 For this month's What's Neat, it's August 2016. I'm your host, Ken Patterson, and this month we've got a really great show. We discover a new process for making co-loads this month, a very lightweight and easy process to make co-loads for our freight cars. We look at the new 36 inch long HO scale Schnabel car from Bachman. We also present an overview of the new Sonami 2 steam decoder with scenes shot outside to create this presentation. John Tyson comes by and shows us how to shrink down 164 scale automobiles into HO scale cars. He's come up with a very special process of experimentation, and he presents that with us this month on What's Neat. Also, Jeff Meyer stops by with one of his latest locomotive projects, which is really special this month. Now I just got back from the NMRA National in beautiful downtown Indianapolis, Indiana, where I delivered a layout to the Athern trade show booth that we will feature in a layout construction segment in a future show. It was a well-deserved reunion of the model railroad hobbyist's crew, I got to hang out with Joe Fugate, our editor, and Lionel Strang, Barry Silverthorne, and Miles Hale were also there, the folks from Train Masters TV. Chris Palomares, I saw him doing interviews with Cody from Kalmbach at the Athern booth, but my overall impression is that the hobby overall is in great, great shape. The hobby is doing very well. We start this segment of What's Neat a little bit different, where you kind of get to hang out with us here in the studio, Ed Richardson, Chris Palomares, Mike Buddy, and John Tyson were all hanging out, and I was just simply walking around with a video camera when some really great information came out, and then we turned it into a formal interview. Now to start this segment with John Tyson, he's really come up with a process that can be used for anything, not just automobiles, but for shrinking down the sizes of any scale type of a model from 164 scale down to HO scale. It's an experimental process that he does for his own benefit, for his own cars. So we're not advocating replicating models that are commercially available and pirating them, we're just something, a simple technique that aids in the modeling of your own private automobile fleet, and it's a pretty cool trick this month. So let's go now with the What's Neat show for August 2016. I was thinking about maybe having some decals made for these tail lights. Of course it'd be neat to have a whole decal for the whole tailgate, but that's, I don't know, it probably doesn't, it has limited use. I'm not too happy with the finish on that one, I wonder what it will look like in the future. Oh really? I can't really tell. It's a little oily. Yeah. I know, the hood's red. Oh yeah. Look at something. Yeah, it is. So I knew I wouldn't be able to paint it and use it for anything good, but I didn't want to just throw it away, so I figured I'd make a good junkyard. I'm gonna slaughter you guys looking at here. Cars! Cars! Yeah. Yeah. Tell me about your cars. This is John Tyson from Joliet, Illinois. He shrinks vehicles. He shrinks vehicles! From 164th scale. These are all shrunk from mainly auto world 164th scale die cast cars. This one, station wagons. I gotta get these separated. Here's one of yours, here's a wreck. Sixty-nine appellate wagon. Gorgeous. These are basically resin cast. Only difference is you're mixing solvent in with your RTV, which over the period of a week or so evaporates out and your mold shrinks and, wow. Look at this. All right, so you're making regular rubber molds, 164th scale cars, you say, big size cars? Yeah, these are... And then you shrink them down to HO scale, so is that all about the timing? Not timing, it's about your ratios. How much solvent you're mixing in? What kind of solvent do you use? I'm using a solvent called NOVOX from Sleuthon, but apparently you could use mineral spirits, cheaper solvents along those lines, but I haven't experimented with those yet. These are some pretty amazing looking models. The detail, the crispness of the detail, if that's the correct word, is just magnificent. And it's about shrinking down the mold. It's not the models, but you're actually shrinking the molds, so you can cast HO scale models. What a really cool trick. It's been a long learning curve, it wasn't easy to learn, I've spent a lot of money on materials that just pretty much went down the drain, but I kind of got it to the point now where I know my mixed ratios, that gets it pretty close, you know. So each one of these cars probably cost you about $50 to make, huh? At least. At least. I don't have... I don't have them all here. Let's look at that truck, man, and that 64. Let's see what I like to do. This truck? Yeah. This one was... This one started as a Malibu short bed, which I made into a long bed and cast, and then I designed photo-etch for the trim, mirrors, the grill bar, the die cast on the tailgate. That's all photo-etch. There's one that I started with one of John's kids with the photo-etching and the detail on the tailgate and everything. That's really nice, guys. Yeah. John is the vehicle master. That's a cool track. It's just another way to do it. There's always different ways to approach it, and you guys have come up with a concept here that appears to work very well. Hi. This week we have John Tyson here from Joliet, Illinois. John's mastered the art of shrinking 164th scale vehicles, which are widely available nowadays, down to 187th scale, and they are quite interesting, so here's John to tell you about it. All right. Well, this came about as a need for just regular everyday cars for city scenes, and I guess I got the idea one day to see if shrinking was possible. So I, you know, a little bit of Google searching, and I stumbled upon this method where you basically add solvent to your silicone mix and over the time of, what, seven days or so, it shrinks down to- That's the solvent evaporates. Yeah. The trick is getting the right ratio of solvent to silicone to control the amount of shrinkage because you can't wind up with cars too big or too small. Right. It took a lot of trial and error to find the ratio, which ended up being somewhere around two parts solvent to one part silicone. So kind of here he goes, just an idea, this is what I make my molds in because this silicone is like the consistency of melting, you know, so you need something, you know, that's going to hold the liquid, but here, this is full size and then after it's shrunk down, this is what, you know, here you go. And this is basically what I start with them, 164 scale. This is an auto world, 70 and Palo. Yeah. Strip it down, take it apart, strip the paint off, pack it with clay, just like you're making a regular mold, only you're mixing solvent in with the, with the silicone. Right. And then this is, this is basically what you end up with now. I'm using what, Novox, yeah, solvent from smooth on, and I'm using smooth on silicone. And you're going to get different results probably with different materials. So you're probably going to have to experiment to get your ratios, but my, like I said, my ratios is two parts solvent, one part RTV. Well, some of the cars here are just amazing. Most of these are Chevy's, which I like, I've always been a Chevy lover. But the way you paint them and finish them with the bare metal foil and stuff, they just, they look spectacular. Thank you. So, all right, well, I guess, I guess this is it then. Thanks for coming down here. Thanks for making the trip down to St. Louis. Thank you. Thanks for inviting me. All right, you're welcome anytime. I'm sure we'll be seeing you again. All right. Thanks, John. All right. This is what's neat. Let me tell you how neat it is. I teach middle school in Oakland, California, and I'm building a model railroad in the classroom. And I had the kids watch a video of Ken Patterson building a static grass applicator. I got the parts, they looked at the video, figure out how to do it, and they did it. They built the static grass applicator, learned a lot about electricity and science and magnetism, and then they started putting in static grass. They had a great time, and they learned a lot. It was neat. For this segment of What's Neat, I was sitting here enjoying some off time running my narrow gauge freight cars. And I've got one of these freight cars that Dirk picked up at a swap meet for about five bucks, and I wanted to fill it up with coal, and I thought, how cool would it be if I could just fill this up with coal right now and pull this into the upper town and deliver a load of coal. But if I do that, along with the other freight cars, I've got to tell you what, it's pretty heavy, and my C19s aren't really going to like that going up a 4% grade with this thing full of coal, okay? So how can I fill this up with coal right now? Let's say in the next hour and make it work, a coal load that's light enough and functional. And so the idea came to me like five minutes after thinking it through. Why couldn't we try something that I think has never been done before? And that's what this segment of what's neat this week is going to be about, and that's going to be making a really quick freight car load that you can make sawdust loads, coal loads, gravel loads, limestone loads using this technique, and I think it's going to work. So we come into the shop here, and I've got some of these grocery store bags, paper or plastic, right? And my theory on that would be, why couldn't I take one of these simple grocery store bags, lay it into the freight car, and take some of that foam pro that we're always talking about using for our layouts all the time, and fill this cavity up with the foam pro, just like this. And as it would expand, in theory, it would fill and could be carved down and colored into any type of load we want. And I also think I could probably pull this plastic away as it cures and sets up. And as the plastic is pulled away, we'll have an individual piece of foam that we might be able to carve and work with. And this doesn't just have to apply to narrow gauge. Here's a regular athern thrall, gondola. And I'm also going to fill this up with foam, same way. And let's see how this works out. Let's give this about 30 minutes to cure and see if we can't make a complete freight car load in the next hour. And we come back 30 minutes later. And as you can see, the foam has expanded. But the beauty of this is the bag protects the freight car. So all we've got to do now is carve this down to the shape of the load that we want, whether it's going to be a limestone load, a coal load, or if you're using high side gondolas wood chip cars, you can make a nice wood chip load this way. So let's continue on with the process of carving this and turning this into a final freight car load that will fit perfectly in our car every time and add virtually no weight at all to the load. Using 80 grit sandpaper, I cut the foam into the shape of how the coal load would look in the car. I was test fitting the load multiple times through this process. I then painted the top of the load with latex paint, which would act as glue. I didn't have any coal on hand for this experiment, so I used woodland scenics ballast, fine cinders, to represent the black coal load. I pressed this into the paint with my fingers and a three inch paint brush, just gently pressing the cinders into the paint. I performed the same steps with the athern thrall gondola, creating two loaded cars in less than 45 minutes. I think they came out great. Now we have an affordable process to make lightweight, realistic looking freight car loads fast and easy. And that's this month's modeling tip on what's neat. For this segment of what's neat, I've got something that's pretty neat today. I'm shooting this Bachman Schnabel car. And I've got it all set up in a scene here where there's a lot of photographers on the bridge, rail fans along the edge of the track, and a lot of track inspection crew guys walking and making sure everything is just right. But what a fascinating load. Every week it's something different. And I got to tell you what, this is what's neat this week. This is 32 inches long, 32 sets of wheels. And it's just a magnificent looking model. Very unusual. I've got idler cars on each end. And of course, there'd be a locomotive right on the end of the idler, so I've got no engines in the shot. Because the angle of the shot is a high shot. Actually here, let me show you what the photograph looks like I shot today. This is a shot I took. Everything's framed out with the buildings, the school bus, the truck. And you can see the crew working. And it's kind of a cool shot. So let's do this. Let's take this really cool model inside now that we've shot it. And at least to see how it runs on the layout. I think this will look really cool going into a curve. I can interview Joe for you. Is this on what's neat this week? Well, look at that. There we are, Joe. OK. Yeah, OK, all right. We're going to talk to Joe for you, because is what neat? OK, this would be an interesting question. This is the kind of thing people, this is what inquiring minds wants to know. You have Ken Patterson on what's neat this week. Yes. And you have Lionel Strang on Train Masters TV. Yes. If you were stuck on a desert island and you had to choose one of us, who would it be? Lionel Patterson. No, no. You're stuck on a- Ken Strang? No, no, no. You're stuck on a desert island. And now- You, of course. Served a boy, exactly. Not the guy holding the camera. No. Not the guy holding the camera. We love you, Ken, in a buddy kind of way. Yes, we love you, Ken. Yeah. All right, that's it. OK, we're done now. We're all done. We're done, Ken. Yeah, we can't think of anything else to say, Ken. No. Ken, turn off the camera. It's Jeff Maher. Jeff, buddy, what are you shooting today on this gorgeous afternoon? It's Atlas GP-40 XCNW patch for Union Pacific. Somebody contacted me about doing this form. It's a commission job. I didn't really want to do it, but it looked like a pretty good- looked like something that might be kind of fun challenging to do, so I gave it a shot. Originally it was a pen-central. You can see it on the long hood. That side, the engineer side of it. For whatever reason, according to prototype photos, that side was a lot more weathered and beat up than the fireman side of it. But I believe it only looked like that from about 2000 to 2003, from what I can find online. Well, you got a good six o'clock shoot time here, long shadows, so looks like you got a good shoot going on. Man, Jeff, thanks a lot for showing us that neat engine today. Any time. Ah, he escaped. Hold on, he's in your spray with the guine. He's wearing your cigarette. Michelle, what are you, what are you doing? Me and Darpa trying to edit video here, honey. Hold on, I gotta get the pig. Well, what are you doing, Michelle? Exactly. I gotta get the pokey pig. What pig, honey? The pig's right there, see a spray booth? What? There's no pig in my spray booth. There it is. Can you see him? Michelle, you need to take your game somewhere else. Hold on! I need to work down here, honey, sweetheart. Wait, if I go, he'll disappear. Then he'll win. Hold on. How long will this take? Just a minute. We're trying to put together a video here, he escaped from the pokey ball. God, I got him. Now let's make sure he doesn't escape. He's right under spray booth. What? He's smelling the cigarette, that's why he wants to escape. All right, you need to do it. Okay, ready? Got you! All right, thank you. That was our entertainment for... Oh my God. Now let's get this video done there. For this segment of What's Neat, we're gonna discuss and look at an overview quickly of the new Sonami 2 steam decoder. Now in last month's video, we looked at the diesel decoder from Sonami 2 and we looked at the dynamic digital exhaust that it had as it went up the hill and labored up the grade and that was a pretty magnificent presentation. This month I'd like to play for you the corporate video that I made for Soundtracks on the Sonami 2 steam decoder. And it's really an impressive decoder designed by designers that absolutely know what they're doing when it comes to making steam. One of the employees that works for Soundtracks, Jared, operates real steam locomotives as a second job all day long so he has an intimate feel for what a locomotive should sound like, how it should feel. He knows it better than model railroaders actually would know it. And that's the type of information and resource that went into the creation of the new Sonami 2. So it's a rather spectacular performing decoder with regards to sound. So check out this video clip coming up with the new Sonami 2 video that I made for Soundtracks. And in a future show, I also want to show you the full installation. One of my most favorite locomotives are these M1A and M1B locomotives that Broadway Limited has come out with. And they are just beautiful models. They look better than the old brass models that we use to hold as the high regards of detail. And these things are superior to brass. So my plan is to tackle this locomotive and we'll put a Sonami 2 in it and show the entire process from start to finish in an upcoming future video. So now let's check out that corporate video from Soundtracks on the Sonami 2 decoder. Sonami 2 is a decoder, 55 selectable bells, air compressors, couplers, and 10 exhaust chuffs. They can be set for two cylinder, three cylinder, articulated in each decoder. It makes matching your prototype easy, fully redesigned and digitally remastered. These decoders are equipped with up to six lighting outputs, flexible 28 function support, Hyperdrive 2 and over 50 individual sound effects available in many great board formats. It's really the perfect solution for any scale from G scale to N scale. Now, one of the great features and sounds found in Sonami 2 and one of the most fun and prototypically correct is the next generation Soundtracks, dynamic digital exhaust and adjustable cutoff. Taking into account all the factors of steam locomotive, we will listen as the locomotive labors hard to bring the train up to speed and climb the hill. Then we'll notice as the engineer runs the Johnson Bar closer to center how the length of the chuff shortens. Finally, as we crest the grade, you'll hear the engineer shut the throttle off and drift down the hill, just like the real thing. Finally, a decoder that lets you stop working steam downhill. Let's listen as the engine digs into the grade ahead. Sonami 2 has two forms of actual functioning brakes available with different braking rates in both variations. Just like the prototype, you have access to the locomotive brake known as the independent brake and the train brake known as the automatic brake simulate real power braking. Sonami 2 fun doesn't just end in the yard with the addition of fireman Fred keeping your boiler hot, fuel and servicing functions and the ability to charge your train, you could add a new level of automation to your operating experience. Features and sounds focused on real rariting fun, Sonami 2 truly is a new dimension in digital sound technology from Soundtracks.