 Hello, Ken Patterson, Bob Rivard from Minneapolis, Minnesota, and the August What's Neat starts like right now. This is What's Neat for August 2017. I'm your host, Ken Patterson, and this month we've got a great 40-minute presentation. First of all, we interview Kevin Rubel, the owner of Caboose, that famous hobby shop in Denver, Colorado, and he tells us about his enthusiasm for the future in the hobby. We discuss the term DCC-ready and explain exactly what that means, and then show a few decoder installations as an example. Then we look at this beautiful Ather STP-40F locomotive, brand new and fresh off the press. I do a photo shoot with that, and it's a very impressive model to look at this month. For layout construction, we do two lift-out sections, again using magnets, but this time we try a lot of new techniques that I've learned over the past year since the very first article, our video on that that we presented. And then there's about 15 or 20 other layout construction tips in the segment, so it's a very informative segment this month for layout construction on What's Neat. Now, as you watch that video, you'll see the Trestle diorama layout and the Blackstone 5x12 layout, and both of those construction videos are available on my website at kenpatterson.com, so be sure to check that out. And with that, let's continue on with the rest of this month's show. For this segment of What's Neat, when you go to the hobby shop and you see all the trains on the shelves, the locomotives sometimes say DCC ready on the box, or they'll say DCC sound ready on the box. Daniel, tell me, what does it usually mean when it says DCC ready? DCC ready means there's an 8-pin or 9-pin harness adapter inside the locomotive, so you can quickly plug in your decoder without any complicated wiring needed. So that means, essentially, not all on my layout when I run trains, for example, I don't think all trains have to have sound in them, so I like to use these Digitrax decoders, these DH126D decoders. These things work really well in the athern locomotives, whereas, like Daniel said a moment ago, all you've got to do is take the shell off the locomotive, and in this case it's an electromotive model here. It requires four screws to remove the shell. Once I take the shell off, I have easy access to the circuit board inside where I can see the plug, which is either a 9-pin, I think, in this case, whereas I pull that plug right off of the locomotive, I then put the new Digitrax decoder onto the locomotive, and then I put the screws back that hold the body shell into place, and that essentially converts this locomotive from a regular DCC model to a DCC model that will run on my layout. A lot of folks, when they see that DCC ready on the box, they think they can just go home and run it on their DCC layout, which quite honestly isn't the case. It's not misleading, but it's something that if you're a novice and you're just looking at the hobby for the first time and you're looking to purchase one of the nicer locomotives to upgrade your train set, it's something that you've got to consider is exactly the terminology of what it means. And in this case, on this Conrail engine, I also wanted to put in a decoder, same type of Digitrax decoder, and it is also DCC ready, so I simply take the hood off of this locomotive. It only required two screws. I put the new decoder in the locomotive, and then I put the screws back that hold the shell on. Also at this time is a good time while you've got the locomotives apart to go ahead and put some KD number 5s on for reliability so that you've got good operation on the layout. After doing all of that, the locomotive is then ready to go. On this GP38 from Ather, and if you look at this model, all I've got to do is remove the hood, and I can get to the innards of the locomotive. Simple as can be. Plug my decoder in, put the hood right back onto the model, and I'm ready to start running it on the layout, so I don't even have to pull off the bottom frame. But essentially, I just wanted to cover the fact of what does it mean when you see something that's DCC ready. So that's this segment of What's Neat. Hello, this is Michael Gross, and you're watching What's Neat with Ken Patterson. For this segment of What's Neat, I've got Kevin Rubel from Denver, Colorado. You'll know him as the owners of Kavus, the hobby shop in Denver. That's a big name and a big tourist attraction to world over. What hobby shop do you go to when you come to the United States? It's Kavus in Denver. And this gentleman owns that wonderful company, the proprietor, and now the sole operator with all of his employees. Tell us, how is this working out for you at the Kavus? It's working well. It's working well. Yeah, we picked up a company that had a great legacy, 78-year legacy, 79 now, of, as we like to say, sharing our passion for trains with other railroad enthusiasts, so. So you're really high on customer service and hands-on. Absolutely. But you also have a large demographic for the internet, is that right? We do. About half of the business is online and that's growing. Now, are you building layouts and you're working in the community, I guess, with regards to promoting the hobby? We are. We're still at the front end of the acquisition. We acquired the company just seven months ago, eight months ago. And so, we're still working some bugs out of our e-commerce system and things like that. That said, within the store itself, we have three operating displays and layouts and we're planning another six to, because I really want to focus on showing the typical hobbyist or train enthusiast something that's achievable. I mean, they see large layouts all the time that are, you know, that fill a basement, fill a barn. We wanna do a large number of small layouts in different scales so the average hobbyist can come in and not be discouraged by or overwhelmed. That is so cool. That is like hands-on. Now, you're in a state that is experiencing growth with regards to finances all throughout the economy in that state presently. And so, you have a great confidence in the hobby in your area, I guess, because of the generation of wealth that's going on in your state. I do, I do. And just in terms of population growth too. But we really focus on trying to be as welcoming as possible to the whole breadth of people who might have an interest in trains just from a passing interest all the way to people who build dedicated buildings to house their layouts. So, that said, we wanna make sure that whoever comes through those doors feels welcome. And when I see someone comes in, coming in that may be a younger person with, you know, dyed hair and piercings and a lot of ink, you know, and they lay down a few hundred bucks for a locomotive, I know that we've done the right thing because we're welcoming to the entire community of train enthusiasts. Let's say there's a retired model reorder out there with some wealth and he's kinda unsure what to do with it. Today's economy, but he's really into the hobby. Are you open to franchising your name, the caboose, or just caboose? We would consider that, sure. We'd consider that. I watch that show, what is it? Marcus Lamonis, it's the guy that buys those businesses and I just see you've got a name, that name has value. The name has a lot of value and the name was ultimately a big portion of the assets that we purchased, not financially, because we allocated that amongst all the assets that were purchased from the old caboose, which was everything pretty much but inventory. But the name is, in my mind, the name is the most valuable asset that we purchased. And the reputation, I can't say enough about Joanne and Joanna Miller and the legacy that they left us with. Absolutely. It's just every time I talk to someone, no matter where I am in the country, I'll mention the caboose and they'll say, oh, there used to be caboose hobbies and everybody knows it. They were good to all of us and me included. I mean, I remember the first time I went there, we took pictures of ourselves at caboose hobbies. I mean, it was like, I mean, it's where you went. Right. So you've got a website now for the guys that want to buy stuff online for me. Tell us what the website is. We do the caboose, the website is mycaboose.com. Mycaboose.com. Yes. And that's been a monumental undertaking because we pride ourselves on carrying more items, not carrying in stock necessarily 100% of them, but listing and representing more manufacturers and more items than anybody else out there. So we're representing just over 500 manufacturers right now in about 170,000 items. So you can imagine the complexity that infers for our e-commerce presence. There is, and that's caused us a bit of delay because that's a pretty big task to try to write code for. And we found that it's very difficult to find canned programs to handle that. So we're actually custom writing code. Are you advertising your store in Monterey Road Hobbyist Magazine? That's the digital? Yes. Oh, that's what the video, that's what we're doing here. Yes, that's right. That's this one. That's this one. Actually, I just talked to our creative director the other day and said we need to get in there because that is one of the few places that we're still not. 178 countries that's worldwide reach. It absolutely. I talked to the folks from MRH back at Train Fest, I believe, or it might have been Amherst about that. And I've been a little bit slow in getting back on the uptick. Where are you going to be now that you're working really hard? You're putting things together. You're putting in the hours now. Is it going to, where are you going to be in five years? In five years, I'd like to see that we are the go-to for the Serious Hobbyist. We're also the first place people might stop, whether it's online or in the brick and mortar, when they are just maybe resurrecting an interest in trains and it doesn't have to be modeling. We intend to support the railfan community as well. And particularly folks bring their kids to get them interested in whatever, whether it's Brio or Lego or whatever. Can you give us that website one more time? www.mikeboost.com Kevin, thank you for being on What's Need. My pleasure, thanks, Kevin. We're continuing now with the BTS log mail project. And before I can even begin the late track, I need to get power into this segment of the layout. And I also need to make the ability to even get a train on this portion of the layout because right now it's an island unto itself. So for this segment, we're going to build another lift out section. But first let me tell you a little bit about the lightener trestle diorama. I've been adding some trees to it and I really, I really like the way it looks this way with a lot of pine trees around it. Now I didn't build these trees myself. These are those grand central gems trees that come in multiple sizes and they look terrific right out of the package. I've used all the various sizes from the nine inch to the three inch to the two inch. It just fills out the area and looks really nice. Again, the section of the layout is not powered yet and I really can't wait to watch a train run across this as it's worked into the layout. Now in order to be able to do this, I'm going to have to build another lift out section. Similarly to the one that you saw me build. Oh, I guess it was about eight months ago where we built this wooden three quarter inch plywood lift out section that had no wires, no rail joiners, just simple magnets. And I use smaller magnets on this. For the new section, I want to use larger magnets. I want to go with those half inch magnets and I'm going to use 16 magnets on this project. And I had multiple choices on how I could attach the Blackstone layout here to the island which contains a trestle and of course a sawmill dioramas. So what my plan is, is to come up with an area here between these two sections of layout where I could build another lift out section that would fit between the pine tree diorama here with the trestle and this Blackstone layout. I call it Blackstone two. Now there's multiple ways I could do this. I could come off of it at this angle into the diorama or another angle like this or even do a complete Y. And the other thing I'd like to do in addition to using larger magnets, I also want to put sides on this one. So in case anything rolls off or gets bumped it has no chance of falling off the layout. And I also want to build a lift out section that has complete scenery on it. So that as we come across through the scene here it'll actually look like a complete section of layout. It won't look like a plywood lift out. So that's two lift outs that we're gonna build in the next couple of days. Probably right between here make it all work out where I've got a turnout on the curve and it's gonna smoothly just go right on to this other section of layout. Again, no rail joiners, no wires, simple magnets to hold it in place, pop it right up when you're done and this should work out really well. And then we can run a train across the trestle and start laying track on the sawmill section of this whole layout project that I'm working on right now. So let's continue on to see how this turns out. I really can't wait myself to see exactly how this is gonna work out for this segment of layout construction on what's need. After giving it some thought I had decided that a left hand turnout will fit the curve and the track across the walkway. Measuring from the rails height I plotted and marked the area to be carved to fit our lift out into the foam. After cutting a 26 inch radius curve piece of three-quarter inch oak plywood I placed this between the span to ensure correct placement and distance and length and flow before notching out the foam for this to fit into. I cut the foam following the lines to match the shape of the lift out sectioned and its base. I sectioned out the foam cutting small pieces out one at a time until I was sure that the plywood end would fit snug and flush ensuring smooth track work. I test fit the lift out section and its base into the foam. Then placing track on the plywood I used a level to check that the rails height which matched the same between the sections perfectly level. It's the rails height that is the most important dimension that must be matched throughout this entire project to ensure smooth train operation. I repeated this process on the trestle module cutting the plywood and the foam with a small handsaw until the notch would accept the three-quarter inch base and the three-quarter inch lift out section. With a piece of track in place I rolled a freight car across the transition and everything seemed to work perfectly and smooth so far so good. Now turning my attention to the turnout and track placement I used a Sharpie at Blackmagic marker to trace lines where the number six turnout and the micro-engineering code 70 track would flow through the scene. We will modify the Shinohara number six turnout curving it to match the radius of the existing track work in the scene. I do this by cutting six of long switch ties with a Dremel cutoff wheel between the two sets of rails. I then cut spaces separating each railroad tie on the leg of the switch that I want to bend using the same cutoff wheel and being very careful not to notch the rail during this process. Upon test fitting the turnout into its space you can clearly see how the slight bend in the turnout matches the existing curve in the track work ensuring a perfect flowing radius throughout the scene. Using the same cutoff wheel I sectioned out the space where our turnout will fit. I removed the rail with a set of pliers and then started chiseling out the ties using a flat screwdriver. After sanding the area smooth with the Stanley Sure Farm planer I checked the foam surface with a level. Then I proceeded to do a final test fit to turn out into its new position complete with the slight curve to match my 26 inch radius track work. At this point I focused on placing the magnets into our base and lift out sections by drilling centering holes through both pieces of wood so our magnets will mate to each other in a perfectly straight line. I then drilled holes, 16 of them into the base and the lift out to match the diameter and the depth of the 14 millimeter magnets. After filling the newly drilled holes with five minute epoxy I placed each of the 16 magnets into position paying close attention to the magnets polarity to avoid any problems in the future. I did this on both ends of the lift out section and let this glue cure for about an hour. While this cured I sealed the area where our turnout would be placed with latex paint to protect it from the liquid nail. To fill the topography that will make for a flat surface to which we will glue our track I masked the ends of the plywood with blue masking tape creating a barrier as I proceeded to wet the area with water before applying a layer of Gorilla Glue. I also let this glue fill the loose gap between the tape and the foam. After the foam Gorilla Glue cured it expanded rising above the surrounding scenery. I cut this flush with a saw making for a flat base to which we will then glue our track. When I pulled away the lift out section the tape that was attached pulled away clean as it was now stuck to the foam. After pulling the tape off of the foam it revealed a smooth layer of Gorilla Glue that is now filling the gap between the wood and the foam. Now, when I placed the lift out section into position you can clearly see the filled gap making for a formed fit around the wood as well as making a nice level surface to transition the track onto the lift out surface from the foam. To form protective sides to the lift out curve I cut strips of 3 32 inch oak plywood. I applied glue to this and screwed things into place with one quarter inch black sheet metal screws working my way all around the curve on both sides of the wood. I then spent about 12 hours staining the wood pieces with red oak stain and then applying four or five coats of polyurethane to give them a really nice shine and I let this set and dry. I sealed the Gorilla Glue foam in the lift out area with brown latex paint. While this dried I glued our number six curve turnout into the main line area with a thin layer of liquid nails. Now again, the liquid nail adhesive will not eat into the foam as it is sealed and protected by the latex paint. Now it was time to glue our lift out foundations into the foam. I sprayed water into our carved out gap and spread a few lines of Gorilla Glue evenly around the space placing our three quarter inch plywood base with the magnets into this glue and setting it to cure. I repeated the process on the trestle diorama spraying water into the gap applying the Gorilla Glue evenly into the gap and then seeding our plywood base with the magnets in it into this glue. I placed the lift out curve with more blue tapes protecting the bottom ends of the plywood into position and set the weights on top of this until the Gorilla Glue cured attaching our magnetic bases securely. I attached the curve track to our lift out section with a thin layer of silicone caulk applying this with a thin metal trowel. I let this cure and set up under more weights for about three hours. I cut the track with my dremel disc cutter leaving a one 16th inch rail overhang onto the foam. This will ensure when the section is removed it will have the necessary rail clearance when lifting the section out of position and then back again. I test rolled a freight car across the gaps and along the curve of our almost completed lift out wood section. I ran DCC track power down the nearest wall and exiting directly behind the baseboard. This will snake under the carpet and reappear under the bench work. I sank a brass tube through the trestle diorama at full 12 inches and then ran power feed wires through this tube. When the tube is removed the wires remain in the foam feeding power to each rail of the lightener trestle module and eventually the sawmill diorama. I cut another three quarter inch piece of oak plywood to fit in our lift out space. This time the curve was just wide enough to hold the track firm. This will become our scenic lift out section. I laid our curve on a sheet of foam and drew out lines creating the dimensions for our overall scenery base. About five inches I left on each side of the track for scenery. I cut this section out following the lines with a jigsaw. I plan to embed the plywood into the foam flush by setting the depth of my router to the same thickness as the plywood. I then proceeded to router out this channel matching the depth and the curve of the plywood road bed exactly. I glued the plywood into the foam with great stuff adhesive and let this set up firm under heavy weights to prevent the plywood from moving as the great stuff expands. After the foam cured, I carved the topography into our scene with a pruning saw. I spent about 20 minutes carving things, making the diorama's topography match that of the surrounding modules that it will be spanning. I did final track profile carving with the Stanley shore farm planer making for a small finished scene ready to be sealed with latex paint on top and underneath. When the paint dried, I test fit the scenic lift out section into its new space, spanning the walkway. And what do you know? It fit just right and without magnets. I did notice about a quarter of an inch gap between the layout scenery and the lift out section which I will fill with additional foam. But so far, this concept is going together very nicely. Now it was time to figure a way to match the magnets placement in the scenic lift out section to the existing bases on each end. I experimented with two methods that would accomplish this. First, I shortened a roofing nail to just about a quarter of an inch long, creating a point, and then I centered this onto each magnet. I placed magic marker ink onto the end of the point and pressed the lift out section into place, allowing the short nail to pinpoint the exact drilling spot on the plywood to center the magnet. I also tried applying craft paint to magnets, placed over each base magnet and pressing the lift out section directly into the paint. The magnets made really nice pink markings and this too worked really well for centering the location of the magnets. I then glued all the magnets into our new scenic lift out section with five minute epoxy and let this cure for about an hour. Turning my attention to bringing power to the lift out section, I soldered brass stock to wires from each rail on the turnout. This brass stock will be glued into our wood base with just a little upward bend to ensure spring or pressure with the lift out section providing good electrical contact. I also installed brass stock contacts to the underside of the lift out section. The wires run from each rail to these brass contacts that match up to the brass stock in the base. When put into place, I confirmed good continuity by running the first locomotive across the wood lift out section. I repeated this process on the scenic lift out section soldering wire to each rail then soldering the other end of the wire to the two pieces of brass stock under the lift out section. Here you see the two pieces of brass stock attached under the lift out that will match the brass contacts in the wood base. When put into position, the magnets provide enough pressure to the brass contacts providing power to the track. As I confirmed by testing another locomotive for the first time through this lift out section. I did add a quarter of an inch of foam, more scenery to the edges, filling the gaps that were in the sections. I did this by adding just a small layer of great stuff foam pro to the ends and then shaping this with a saw. To finish the scenery on the lift out section, I sprinkled sifted and screened backyard dirt onto the scene. I ballast the track with screened creek rock and smooth this with a brush. I sprinkled on various sized rocks to add just a little more texture to the scene. I added medium green and light green ground foam vegetation to the scene. And then I glued everything into place with woodland scenic scenic cement using about a half of a bottle on this diorama. I also spread creek rock ballast onto the simple wood lift out section. I used my finger to form a straight clean ballast line just along the outside edges of the ties. I dribbled on woodland scenic scenic cement onto this gluing the rocks permanently into place. Here you see both of the new lift out sections, the scenery drying under a hot photo flood just to speed things up. I added about 30 trees to the scene using various sized pine trees made by Grand Central Gems. These are the same trees that are on the surrounding modules. And with that, it was time to test fit the scenic lift out section into place for the first time and finally run a train through the scene and onto the trestle diorama. The train ran smooth with no problems at all all the way across the lift out section and then on to run across the trestle to the very end of the track where construction will need to continue onto the sawmill diorama which we will cover in future episodes of What's Neat. And just like that, we end another layout construction segment on What's Neat. Lift out sections, both scenic, non-senic, using magnets. The structural integrity of magnets these days I think is gonna lend itself well to modular construction, the future and what can be done with regards to setting up a layout and having that structural integrity that these magnets afford us to connect things together. Think about it. And that's this layout construction segment on What's Neat. Hi, I'm Jim Napoli and you're watching What's Neat with Ken Patterson. On this segment of What's Neat, I've got something kind of neat today. I've got the brand new SDP-40F locomotives so the UHO scale guys are gonna get excited about this new ather locomotive that's gonna be coming to a hobby shop soon. But look at this beautiful model. There's a lot of engineering that went into this. Today I'm shooting video of it driving so I've got the sound all hooked up so everything will run by from a consist and it all looks good. I'm also gonna set up the desert scene today and try to get a couple of video run-by so that we can create a presentation for the announcement of this product. But this is one of the pre-production models. It's got full sound, amazing lights. It's even got running lights above the trucks. So it's kind of cool. So check it out when these are available, UAM Track fans and HS scale are gonna go nuts. Just like I did when I got to get my hands on this one. So this is a good photo shoot day and a kind of cool model to be working with this afternoon and I wanted to share it with you first on what's neat. It's day two of that photo shoot using the same ather locomotive only today I wanted to capture something really special. I wanted to get a signature shot with a locomotives running on a super elevated curve and this is only still photography today but I wanna show you how I'm flying by the seat of my pants on the scene because it only matters what it looks like from the position of the camera but if you look I've got it sitting on the super elevated curve. The train is winding off in the distance and then there's these cornfields placed in various areas. In fact, one of the cornfields is just suspended on a tripod so that I can position it in the exact same spot. I'm even using vehicles. I'm just literally flying by the seat of my pants to do a quick interesting photo shoot. This is one of those setups where you set it up once and you'll never get to do it again but let me show you the photography that I just got from this. It's pretty, it's just dead on for what I wanted for the location. Now the building's not gonna be seen in the scene but here's the shot that I just did with this. This shot came out pretty decent and it's one of those setups where you only get to do it once. I managed to get rid of the neighbor's fence and everything else just bled out perfect. So another photo shoot using this gorgeous, gorgeous locomotive from Athern and I've got a unit behind that just to kinda make an interesting looking consist. But that's gonna pretty much wrap up this photography shoot with this locomotive and that's a segment on what's neat, just an interesting, just another interesting day around here.