 I'm James. I'm Kyle. And I'm Richard. November's What's Neat Starts Right Now! The What's Neat Show is sponsored by Lombard Hobbies, your value hobby shop for over 40 years of modelers helping modelers. Big inventory, value pricing, fast shipping, and great service. Additional support is provided by Walthers Trains, everything you need to build a great model railroad. Check out their website at Walthers.com. And by Bachman Trains. Now that's the way to run a railroad. Check out their website at BachmanTrains.com. Further support is provided by American Limited Models, the relentless pursuit of accuracy. Check out their website at AmericanLimitedModels.com. And thank you for helping us support the best hobby in the world. This is What's Neat for November 2021. I'm your host Ken Patterson. In this month, Radisson McGuire stops by and he shares with us an array of wonderful military models in Ato scale that he built that is perfect for freight car loads. Also Larry Harrington from Bachman Trains out in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. He shows us the brand new Siemens ALC 42 locomotive. That's right, the Charger locomotive from Amtrak. This comes with TCS wow sound and one of the models is a very special run in black with the Amtrak pointless arrow on it. It will run model only to be made one time and you're going to see it this month on What's Neat. We also build the Walther's Fire Station headquarters building. It's an amazing structure. We build it from start to finish. Show you the construction, the coloring process all the way to a wonderful model that I will show you with outdoor photography. Now it's getting close to Christmas and if you wonder what to buy that special model reorder and you're not quite sure what, Lombard Hobbies in Lombard, Illinois has got the answer. They sell gift certificates that are available 24 hours a day on their website at LombardHobby.com. It's perfect in that you don't have to worry about buying the wrong gift and then dealing with exchanges and different things like that. It's the way to do it for your special modeler in your life. Be sure to check out the What's Neat this week in Moderating Podcast that we shoot down here every Saturday night keeping you updated on what's new in the hobby with an array of new products and also special guests and interviews from around the world. It's a great show. Don't miss one episode. And with that, let's continue on with the rest of this November 2021 What's Neat. For this segment of What's Neat, I'm standing here with Rad McGuire. Now you've seen him on the show two years ago, pre-COVID. When he was out on the property showing us some of his amazing military vehicles that is his main stage is like Mike Buddy likes auto racks. But Rad, welcome to my studio and the What's Neat show and share with us some of these amazing vehicles that you brought with you. Well, Ken, you know, this is something that has been kind of a pet project of mine since the 2019 What's Neat. These are the combat ready vehicles. We covered the non-combat vehicles for railhead movements and whatnot in the November 2019. Well, these we're going to cover kind of what they are, who makes them and their role in the military. Now, keep in mind all these vehicles that you see on the ground here are for the US Army. The Marine Corps vehicles are on the train, which was covered in 2019. We're going to start right here. Here we have the classic unarmored slant back Humvee with some basic armor attachments. This would have been mid 90s, early, early, early 2000s in Iraq. Then they went and upgraded to the 998. Well, I say upgraded in all reality. All they did was put in sheets of armor to protect them from ID gun blasts and just general small arms fire because these are unarmored vehicles initially. Same for this cargo truck in the background. You can see just a piece of sheet metal over the door. Well, the military realized we need something better. So then we move on to the two M 1151A ones. This is in two different variations here. We have one with a crows, which is a crew automated weight weapon station crows. It is also got a spark mine roller. And this is still an armored Humvee built by Arsenal M. And then we have another 1151 with the added extra window package protection and the covered manned turret. It also has ID antennas and different, you know, things to help them. Now, for those of you who are not familiar, the Humvees are out the door. Now we move to what's officially replacing the Humvee in both the US Marine Corps and US Army. And that is the Oshkosh JLTV joint like tactical vehicle. There are a few different variations of this. This is a model offered by Arsenal M. It's a resin kit out of Germany. And for those of you don't know, Arsenal M has officially bought Rocco mini tanks. So we will finally get the Rocco kits back in stock after all these years. Now, let's follow to the non combative vehicles. And I say non combative because anything with the Red Cross is of course a medical unit. You cannot have any weapons on the vehicle. So no turrets, nothing like that. And technically, you're not supposed to shoot at the vehicles because they are medical vehicles. But unfortunately in war, that doesn't always happen. But we have an M113A1 and we've got a custom 3D printed litter and some extra stowage boxes up here for the medical team. Then we have a 998 four litter ambulance. And this is got would carry two stacks of structures on each end. This is still used by all branches of the military today and even some local SWAT teams use these. Next, we have one of the more uncommon ones. This is a M998 soft top canvas top canvas door two litter ambulance. And that is basically the two litters just sit in the in the bed in the bed here. This is a conversion kit top to a Rocco ambulance. So we'll move back here. This is the monster, the beast. This right here is the M1071 Het and M1000 trailer by Arsenal M. This is the truck. This is the tow truck they call to come pick up the Abrams tanks. It is a hydraulic trailer in real life. The trailer actually sinks down to put the ramps down to unload the tanks. And you can basically haul anything you want on this truck and it's going to pull it and then some. But this is an all resin kit by Arsenal M. And it's kind of difficult to show behind the camera, but it does have a completely removable cab and interior to it. It's got some photo etched parts and everything else. Moving on to the right. We have some of our infantry vehicles, infantry support vehicles. We have an M113A cab, which has got all the storage. It's got the 50 cal mount to it, IFF plates, spare road wheels and storage in the back. It's also got a unit marking number on the side, which more than likely would be an infrared lettering. So they can pick it up on the NVGs. Next we have a striker LAV. This is a vehicle I would not want to be on the receiving end of. This is a infantry support vehicle and it's got a crow's weapon system on it. This is a model by Trident and sitting about 10 feet away from us is about, oh, I don't know, Ken, 10 or 12 of these on your train. So you've kind of outdone me on the strikers. Next we have a Bradley infantry fighting vehicle. This is the vehicle everyone looks at me and says, oh, look, it's a tank. It's not a tank. It's an infantry support vehicle. It's kind of the mixture of it's got a Bushmaster chain gun, a tow rocket launcher, and then carries people in the back. And this is a vehicle only used by the US Army. The Marine Corps do not use these vehicles. Next we're going to push this guy to the side. This right here is one of our prototype vehicles, the Dirt Diggler. This is an M9 ACE. It is a combat bulldozer. It is a Roco model, a very easy little model to assemble in plastic. And it kind of works like a road scraper earth mover slash bulldozer. But they're used by multiple branches in the military. Moving on, we have a vehicle kind of made famous by the movie Transformers. It's the Buffalo MPCV. This is a vehicle that is main purpose in life is to find IEDs and diffuse them. It's got the rake right here, which is a hydraulic rake which can come around just like a crane and pick out the IED from sand areas. And it's got a crow's system and different IED jammers and protection systems and added a bunch of spotlights because at night when they're doing operations, the crews need to see where they're going. And then underneath is the smallest vehicle in the fleet. And that's a little bomb diffusing robot. I haven't really figured out a name for him yet, but eventually. Moving on, we have the armored D9R, I call it the killdozer. This is one of the most mean vehicles in the fleet. This is a resin kit by Arsenal M. It is one of the easiest resin kits you can possibly build. If you're getting into the resin market, I highly recommend buying this one. But it is used by the US military, different branches, and the Israeli Defense Force also uses these. But it is just a mean caterpillar vehicle. Moving on, we have the M88A2 Hercules. This is the tow truck for the tanks and anything heavy armored in the end. It is a model by MR Models and is not for the faint of heart. It's an all resin kit, but you can model it in a few different positions. This one's got the outriggers out and it's ready to pick up its heavy load. It's also got a ACAF turret system off an M113 because they started adding those just to give the crew some extra protection in the end if they have to poke their heads up. Moving on, we have the M1150 assault breaching vehicle, aka the Ripper. The Ripper is built on an M1A1 tank chassis. And in each of these pods, it carries 1,700 pounds of C4 McClick debt cord. And it's essentially just C4 rope. And it shoots the C4 out of this canister right here, backs up a little and detonates and clears the route with the mineplow. And then these are the lane markers that shoot down and tell the people, okay, you stay in this trench, you don't go outside here, it's not safe. Moving on, we have some common vehicles. Everyone knows what these are. These are the M1A rooms. We have a standard M1A1 right here, this in the NATO woodland paint scheme. And then next to it, we have its cousin, the M1A2 Tusk V2. Tusk stands for Tank Urban Survival Kit. This is a kit that was added onto the tank, ceramic armor plating to protect the tank from IEDs, RPGs, anything explosive that can get really close to the tank and damage it because little known fact, the side armor panels of the tank and the tracks are the most weak point in the vehicle. So this is a updated package that we see on the tanks. And then finally, we have the M270 MRLS rocket launcher, a vehicle that is not only used by the US, but also Germany and a few of our Allied nations. It is a rocket launcher artillery piece. And as we can see here, I drill out some of the holes to make it look like the rocket is already fired out of it. But these vehicles right here are normally accompanied by some flatbed trucks with more rocket pods and whatnot on it because they do launch these extremely fast if you've ever seen them on YouTube or whatever. So looking back at the train real quick, we've got some vehicles and some items to add. These are some Connex boxes and containers. You've got some of the quad cons here, which are little five foot containers. They can go on some VTTX or intermodal equipment. These are resin made by Arsenal M. Spring Mills Depot is supposed to be releasing those very soon in plastic. And then we have an old K-Line container that's been patched out for the military. You see that a lot nowadays. But this is going to cover your basic combat vehicles that you would see out in the world today. There are a lot more M-Raps and different Humvee variants I did not cover because unfortunately they don't make a kit for everything out there. But this gives you all a very clear picture of what you can have on a modern military train from 2000 to present day. This has been Rad McGuire. This is absolutely amazing. Thank you so much for stopping by and sharing these amazing models. I believe next month you said you're going to share with us how to build a vehicle. Yeah, we're going to cover how to paint the NATO Woodland scheme on a Oshkosh tank truck. That's awesome. Thank you very much, Rad. This is that segment for What's Neat. For this segment of What's Neat, I've got Larry Harrington all the way from beautiful Philadelphia, Pennsylvania at Bachman Trains. Larry, welcome to the What's Neat show. Thanks a lot for having me. This is a great opportunity for both of us, I think. Absolutely. Now, you've been working for Bachman for many years and prior to that you were with Williams. And when you were brought on to Bachman, I shot a lot of beautiful photography for you. And I want to share some of that material right now with us, with the viewers. I remember a Williams dash nine locomotive that was really neat. And one of my favorite shots with this William, I think it was a Pacific locomotive. I shot it with the sunrise and I also shot it in some wonderful daylight shots. That was a gray locomotive with a black boiler. It was very, very beautiful. Also, I recall that we shot various freight cars. There was a, in fact, I'm going to talk about this beautiful Amtrak locomotive because we're going to be talking about that today. But you've got that in the three rail Williams line that we shot some time ago. A lot of these photographs date back over the past, I want to say seven years. But we've been doing Williams here at Bachman for I've been here almost 14 years now. So it's times really fine. I mean, it's 2007 is when we first started with Williams at Bachman. Absolutely. And the last one I'm going to show off is this beautiful Canadian national locomotive with all the mountains and the pine trees in the background. This is where we stack and layer the scenery. You guys love it when I do that. But Larry, you've got some exciting stuff to talk about. But before you do, tell me about your passion for trains, because people consider you very lucky in that you get to work for the industry. And a lot of viewers out there would love to have your job. Tell me about your passion. Well, it's it is it started that way as a passion with a little as a little kid, 11 years old. We used to always had trains at Christmas time. We set up two loops of Lionel trains around the Christmas tree. And I still remember the two locomotives. One was a steam 264. And another one was a 624 NW2 switcher, CNO switcher. So those two were always on the layout. And then I think I was around 11 years old. My father took me over to a friend's house. And he had he was having an open house for Christmas and went down to his basement. And it was just he converted his basement into the basically the shrine of trains. And he had like seven or eight trains running. He did this only a Christmas time. He put it put it up, take it down. He had a normally a pool table and, you know, club room. But he built everything over top of the pool table. He had it was American flyer layout. And I he used to it wasn't true to scale by any means. But it was a lot of fun. He had an operating airport with landing lights and sequence. He was an electrician. So he made all kinds of neat gadgets for his layout. And then what caught my attention was the operating cars. I had just the basic lineup sets with no extra frills. And then I saw these operating cars and log dumps, coal dumps, cattle cars. And I was like, wow, these are cool. So that's what got got me caught in the hobby back when I was like 11 years old. And that started from there. So and so many of the viewers out there can share that same sentiment and that passion, because those were some amazing models. When you're a child and you see that stuff working the way it is, it's just better than anything. So today you've got some new products that you want to talk about, some amazing products. And that's what I love about the What's Neat Show is that we get to see this stuff first. Great. Well, the big announcement that we have is this is our can you see that OK on the screen? Well, we'll actually give you some more clear shot. This is beautiful. Tell us what is that? This is the ALC 42 Amtrak Charger locomotive. They this is replacing the P 42s as a long term passenger long haul passenger train engine. And it was started out. This is a Siemens locomotive. And the first iteration that we did was a slightly different model. This is the SC 44. This is the Ace Alamak corridor express road name. Very cool. This has slightly different features. And if you look at the nose of both of them, they're slightly different as well. Again, I'll give you better shots of these, but just to share them live with you right now. That's amazing. Now, a lot of folks out there in the hobby call that the pointless arrow. But when you're in the industry working for Amtrak, they call that the motion mark. Right. So this this is a throwback pain scheme to day one livery. When they introduced this locomotive, this is called the day one livery. And this was originally on an eight locomotive, something similar to this. Amtrak is is honoring that with this pain scheme. We are doing this mod. This is something different that we've ever done since I've been here is actually this model we we've pre sold. We're only going to make it once this particular pain scheme of that model. And it's the anniversary edition and we're only doing it once. So the model has already been pre sold to dealers and distributors. And we've we're making the product. We're currently in production on it right now. We'll be delivering it within the next month and a half or so. And it's it's been really exciting to do this because we've been doing we've been building this model at the same time. Amtrak has been building their prototype. Wow. So so there's been some challenges along the way because they've made some changes and it didn't trickle down like to the pain scheme or some minor changes. So we we originally had a decoration sample a couple of months ago and we had to make a good number of changes because they I guess because the way the the decaling fell in the locomotive they had to adjust where the position of certain things. So so we want to get it right. And we did we've this all been approved through Amtrak and Siemens. We'll also be doing this phase six model. Oh wow. So this is another Amtrak ALC 42. Is that limited as well? This is not limited. We have two paints, two road numbers of this. This will be 300, which will be the first of the series and 305. And as we sell different production runs, we'll change the cab number. That's amazing. Make sure the viewers out there get those from Lombard Hobbies that sponsor the What's Needs Show. Very. Thank you very much, Andrew. What a great store. I still need to get up there. But that motion mark is definitely a limited model. So when they're out, you'll see those are going for double the price, just like we've seen in the past on so many other models. The the charger has been a very good model for us overall. This is we worked with in conjunction with TCS getting the sounds and it's just a phenomenal sound system and lighting package. They're on the SC 44. There's 10 lighting functions and on the ALC 42. There's eight lighting functions because there's no strobes on the ALC 42. But if they had them, we'd have one there as well. So but the sound I actually got to go with TCS to the TTCI testing facility in Colorado and we spent two days out there in the desert and recorded every sound that this locomotive makes blowers, prime movers, you know, the traction motors, everything that possibly warning sounds, all kinds of stuff. That was absolutely amazing. And for the viewers out there that would like to see Larry out there recording the sounds, we covered that on the What's Neat this week podcast. Be sure to go to what'sneat.com to find out exactly which show that was on. It was absolutely amazing. And as I remember, there was a road runner that ran by during that day. There was and a thunderstorm, too. So we had a little bit of excitement on the first day. We had all the boom mics up on mounted to the side of the locomotive. And, you know, we didn't want lightning rods, so we had to pick it up quickly and it didn't last long. But we lost a good bit of time for set up and tear down doing it. But so it was interesting two days. That's very cool. And you had another surprise for us. I think I saw a Union Pacific Library there, didn't you? Well, we actually have more than just the Union Pacific. This is a new addition to our smooth side passenger cars. This is a diner. So there's got a full interior lighting. This is all new tooling. This goes, we already have a coach, a baggage and an observation car. So this extends that consists a little bit. Yes. And we have this in, I think, six paint schemes. We've got Union Pacific. We have a fleet of modernism from Pennsylvania. Beautiful. Oh, my gosh. That would go great with that steam locomotive that you guys, a streamlined steam locomotive. Streamlines exactly. Right. Let me show a picture of that right now. That was the K4 that we shot. It was this beautiful Brunswick green color, as I recall. And here's another Pennsylvania, this more standard paint scheme. It'll also be in aluminum, which I don't have a sample of in front of me, but just all unpainted, undecorated aluminum. And then this is Southern Pacific Daylight. And we also have the Baltimore, Ohio. Oh, how beautiful. Yes. Look at that. So these are, like I said, complete interior inside LED lighting. Everything's installed. You don't have to do anything. Mark two, our couplers are easy to make couplers. And like I said, it's ready to run to go in your lap. That's absolutely awesome, Larry. Anything else you want to cover while I've got you here? Just thanks for the viewers. And we really appreciate all the good response we're getting from these charger locomotives. And like I said, if you want to get this day one livery, like go, go see your local dealer as soon as possible in order, because I know some of them have already sold out what they've planned to buy. So rock and roll. It's absolutely beautiful. Larry, thank you so much for sharing this with the viewers of the Weets What's Neat show, and that is this segment for What's Neat. For this segment of What's Neat, we're going to discuss fire apparatus and all the emergency equipment and vehicles that are available in our hobby and HO scale. Now, Walthers makes an array of buildings already structured towards that subject matter. And I've got their fire department headquarters building right here. And I've got it all laid out on the table. There's not very many parts to it, a few brick walls, cement walls and some garage doors and windows. Now, in order to paint this structure, I don't want to pull out the airbrush. I just want to keep it simple. So I've picked up a bunch of colors of Rust-Oleum shape the can paint from the hardware store today, and I've already painted the brick walls, which we will then weather with oil paint. And I want to tell you what color I painted that. It's described as this kind of rose color brick. In fact, it's called satin claret wine. So it's a neat color. I've also got varying shades of gray. One of them I'll use for the trim of the building. The other one for the sidewalks. I'm going to paint the windows as dark primer color instead of black, which I think will look really well. And I've got some brown primer that I'm not sure if I'm going to use, but I picked it up because it fits the color palette of what we're doing on this structure. The building itself is relatively easy to build. And what we're going to do now is we're going to actually start the construction of it, so I can show you step by step how easy this structure goes together. Some of the other buildings that are in the line of the Waffers Fire apparatus structures would be this fire department repair shop that they've got. I've also got the two bay fire station, which we all know about. It's been around for a long time. And I've also got what they call the fire department drill tower, which I imagine is what they use to practice putting out fires and rescues on. So let's continue on with this and see what happens next with regards to the construction of this wonderful firehouse building. To start the construction of this building, I painted all of the concrete decorative walls, and there's a great deal of them, as you can see here in this clip. And I painted them with a color called Country Gray. It's called Shocked Rust-Oleum Ultra Matte Paint Country Gray. And I sprayed this lightly across all of those pieces as they were still attached to the sprues. This went relatively quick and I let this dry thoroughly. Now, I painted the foundation and the roof of the building using Satin Blossom White Paint. This is another Rust-Oleum color in the line of painter's touch. Ultra Cover Primer Paint and this went on very smooth as well. Again, it's a different color than what I painted the decorative wall cement parts of the building with. To paint the windows of the structure, again, I painted them as they were attached to the sprues. I painted them a dark gray primer paint. This is a Rust-Oleum paint. It's actually called Automotive Primer. And again, this went on very smooth and it's a very fast drying paint. And I painted all of the windows this color around the building because I figured it would go really good with the brick color, which in the opening of the video, I called it a rose type of paint. It's actually Flat Red Primer. And I'll go into that as we get into the painting of the cement walls or the brick walls of the structure. I painted the garage doors of the building after I masked off all of the windows so that I wouldn't get any white paint onto the windows, as you can see here. So I used the blue masking tape. And the color paint that I used on that is Rust-Oleum's Painters Touch Satin Blossom White Paint. And this went on very smooth and I actually had to let it dry and then go paint the doors a second time. I'm not sure why that was, but the effort paid off to give me a nice smooth finish on the doors. Now, after the parts were all dry, I used these actually track cutters, the orange-handled flush cutting track cutters to nip off all of the pieces from the sprues. Now, to go back and do this, actually, if I were to do it again, I would have actually used those flush cutting pliers that you see that are available on the market because they give you a better flush finish. I also used the orange cutters on all of the brick walls, as you see here. Again, the brick walls were painted, Rust-Oleum, Primer's Touch, a flat red primer. Flat out. This color looked really good. I then took a file and I like to use a fine diamond file. And because the orange cutters didn't cut everything completely flush, I had to file off the nubs where the sprues were attached to the building. Now, I did this around all the doorways. I did this around the edges of all of the parts of the structure. Here you see me using a file to file the nubs off of the brick wall sections. Again, just filing back and forth. No magic to this. The beauty of a diamond, fine diamond file with a grid on it is it gives you a really nice flat, smooth finish on the finished model. Now, after all the parts were filed, I started to use Tester's Glue to glue the brick sections onto the cement, I call them cement walls, the main walls. It's more like brick lamination and this two-tone color looks great. Here you see me using the flush cutting track cutters to cut the decorative, I call it cement trim that will get attached to the structure, to the front walls of the structure. This two-color variation, again, looks really neat with the brick walls when it's finished. I also use the diamond file, again, to file these parts after they were trimmed just to make sure that all of the edges were flush and this also helps the pieces fit into their position into the building as they're laminated into the front of the walls. The windows simply snap into place into the structure. Of course, I filed around the edges of all these windows so that they would in fact snap into the building. And I just simply went along and pressed each one of the different, various-sized windows into the backside of the walls. They fit flush on the backside. I then used this Tester's Glue right out of the tube to simply kind of glob it on around the edges of the windows. When this dries, the glue will shrink and it will become more flat, so it won't be raised up at all and this will definitely hold the windows into place as the glue starts to eat into the plastic from the back sides. Now, you would think that because the parts are painted, the glue may not attach to the plastic very well, but this had no problem at all, eating through the paint and into the plastic, dissolving everything together so that the walls become one finished piece of plastic walls. It worked out really well that way. After I had all the parts dried and all the outside pieces glued together and the windows glued into place, I assembled the front three walls together and then I test fit them on top of the base just to make sure that everything was square as I went ahead and proceeded to put the Tester's Tube Glue into the corners of the building, making sure everything again was square onto the base so that as it set up, I knew I would ensure myself a good final finish on this building. Everything would be square. Everything would fit just right onto the base of the building. I did the same on the back wall of the building. As you can see, the walls have got a 45 degree angle molded into the edges so that when they fit together, you end up with a nice tight finish. I simply beaded the glue onto the parts where they will connect together with the base again in place to ensure everything's fitting just correctly and square. And then I simply pushed this wall section on the rear of the building into place, which essentially gives us the shape of the building with all the walls set up. And I let this dry for at least three hours before I proceeded on with the next step. The process of gluing the curved brick, which is essentially laminated onto the plastic of the structure, I put glue onto the back of each one of the curved pieces and I pressed them into place. Now, it may be best to come along with plastic body putty to fill the gaps of the brick wall, which I didn't actually do because I did the best that I could. Again, fit these curved corners into place on the structure, which actually looked pretty good. Before I glued the roof into place, I thought it would be best to test fit it on top of the structure, which is what I did. This again would ensure that I got all the walls absolutely square so that this piece did just drop right into place, just like I wanted it to. I then proceeded to put the tube glue onto the tabs on the inside of the building that hold the roof from falling completely through to the base of the building. So I worked my way all around the structure this way. And then I simply put the roof right on top of the glue, fitting it into the building just right on top of the nubs. And everything did fit just right, ensuring that we have a perfectly square structure. Everything lined up just perfect. It's relatively easy, this part. Now, here you see I've masked off the inside top where the brick of the structure meets the roof. I masked it with fine line masking tape that you would use in the automotive body build business. And then I took the paint, the same color paint, that I painted the walls of the structure with, again using country gray paint. I just sprayed it gently to paint the top edge stone, the trim work that works its way around the top of the building. This will accent it and look really good. See that I masked the entire structure with the blue tape because again, we're not using an airbrush with this, we're using shake the can paint. So I don't have the perfect fine paint. I've got kind of a blast of paint and I wanted to protect the walls. It's also important to make sure that this tape is tight around the edges so that you don't get any paint bleed onto the brick. After that was done, I started to remove all of the tape to see how the finished product looked. And I really liked the way this came out. Upon pulling all of the tape off of the side brick walls, after the top was still drying, as you can see it's wet as I'm pulling the tape off. I wanted to make sure that there was no bleed. And if there was any bleed, I simply took a paintbrush that was dipped into a little bit of lighter fluid and I ran the paintbrush along the brick, removing the uncured gray paint from the brick. That's a trick that we use in brass painting. It also works equally as well on plastic buildings. But again, after I removed all the tape, making sure I didn't have any bleed, the roof of the building and the bricks on the inside edges of the roof where you see it going together here, it all looked really good. Everything looked just right. So we're almost finished with the fire station from Walther's. And this building is really turning out nice. I'm very happy with the final results so far. All the color treatment looks dynamite. Now I'm putting the glass in the building because actually in fact, I want to shoot this building today. The sun's great. Everything's good outside. Now for glass, there's multiple ways you can do this. The old fashioned way obviously is to use thin styrene that's clear and glue it into place. I guess they would call that acetate. But today I'm going to use the mic buddy method that he uses with all of his automobiles because I know it works really well. And that's simply to use scotch packing tape. Honest to God, this works and it'll look good in outdoor photos. And it lasts for a long time. On his vehicles, I've had vehicles where I put windshields on cars and they've lasted for more than 15 years and they don't yellow. So let me show you the building here. I've got it laid on the surface and I'm going to take this piece of tape that I've cut with scissors, hold it very gently on the very edges with your fingers because that's where you will get fingerprints. And I'm going to simply put this into place in the building. And I don't know if you can really see this but just trust me, we're going to do this entire strip of windows all at one time. I'm going to center it the very best that I can. Just like that. And let the tape simply lay into place in the structure. Just like that. Now if you get fingerprints on the smooth side without the sticky side, the sticky side will be onto the outside of the structure. And just like that, it's in place. And then what I'll do is I'll come through and I'll cut the corners. And what you end up with is absolutely clear windows that reflect very well in the light. And you'll see this because I show you outdoor photos of this building. So I'm going to work my way all the way around. The beauty of the tape is on this curved window section right here, it's going to lend itself well to curving around which would be relatively difficult to do with acetate because that's a pretty tight radius. So I've got the windows put in using the packing tape all the way around on the structure. The last thing to do to this model is to finish out the roof. And I'm putting roll roofing on it. And what I'm using for that is simple electrical tape. I've also used masking tape to do this which you generally would have to paint black. Let me show you the building the way this is starting to look. All I'm simply doing is running rows and rows of electrical tape across the top of the structure. Which is like this. I'm letting them overlap nice and smooth. And then I'm cutting it with a scissor doing a rough cut on the edges. And what I will do is I will take a razor blade and I will cut the edges where the stonework will meet the roof work. And then what I will do is I'll take black paint, craft paint. I'll make it all flat black and then I might take some high gloss paint and paint where the tar would be between the seams of the roof. It gives a really neat effect when you do it that way. And upon doing that this building is essentially completed. I've got the base built for the building. Now that we've got the interior put in the building with regards to all the glass work I'll simply glue this building to the plastic base where the front aprons and the rear aprons are there for the drive-in areas of the fire trucks where they'll drive. And that will complete this building. Now this building also comes with some signage which is a printed material that Walther's offers with the kit and I may or might may not use that. But at this point let me show you what this building looks like now. I photographed it outside or at least I'm going to and these are the finished pictures that you see. Outdoor photography will bring in all the detail show how the building looks. You could further weather the brick work with oil paint. I like to use burnt umber when I do that to some of my structures. You've seen me do that when I modeled the Walther's Paper Mill which ran in a previous What's Neat video. I don't know which one. I don't have Daniel here. But that's what the WN index is for. Type in WN index on the internet and you will find an index for every What's Neat show the subject matter that's in them the guests that we've interviewed in all of those various shows. It's all to be had on the internet. You can find out any episode of the over 150 What's Neat shows that I produced since 2012 and in that you will find the paper mill structure that I built the Walther's Paper Mill which I did in fact weather with a wash of burnt umber. It makes the brick work look really fantastic. I'm not going to do this back to this building because I want this building to look relatively well kept. You know a fire department's got fire hoses and you can bet they wash the outside of the building on days off. So with that that's this structure. The next thing we're going to do is cover all the various fire apparatus vehicles that are available from Walther's. I went through the Walther's catalog. I think we've got 18 different vehicles that we're going to share next on this episode of What's Neat. So you've seen me build the Walther's Fire Department Headquarter building which came out to be a really nice structure but there's other buildings in the line of structure that they've got for fire apparatus. The second one that I built here this is called the Fire Department Drill Tower and what they do on this they practice repelling and they practice bringing the fire hoses up the steps and all about and try to not get things tangled up. They don't actually build fires in this building but it's a very intricate structure in that it's got a lot of stair detail and a lot of handrail detail. That one took a little while to build. The next building that we've got they call the Fire Department Repair Shop and actually this building could double as a great many things. My buddy tells me it looks like a southwestern bell building for working on the trucks. So this is a great building for a shop or anything where they need to drive in door for the structure. The last one that I've got is a two bay fire station and this kit made by Walther's is available built which this one was or you can buy it in kit form in the box. So these are the four buildings that I'm aware of that Walther's stocks for the fire department sections that you could build on your layout. Next we're going to look at all the different fire apparatuses and vehicles. Now we're going to talk about some of the fire vehicles that are available on the market. All of these I found in the Walther's catalog and there's a lot of neat models here. We're going to start with a 2005 Quint Pierce fire truck. This has got a 75 foot ladder on it. It's in red and white and it's got some very nice detail on it for a model. It's about 1795 retail as I purchased it. The heavy duty ladder truck in red. This has got a 50 foot ladder on it. It's a crew cab with side ladders and hoses. The next model we're going to look at is a heavy duty ladder truck in red and white. It's got L49 written on it. It's a 35 foot long truck. It's got a really nice long ladder on it. It's just a neat looking model. The heavy duty fire engine slash pumper is in red. It's got a seven seat crew cabinet and it's got a lot of detailed controls on it. It's a neat model in that on this model. This is the type of model where the pumping station is actually right behind the cab and it's kind of neat the way it's designed. I've got an international 4900 crew cab fire engine. This is a first response truck. Medium duty truck from the late 80s. It's got a six cylinder diesel in it. 350 horsepower water cannon on top with a four crew cabin. The next model that we're going to look at is an international 7600 two axle crew cab. This one is in red and black. And this is called a brush fire truck. It's 26 feet long. 390 horsepower diesel in it for pumping the water. The international this is the same truck as before with a standard cab. It's 22 feet long. It's got a lot of neat detail in the mirrors and the handrails on it. It's just a neat looking model. The hazardous material fire truck is next. This one's used for hazmat or chemical spills. It's a pretty neat looking truck. This is one where you walk inside the truck. Sometimes they use it as a command station vehicle. It's got a seven passenger crew cab on it. It's a pretty big truck at 35 feet long and a lot of panel storage on the inside and out. The next truck I want to look to show you is this international 4900 series fire department utility truck. This one is in red. It's got an enhanced tailgate on it. It's kind of neat looking. This is the one that Campbell Rice told me they would use whereas when they're going from one fire to another they usually leave the hoses in place and they'll have a crew come by and pick up the hoses, throw it in this truck and take them to the next location where they need to put out a fire. Atherin makes some pretty neat trucks too. Before I talk about those I want to talk about the fire service van. This is a small plastic model and the last one I want to talk about is a Ford Expedition. This is a special service vehicle and this model came with decals in the package. Now all of these models that I've just described except for the very first one are from Bully. That's the name that they used to be under. Now they're sold under Walther's scene master line so you can find all of these in the Walther's catalog. Now Atherin makes two types of fire trucks or fire apparatus as Campbell likes us to talk about them as being. The first one is a pumper truck with a water cannon on top. This has got a crew cab extended with a ladder and a lot of neat hose detail. The Atherin models are pretty crisp. The next one is a snorkel ladder pumper truck. This is in red and white with a standard cab. It's got a 43 foot actually it's got a snorkel on it so it's a 43 foot long truck and it's got a really cool snorkel that extends as you can see in this photograph very fine ladder details on this one. The last one I want to show you this is a European model made by Preline and this is an open cab fire truck. It's in white. It's an early model with a lot of hose details and ladder and a lot of chrome on it. Campbell said that this is the type of truck that they would use in California obviously because it's got the open cab on it. It's designed for a season where it doesn't rain very much. Now there's two very special trucks that I want to talk about too. These are from East Coast Circuits. My friend Neil Mold's out there. He sells these and these are magnificent in that they're loaded with LEDs. These models look absolutely fantastic on the layout when they're all lit up. The first vehicle is a Seamaster hazmet truck just like the one that we talked about here. Except for this one's got 42 LEDs in it in total. They run between 9 and 12 volts. You don't want to go higher than that. You'll be in trouble. You'll burn them out. This has got nine flashing patterns on it. Alternating headlights, 12 scene lights in cool white LEDs. And Campbell said in the real ones those would raise up and light up the entire scene around the vehicle. They've also got a bumper. Bumper perimeter lighting in red. These are red LEDs. Operating light bars with red LEDs. They've got eight LEDs on the rear perimeter warning lights in red and blue. Four LED cap perimeter warning lights in red. Six perimeter warning lights in red. These are again LEDs. And operating hazard lights and those are in amber color otherwise looking yellow. And this truck, believe it or not, sells for $90 retail price. Absolutely an amazing price. The second vehicle that I want to talk about and this is the Seamaster bumper truck which is just like the first one that we had talked about. It's a pretty neat model in that this model has got 20 LEDs. 28 LEDs in total on it. It's absolutely beautiful and it's all lit up. I ran the ones that you're looking at on video here with a nine volt battery and it works really well. This has got six flashing patterns on it. Alternating headlights. Six scene lights and cool white LEDs. Operating front light bars with red LEDs. Operating rear beacons with red LEDs. Bumper perimeter lighting with red LEDs. Four LEDs on the rear perimeter warning lights and four LED cab perimeter warning lights and two side clearance marker lights and those are in amber. Operating hazard lights are also in amber and this model retails for $85.95. Absolutely amazing. This includes shipping within the USA those prices. You can find those by going to Eastcoastcircuits.com. It's a website. I'll show it right here to you. I've looked at it and it's a really neat set of models that they've got. They've got a lot of other models that line up including police cars and utility trucks. We've shown some of those on the What's Neat This Week podcast. Absolutely amazing models available to the modelers all in HO scale for those that want to either model a fire scene or model a firehouse where the models are sitting just inside or even model a car accident scene. Which is probably what I would choose to do on the layout. Just something interesting where I could bury an ambulance, some police vehicles, and some fire apparatus on the scene. So with that we've covered a lot of things with regards to the buildings and the fire apparatus that's available in HO scale for your layout. And that is this segment for What's Neat. All of the products seen on this episode of What's Neat are available from Lombard Hobbies in Lombard, Illinois. Or order online at LombardHobby.com. Wothers Trains supporting hobby retailers across the world since 1932. Check out their website and learn more at Wothers.com. American Limited Models available at your local hobby shop or online at AmericanLimitedModels.com. Bachman Trains Now that's the way to run a railroad. Check out their website at BachmanTrains.com.