on the timeline
03) All segments are then merged into a new reconstituted new audio part
04) No volume or fade handles appear in the new audio part
If the new audio part is an audio part, why no handles? If I were to omit step 02) would things work as I expect? I never had this issue with merged parts in Pro Tools so not quite understanding it. Thanks for any enlightenment you could send my way.