 For this What's Neat this week, it's October. The hot, wonderful dog days of summer are over and we've had an awfully lot of nice, mild, cool days this past summer. It took approximately a week to film this What's Neat this week video where Glenn Andrews came over, played us some live music Saturday night on the cliff during a magnificent moonrise. So I had to share some of that along with a lot of garden railroad footage as I've been getting the layout and condition to do a lot of videography this past summer. Further into the tape, I'm going to discuss layout construction. And this time the topic is going to be a lift-out section, a four foot wide lift-out section that I built on my home way out that uses door hinges to hold things in place tight so that it goes in and out smooth with no train derailments when it's installed. So enjoy this, October's What's Neat this week. Time of day when she's around. I was on the tracks when the gates came down. Suddenly, as those bloodshot rear caught a ride to another town where the air was clean and the sun never... Well, here's just something you don't see every single day on the model railroad room. This is a double module, 16 foot long river section that I built for my layout. And what I'm trying to do and what I've done this week is I've worked a BLMA bridge into the scene so that I could try to create a few nice, you know, still ad photos for Craig Martin over at BLMA Models. So I've got this scene in mind where the bridge is up high above the water. And then I've got another scene that I'm working on, which would be more like a sunrise scene with lower piers. And the bridge will be much lower to the water. So both dioramas, this part of my layout and then a four by eight sheet of foam that's still getting finished with the water on it will make a two diorama type of an ad campaign. And I'm pretty sure I know I'm going to get one good shot off of. That's all I really need is just one winner. But the scene was actually designed to capture a photograph from this angle. You almost see it was made for this type of a shot. Today, I want to talk about lift out sections. This is a almost four foot wide area on my layout. Where I built this lift out section. It's completely oak wrapped foam. The whole thing is self contained. It's held in place by door hinges. So when I pull out the pins and I take off the little rail joiners. Same thing over here. I've got door hinges. I pull out the pins. I'll joiner slide off and I have one power plug on this side. Now the whole unit will lift up clean. The whole thing is completely wrapped in oak. Bottom side, top side is scenery, foam, cut to shape, put in place. Now this can go anywhere I need it to go. I have complete access in and out of the basement. Simply put it right back in when you're finished. Door hinges allow everything to line up smooth and tight. Slide your rail joiners back in and then put your pins right back in. This is a very foolproof way to do a lift out section in my opinion. It's 10 years old right now. It has not warped and I've had no issues with any type of foam shrinkage on this section of scenery at all. So I suggest this is a good way to make a lift out section that's not hinged. Just a lift out convenient way to give access in and out of the layout room. I know a lot of manufacturers listen and watch what's neat this week. And I've been involved in a lot of pre-production work from time to time. At Walthers I worked with them on the Santa Fe Super Chief when that came out with a redone sleeper and the whole train was plated. That model sold out before it was even manufactured. That was a good deal. That helped Walthers also with the design of the Unipacifica City. Streamliner cars, consisting in what cars to make and da da da da. One of my more recent accomplishments I want to brag about is the new Bachman 4040. They're coming out with this beautiful Civil War engine that's been in their line for 40 years but has completely been retooled with no more drive shaft between the tender and the locomotive and a sound system in it. It is going to be a gem. It is going to cause a lot of people that have always wanted to model the Civil War era to now have the chance to get into it with some smooth running locomotives. One plea I do want to make to the manufacturers out there is something that I've always thought that the industry as needed was more of the river type of boats and the river transportation network. We've got ore docks. We've got ore ships for the Great Lakes. There's plenty of sailboats. There's lots of fishing boats available in the HO scale market. But what's not available is a river tug, an Illinois river, a Mississippi river, tow boat, a 200 foot box or rake to put in front of it. Just two simple models like that could then cause the evolution for a whole series of buildings. Say a grain elevator to river offloading from trains. Coal comes from barges to offloading facilities and then goes on to trains. There's a lot of river tie-ins with the railroads up and down the Midwest that I kind of think has been ignored by the manufacturers and I think it'd be worth looking into.