 Hi, I'm Dan O'Coombs and November's What's Neat starts right now. The What's Neat Show is sponsored by Caboose, sharing our passion for trains since 1938. This is What's Neat for November 2017. I'm your host Ken Patterson and this month we interview George Bogatec from Soundtracks and we don't talk about one CV. We just learn about George and his modeling and his model railroad layout that he's got. He's a modeler and he shares all of that with us this month in the interview. We also have Ron Pair come by all the way from Canada and he builds an ITLA scale model, a laser kit and he shows us his techniques and he builds his kit in less than about three hours. We also build a locomotive cradle for holding our models when you repair them. I show how to build one in HO scale and I also show one in N scale and one in large scale that I've used in the past that works really well for me. We take a look at the Intermountain Tier IV locomotives just coming out within the last few months. These beautiful models with sound. We run them outside, photograph them. They're a real treat to look at this month for What's Neat. Also I show you how I shot this gorgeous nighttime shot with a full moon for after and using their F units and I take you step by step through that nighttime photography project. Our podcast is doing extremely well. We're already past show 13 at this point and the audience keeps building and building. We're pushing close to 7,000 views on the highest viewed podcast at this point. So with that I want to thank Caboose, that wonderful hobby shop in Denver, Colorado that sponsors this The What's Neat show and also I just want to thank all the people that have purchased videos at KenPatterson.com in this past year. Thank you very much and with that let's continue on with the rest of November's show. November's segment for What's Neat, we're going to talk about building a locomotive cradle. A tool that's instrumental in helping you repair and change katie couplers on any kind of an HO scale model, cradles can also the same technique applies in end scale. Here I took a simple piece of foam and carved it out with a little felt on the inside and I've got a very free end scale cradle for working on a model or cleaning the wheels. I also do the same principle with large scale. Here I've got a locomotive carrier and generally I simply line this with a towel and then I'm able to put the models in without doing any damage at all to any of the detail and these are some pretty heavy locomotives they can do some damage but today we're going to build a locomotive cradle in HO scale and this is one that we're going to build for the show right now and I'm going to show you the process on how to go about building something like this. The most important dimension to keep in mind is you've got to be able to clear your sunshades and an HO scale it usually translates into a width of about one and three quarters of an inch. That's the minimum width that you've got to calculate when you start figuring the thickness of all the materials in the woods you're going to use. Now for today's project we're simply going to use some scrap wood to build the one that we're going to build. Using a scrap one by four for the base I measured with the width of the locomotive and the sunshades and then I figured the dimensions for the cradle walls along with the thickness of the drawer liner material which is made from the synthetic rubber material. Once I had the side dimensions I measured the longest model I had on hand to figure the length of the cradle which this turned out to be about 15 inches long. I made the sidewalls about one and a half inches high and then proceeded to cut the base on the circular saw which is again 15 inches long. And then the sidewalls in order to cut these scrap pieces of wood I ran them through the band saw carefully measuring the one and a half inch measurement and then running these wood pieces through the saw. After test fitting all the pieces together I used wood screws to assemble the new locomotive cradle together. I used a box knife and a straight edge to cut strips of the drawer liner material which will ensure a soft cushioned interior lining for our cradle. I stained our new tool with red oak stain and then applied a few coats of polyurethane just to give it a nice professional finish. I spread clear coat silicone to the inside walls of the cradle using one of these Ross painters knives which then I glued the rubber like drawer liner material to this along the bottom and the sides wrapping it just a little bit around the top. I also put actually two layers of material fitting it into the bottom perfectly just to ensure soft roof no details broken you know what I mean. After this dried flat and smooth I applied felt self stick pads to the underside of the cradle acting as a feat. Then with all of that what I've ended up with is a new tool for gently holding models which helps facilitate katie coupler installation and overall locomotive customization and repair. It's a very simple process to build something like this costs virtually nothing you can do it in just a few hours and a tool like this is going to go through use for years. The one that I built here is probably going on 15 years old and it's worked great but now I've got two and this one manages a shop so it's kind of cool a neat tool build one yourself and that's this segment for What's Neat for this segment of What's Neat I've got George Bogatuck now every time you see George he's pitching a CVs about the wonderful soundtracks tsunami two decoders that have come out but today we're not even going to talk about anything about sound digital or anything else today I want to get to know George because quite honestly George is a very accomplished modeler as you've seen from his challenger locomotive and his 440 that he's shown us in previous videos but today we're going to get a peek at his layout a little bit of insight into who is George Bogatuck at soundtracks George welcome to What's Neat tell us about you your layout let's start with why is it you're in the hobby you've been working for soundtracks now for how many years about eight and a half years now it'll be nine years November 1st so I haven't worked today in almost nine years now so having a lot of fun doing it that's awesome when your job feels like play now you've been in the hobby pretty much since you were a child you got your start yeah I started around the age of 13 and I originally grew up in Arlington Texas between Dallas and Fort Worth and there was a hobby shop that was next door to the grocery store my mom went to all the time and so I would go over there and you know Google at the trains or just stare at them just fascinated with them and she would do her shopping and then every now and then she would pick me up something and I got to the point where I had a few models that I would take home and started running them on at that time Atlas sectional track on the carpet trying to run things and I started at about age 13 I had my first athern blue box GP 38 dash 2 which interestingly enough I still have it kind of a sentimental thing but I was lucky enough at the age of about 16 15 somewhere around there to kind of start part-time at that hobby shop they were moving across the street and they needed some extra bodies to help carry stuff so I was able to work there for a few years through high school to be able to get into the hobby and into the industry a little bit and I kind of got a feel for the retail side of it and granted I was very young so I didn't know everything but I thought I did and but I had a good time and then and then college came and spent some time there and then after that I ended up working at a auto parts store an independent chain of stores bounced around the Dallas-Fort Worth area with a few different stores and then the opportunity opened up to work at a Chevrolet dealer doing parts so I worked there for about six seven years something along those lines and then when I got laid off there I decided you know what I need to find something I want to do not something I have to do and it's amazing how much you enjoy your job when you actually enjoy what you're doing and it doesn't feel like work and and every day I kind of dreaded going into work working at the dealership because I knew everybody was upset because their cars broken it's gonna cost them money they didn't have or didn't plan on it and of course whatever they needed usually was out of stock or had to special order so now it's going to be a few days and I took the brunt of all that because of course I was the salesperson out there on this the floor so I kind of got frustrated by that because I'm trying to help people and they're still yelling at me so so yeah the opportunity came up Nancy had soundtracks opened the door and said well if you happen to be in town we'll talk to you and then a month later I was on the doorstep knocking on the door and at that point she couldn't avoid me we walked in and had an interview and after interviewing four or five different people in the office six seven hours later she sent me home and told me to pick up the real estate listings and I had basically walked in and talked myself into a position because they weren't actually hiring at the time but they realized the value and the assets that I could bring to the company okay as a you know a modeler interested and with of course my sales background so sales background and enthusiasm were the key point exactly now you've got a home layout now tell us a little bit about that so my small switching layout is just renting a house right now and so I don't have a whole lot of space that I can dedicate to a layout but I have a it's about 20 21 feet long by two foot wide it's a small shelf switching layout for now I personally model in 1978 Missouri Pacific I chose 1978 because it's kind of in that area of changing over from first generation diesels to second generation diesels so I could have a good mix of both on my layout and modeling the Missouri Pacific of course I grew up in Texas so that's what I saw Missouri Pacific the Mopac and so I've done some research and learned a lot I've joined the Missouri Pacific Historical Society and learned a lot from those guys about the history of the railroad and I've decided not modeling East Texas I want to do the White River route which is southern Missouri northern Arkansas nice beautiful scenery and and it still runs the route the railroad that I enjoy that I've got so many models of that I couldn't change over if I wanted to but for now I've got a small switching layout just based on a generic town I'll call it southern Missouri just because I don't have any dedicated space for it it's not based on any track plan or anything but it gives me something to play with something to keep enjoying and keep testing my skills and so I can still learn so when I do get that space that I'm able to build the layout that I want yeah five years from now yeah what you're gonna have I'm hoping so I'm hoping it's shorter than that but we'll see okay so I'm you know it gives me something to play with and it's of course using DCC and with the tsunami twos I've been able to include a lot of that into my small switching layout so I've been able to play around and have it sort of a test bed as well as my own enjoyment for the layout so what kind of DCC system do you use I mean we have one that you like I have two or three actually at home I have the CVP easy DCC and I also have the NCE power cab and a couple other small ones and it just depends on what I'm doing what with what which one I choose currently the NCE is hooked up to my to my layout because it does have access to the higher functions functions 14 there are 12 13 14 all the way up to 28 so I can have all access to all those functions when I'm doing my switching a lot of really cool stuff going on so the next time we're at a swap meet and we see George we can shake his hand and know a little background about him other than just soundtracks as much as I love my job and enjoy it yeah it's fun to get to talk about me for a little bit most people want to know all about the decoder and everything and I'm always happy to do that but it's good to get to know the modeler and other friends in the hobby because I really look at this job as much as I enjoy it to a certain level I feel like I'm paying back to the community nobody in this world is born knowing how to model railroad and so when I was at that young age a lot of people took me under their wing and taught me a lot of talent a lot of skills taught me what I was doing quite frankly and I can you know thank those people for years many of them are still good friends of mine right now that that I've known for more than 20 years give a shout out but so when I'm talking to modelers and trying to help them understand DCC and the decoders and things like that I feel like I'm trying to help them maximize their enjoyment as a way of paying back to the community as opposed to just simply trying to sell the name on my shirt or try to sell the decoders so I genuinely enjoy helping people and I'll be happy you know patient because like in nobody's born knowing how to do this everybody has their own way of learning things and I'm always willing to help and and able to help anytime again awesome man thank you for being on what's neat no problem thank you to talk to everybody this is one of my favorite segments on the show where we say what's Ken doing at 3 30 in the morning and tonight I'm doing an athern photo shoot using some gorgeous f units here a Southern Pacific shot I've got the headlights of the locomotive lit using a AA battery it's actually just taped in the locomotive the bulbs are glued into place to give me the effect that I need for the shot I have no idea exactly how these photos are going to come out I've been shooting for about two hours so I've got some moon shots with the moon in the background and some other shots that are tighter on the locomotive where the moon's not in the background but through the magic of video I can now show you how the actual photograph came out for this photo shoot should be pretty interesting with the moon and the lighting I lit the locomotives with a flashlight for just a few seconds I'm sure Chris Palomero's may have had just a little bit of a hand in photoshopping on this but otherwise this is another cool athern photo shoot that I'm doing here at 3 30 in the morning and this one was a nighttime shoot and I'm shooting out here with exposures set the camera for bulb so I've literally been shooting about maybe two to three minute exposures and just licking the whole scene with just a flashlight to give it some light plus I did have the lights on on this side of the house up here as some fill light and the main lights on the back of the house that are lighting me up now for this videography were in fact turned off but otherwise that's just another quick nighttime setup be creative try this on your own it's a lot of fun to do and that's this quick photography segment on what's neat for this segment of what's neat I'm doing another outdoor photography photo shoot today and I'm shooting these inner mountain ET 44 AC locomotives otherwise known as tier 4 locomotives and Dirk Reynolds picked up three of these locomotives from inner mountain and I ran test ran them last night but right now I'm doing a photo shoot I'm working a few athern models in and just trying to set up something really nice just just to make a good shot to have some illustration photographs for this segment of video that we're shooting but the fact is these models are actually quite beautiful they run very similar to Kato units there's a lot of detail on them look at the chain rigging here on this you need Pacific truck and also I noticed that the journals the roller bearings they spin on the wheels which is kind of cool so when they're running you can actually see those spinning neat design a lot of thought and work must have went into these locomotives I think they come with low sound the way they are right now but we're just going to shoot just a few more photographs of these pretty impressive models can't wait to take them inside and run them on the layout but I just wanted to share them with you because this is the first time I've actually got the touch and work with these beautiful tier 4 locomotives from inner mountain and they're kind of worth a look so that's this quick segment of what's neat so we've brought Dirk's tier 4 inner mountain locomotives inside to try to run them here and see how they run on the layout so I'm going to duck out of the way and run the camera and Dirk tell me what do you think about these beautiful models that you've picked up here do you like them? I think they're tremendous the biggest thing that I want to point out are the grills when we shot these at the RPM meet it was rather dark in there you can't really do a lot with fluorescent lighting but once you bring these inside and boy we took them outside and shot them those grates underneath those grills just popped and really really looked good so I'm pretty impressed with this right now ball bearings I love that that really looks just like the the Kato's did or do no they did a good job they're nice models thanks for picking these up and letting us play with them Dirk appreciate you sharing these inner mountain locomotives with us on what's neat for this segment of what it's neat I'm actually taking off a little private time to enjoy running some trains if you can believe I've worked that into my schedule and I wanted to paint the wheels on these freight cars these are some of the nicest tank cars these are new ones from athern and I just love these I want to put some Katie couplers on them and get them to run on the layout and just have them run perfectly all the way around the room but the problem is if I put a tank car like this into my locomotive cradle to put Katie couplers on it I'll probably end up breaking things because as soon as you take the tank car and you put it into this hard foam liner and then you start putting any amount of pressure on it at all to do any of the decals they're just totally going to end up with handrails that are just destroyed and at this point you're going to cry because you just ruined your freight car so I've come up with a solution a few minutes ago I was looking at this microfiber cloth this stuff is so soft and I was thinking why couldn't I take a piece of this cloth and cut it up into some long strips about three or four inches wide and then cut those strips in half and then I'll roll each one of those strips up and put them into the locomotive cradle which would then create about a half of an inch of a gap so that when I put the tank car into the cradle I can easily change the couplers and avoid damaging any of the parts so I've done that and I think this is a good way to go and I can also paint the wheels while it's in this cradle and I'll get these cars to run nice without any damage at all to the tops of them which you know how that works out you just don't you don't want to do it so that's this segment on what's neat for this segment of what's neat I've got Ron Perry who's come all the way from Canada just in Trudeau territory thank you for being here Ron I'm glad to have you on the show and today we're looking at these ITLA scale models we've checked out their website they've got a great variety of laser cut kits available and the first thing that Ron pointed out to me that I've noticed is these aren't necessary laser kits as much as they are a puzzle they're about an eighth of an inch thick the walls are very dynamic and robust and I would really equate this to building a puzzle wouldn't you think rather than just a laser kit because it looks very simple I think that a kit is very daunting when you look at it especially when it's nicely done and finished and stuff like that but when you see it in the part sheet like this it becomes like very you know you wrap it in your mind very easily this kit appears to have three sets of parts so to me this looks like a one-night project so we're gonna attempt to build this right now Ron has got a great experience with building these kits from this company already and that is I want you to check it out on their website ITLA scale models this is a brand new kit they've just come out with so we've got the very first one to show off on this the York Industries and the one that we're building today is the Olympia tool and die company so we're gonna get started on that we're gonna pull out some craft paints and Ron I guess you've got your work cut out for you for the next couple of hours so we pulled out a few paints then we want to put into this kit now we don't have all the colors that we need which I think is nice I like to mix my own paints I'm going to make the windows this nice army green we're gonna put some red on the door we're gonna put some red bricks in but I like to mix my paints a little bit so that there's variation in the color and then we're gonna make ourselves some aged concrete with these two colors to add a little bit of warmth to our gray and that's gonna be our cement and stucco just get a little bit of paint on the brush and paint while the parts are in the sheet and this makes it easier for you to visualize what colors are gonna go on which and it also makes sure that you don't get paint on other pieces and many amateur modelers you'll see little colors of paint where they couldn't quite get the brush into the edge nice enough and by doing these separately on the sheet you'll never get that errant paint all over the place I'm just gonna try to dry brush you don't want to get a lot of paint onto these windows you just want to kind of dry brush it just to get color on we don't want to glob it on just want to get a little bit of paint so very light very gently too because these are very delicate parts I don't know if the camera can really see how thin these moneys are very very thin so be delicate even though I look like I'm pounding it we've got a few parts here that are going to get a few different colors and I'm going to start with the wall capping at the top of the roof it's got some you know in the picture here I like to follow the pictures in the model sometimes they make the model look the same as on the picture of the instructions so I see a little bit of that this is copper up there so I'm gonna mix a little bit of gray just a wee bit of gray so using a very light gray I don't want to get a green that's on the same green as the windows I want to make it look like it's the the patina of copper I don't want to make the copper gold or anything like that just want to add a little bit of gray on it to get a tinge of green like that paint it on and then later we'll add a little bit of gray on top just to give it the variation we're looking for now I'm going to let this dry over about an hour because if I put the gray on right now it's going to mix with the green but if I allow this to dry a little bit and then I put the gray on then it will sit on top of the green color which is important so we're mixing some darker gray again with our really light gray here to get our concrete walls a little bit now this is going to be our stucco on these boards you know I've got a little bit of green on it that's okay again I like to have this variation come through on the boards because you know really gives a nice character to the model I think it's really important to mix your own paints there's nothing worse than stopping a project because you don't think you have the color we're just going to highlight this after we've dried it off and the handy-dandy oven so our red iron oxide paint here is a little bit bright for our doors and we don't really want to have a brand-new red paint on it anyway so we'll bring over a little bit of gray tone down the color a bit we'll bring the color back up again just want to tone it down first build it up to where we want it to have where we want to have it just gonna paint this door with the etchings on the wood it's gonna change the color of the paint a little bit and of course we can come back and and touch things up if we don't like the color which I might change it up later who knows some of these parts have both sides that you have to do kind of like this billboard frame and these railings that go on to the outside so paint them gray on both sides while they're in the sheet again just makes things easier for painting them you really don't want to be handling these parts while you're hitting them with a brush and stuff like that so being in the sheet keeps them safe here we're going to paint our walls a red brick color however in our fantasy world when we got the windows bricked up the contractor came in with the yellow bricks so what we're gonna do is we're gonna pull the yellow brick out we're gonna put it to the side and then we're gonna paint the wall with red brick we've got ourselves some burnt sienna and raw sienna here and this is some oxide red we're not really gonna use any oxide red but we're gonna use the raw and the burnt sienas and those are great brick colors they're basically brick in the jar paint on this gonna leave some brick dry there and when I dip my brush again grab some raw sienna start mixing these colors because our bricks really are pretty lively now by adding pewter gray to our chamomile beige color here we're putting it on the wall as our stucco and as you can see we're adding just a wee bit of gray and it's really changing the color a lot mixing your colors to get the color you want is the best way to build a model the best things I'd like to point out about the design of these kits is something that I really appreciate is that these these micro plywood windows I don't know if you can see them here they're in the sheet here and and they're they're made out of airplane wood airplane model wood it's a micro plywood however what I would like to point out is that the lintel on top and bottom are both on the sheet so that when you put it in the wall itself the the window is pushing our lintels out a little bit so you can see the profile on the edge of the building with no trouble at all if you're building red big brick burnt sienna and raw sienna are the colors that you need to do these two colors together are every color of brick that you can find from yellow brick to red red brick yellow brick here doesn't have any paint at all on it as you can see this MDF board is really lightly colored but when the laser patina hits the wood and you start adding other colors to it brings out the life of this yellow brick and really no other kit on the market looks like yellow brick like this okay what color paint did you use on that yellow brick there's no paint that's not paint that's patina tell me what that means because I'm probably gonna edit this out but maybe I won't but what a patina is is that when you burn the laser all the burn marks color the brick a little bit and that's that's the color it adds a little bit of yellow to the brick color itself and the only thing you need to do is add a dull coat to this at the end to seal the wood up so you put a nice dull coat finish on that and it makes it look like yellow brick just plain on the material yep that's another benefit to using the material from these kits wouldn't you say definitely that's really great before we glue all our walls together I would like to point out that this building can be a four-sided structure or a background flat and because it can be a background flat ITLA scale models has put in these extra pieces so that you can make it into a background flat but we're not going to use those we're gonna take our walls that have been fully assembled and painted we are going to be in the tab and slot section here because we want to have a nice connection between the walls themselves wipe it off the back so we don't glue ourselves to the table and just push them together now if some glue squeezes out you wipe off the access really don't worry about it though because we have these covers that go over the joining sections so I'm gonna go over these walls and put them together this way and then we'll be back when we stand the structure up and glue all those walls together now one thing I like to do is take one of these 90 degree edges and throw it in a corner just to make sure we've got a nice corner in there only takes a few seconds for each of these corners does to to to form up to you know to stick together so we leave this for a couple seconds this one's already been glued so we'll put this one on and I'm in the back here I'll use my piece to make the corners 90 degrees another way to do this is to take put the roof together I guess we're going to try to put the roof in and I'm going to prop the roof up with these pieces that came out of the parts sheet they're kind of the scrap and these are going to put make sure the roof isn't flush with the top it's kind of inset a little bit just gonna add a little bit of glue here pop it into the top my handy dandy applicator it's gonna be a little bit messy but the stuff will take and those are wooden spacers to give you space between the roof for your offset yeah that works nice like that so we just let it dry now and do this corners putting some color on this roof here so that when we get the details on we can make them the show of the roof because these kits really have a lot of nice details that go on them the great thing about these these strips as they hide all your tab and slot corners and joiners just put a little bit of glue kind of like to put a lot of glue on and then wipe it spread it out that way it doesn't really squeeze out the edges of your your wood which is important because it leave mucked up stuff now another reason why we painted our model first if we got our glue on the wood the wood wouldn't really accept the paint like it does properly sign that refers to another kit of theirs check it out it's really nice looking Ron I gotta tell you just looking at the kit the way you've got it right now it almost looks like you're finished done today and you've done that seriously you we've been doing a lot of goofing off but you don't have any more than just about two hours two and a half hours in this building until construction time and the coloring treatment all of it I think looks great which is a testament to the ITLA scale models and so far what they've done with this Olympia tool and die casting building I really appreciate you come in here and building it let's take it and set it up on a diorama and take it outside and shoot some photos of it and see how good this looks but I gotta tell you what we're just about done with this segment so after working on this building again for about three hours I would say that this thing came out pretty darn nice judging from these outdoor photograph that we just shot of this ITLA scale model building it's literally a puzzle it just fell together your color treatment was really nice as it shows here in these photos thanks for coming thanks for doing this Ron say something wrong thank you Ken and you know I think it's a testament to how easy these kits can be built and they shouldn't be intimidating to anybody no that's a fact because you can be a rank this could be your first kit and it could be the best kit you ever do and make you feel good so check them out under $50 ITLA scale models and we're gonna build some more of these because I really like how they go together and that's pretty much this layout building segment on what's neat all of the model railroad products seen in this episode of what's neat are available through caboose in Denver Colorado or order online at my caboose.com