 Hi, I'm Richard L. Bianca, and July'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 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 July 2021. I'm your host Ken Patterson, and this month we really do have a good show. First of all, we start out with an end scale project layout that we started in the first quarter of this year, whereas we're going to run it through the entire year where we build this end scale layout that's about three and a half feet by eight feet, something very manageable. And for this first part, we show how to lay the track and build the initial bench work for the layout. Also this month, we've got some great drone footage from our drone pilot, Dan Scheidel, where he shares with us the Feather River Canyon with some beautiful bridges, great photography from the air and modeling ideas from above. This is what you really need to see what models should look like on your layout. All the answers are in this footage. Also this month, we've got a great interview from Robert Steers from San Juan Model Company and American Limited Models, whereas him and his partners have purchased various companies in our industry that were going to be retired or going out of business and otherwise saved some of these great companies for us in the best hobby in the world. Also this month, I'd like to thank Lombard Hobbies very much. I actually placed an order with them for these beautiful SD80 max, which I actually photographed from for Athens sometime back and had to send them back to Athens and I kind of missed these models. So I called up Andrew at Lombard Hobbies in Lombard, Illinois, and I placed a phone order with him and they had exactly what I wanted in stock. Plus when you place an order with them, they send you this great business card. Rand Hood told me about this when he placed his order and I actually really wanted one of these because this doubles as a track gauge for N scale and H.O. scale for your wheels and your track. It's a pretty neat metal business card. Also in the box, there were some fruit snacks and in there was a note that said Lombard Hobbies, sweet to you. Thank you for being a great customer. So rock and roll, really appreciate that. Also be sure to check out the What's Neat This Week in Model Reroading podcast that we record every Saturday night, keeping you updated every week on what's new in the hobby with special guests, great interviews, and various subject matter where we talk about model reroading every single week. And so with that, let's continue on with the rest of this July 2021 What's Neat. For this segment of What's Neat, we're going to build an end scale layout. So this is going to be an ongoing project as it snows outside. And there's nothing better than do to build something really cool. Now I want to build this layout so it'll fit on a simple sheet of foam. And that's a four by eight sheet of two inch foam. We're going to double it and make it actually four inches thick for stability, wrap it in oak and design it the way I traditionally do a lot of the layouts that you see me build on What's Neat. Now I'm going to use code 55, microengineering track throughout the entire project. And I want a minimum radius, I believe, of about 19 inches. I don't want to go any tighter than that. And that'll fit adequately on the sheet of foam, allowing three inches of space all the way around the layout in the event that something flips over or something goes wrong, we won't end up with a train on the floor. So to start this project, I simply took a yard stick and I put my finger in the hole that's in it. And I set it up and I drew two circles because it's always the radius that dictates how the layout is generally designed. This is for a small layout and this is also for a great big hole layout. It's always the curvature of the radius that generally is the first thing that I lay out on a piece of paper when I'm designing a layout so that then that dictates where the main lines go in between the radius. So in this case, I've drawn two circles on the foam, 19 inch circle here, 19 inch radius circle here, which will then dictate with three inches all the way around about the size of the layout. Now I arched my arm to join the two circles with a french curve, a bit of a transition into the curve so that the two circles can be joined. I don't think I want to have a lot of main lines that are straight on a layout. I really enjoy curving the main line. It makes for more of an interesting run. Now on this side here, I took a simple yard stick. Actually, this is a five foot long stick and I joined the two circles together anticipating that we'll put in some turnouts, build a holding yard on this side of the layout and on the other side of the layout, just let it be traditional curvature, scenery, dot, dot, dot. So as we continue on this project, I will document and share with you the process that I go through to design this very simple, very attainable, small end scale layout. So we've got a total of 13 turnouts on this end scale layout and I'm presently running jumper wires on the turnouts. I've got my table set up here where I've got a soldering iron. I've got some 32 gauge fine wire and I'm using this wonderful solder, this 60, 40, very small fine solder. And what I'm doing is the rails on a microengineering turnout. Well, this is an end scale code 55 turnout. The power is brought to the rails through the points. So the points are what give me my conductivity of power up to the frog. The frog is a dead frog and then beyond that are two more rails. And these rails are also not powered. Once the power goes beyond the frog that's diverted through the points right here, it stops. So what I'm going to do is power up these two rails right here. And I do this at an age of scale to all of my turnouts. And so what I've done is I've taken the 32 gauge wire and you can see I've jumpered it from this rail over to that rail and then from here over to here. OK, so that gives me power to the center two rails, which makes our entire turnout hot and the DCC power runs through it. I'm doing this to all 13 turnouts so that when we drop in power feed wires for this layout, we can do that from just one spot. And then as we cut our blocks, I'll notch out the rail. We'll put on our switches so that all the siding tracks, we can turn the power off in those tracks in the event that we have a train or a locomotive sitting on those tracks and we want them simply to have no power whatsoever. So that's what I'm doing to all 13 turnouts. It's taken just a few days to do this. I'm taking my time listening to the TV in the background as I work on this part of the project. Curving microengineering code 55 and scale track that is pre weathered is pretty easy. Starting at one end and working the curve a few inches at a time until you have the radius that you desire. I've decided to make the layout have a double track main line with the outside track for main line running and the inside track having access to all the sightings and storage tracks. I've used inner mountain auto racks to measure and make sure that the trains don't make contact with each other on the 19 inch inside radius and the 21 inch outside radius curves. It's very easy after you've curved your track to test fit and lay everything into place, giving the outside shape of the basic layout track form that I want. I've kind of decided on this project to go ahead and lay the entire outside main line first just so that I can get things running right away and have a better feel on how this layout would lay out on the foam. Let me show you how to join the track sections together and have good electrical contact between the track sections. I use a Dremel with a wire brush attachment to remove the weathering solution or better put the darkened finish on the rail as this will interfere with good electrical conductivity. I also remove the first tie on the ends of each three foot section to track to make space for the rail joiners. For projects in the past, you have seen me use Atlas and scale rail joiners in HO scale and N scale and O N 30. But for this project, I've elected to try micro engineering and scale rail joiners. These are smaller and more flat. I also cut the tips off of the ends of the micro engineering rail joiners to make them a little bit shorter to have more space when putting the track together, then pressing them onto the rails and joining our rail sections and our track together. I used a three foot straight edge to ensure that the code 555 track was absolutely straight. I put the straight edge against the rail and laid everything into place and taped things down as I moved along so nothing would shift and get out of position. I also started to lay out the tracks for a switch yard and also on the other side of the layout, I started to lay out some tracks for where I think I'm going to put a grain elevator. This is all going together very quickly and no drawings. Just laying it out on the foam to see what we have to work with. Now that I've got the switch structure for this segment of the layout taped down into position, I'm getting ready to solder everything together so nothing's going to move, nothing will shift. So I'm putting a little flux on all of the joints at the rail joiners and then I'm going to solder this all together as one piece. And this is all going to hold together like a piece of stained glass as if you're doing a stained glass window because I don't want this section to shift because once this is done, I can complete the circle, the radius curves all the way around and have the first main line in place. One thing that I will say upon doing this project and I've modeled end scale in dioramas in the past for photo shoots. But there's something about end scale that I will tell you from this project I have a whole found new respect for end scalers because this stuff is so small. It's very difficult to get everything to be absolutely precise. This is much more difficult than O scale or H O scale or O N 30 or H O N 3, which I've built plenty of layouts in the past up. So I have a whole new found respect as we do this project for end scale folks. And just so like this, I've got it. The temperature is set for 842 degrees on this soldering iron. I'm using the same pencil point that I use for all my H O scale track and O N 30 track and H O N 3 track. I'm using 60 40 Rosin core solder and it's flowing into the joints very nicely. Just a little touch of the rail, a little solder goes a long way. And this will be permanent now where it's not going to shift and move around. I'm using DAP quick seal plus silicone. This is actually not silicone. But what this is is a great clear glue from DAP. It's called quick seal plus. And I'm using it to glue down this section of track that we've just completed so that this part will not move at all. As we lay the rest of the main line for this first segment. Now, this glue will dry completely clear. And the nice thing about this glue is the fact that ballast will stick to it. You've seen me use this on H O scale and H O N 3 projects a lot. So that's we're going to use on this just to glue down this segment, which will dictate pretty much the rest of the parameters of the layout. So I'm using a Ross painter's knife to just apply a little bit of this material underneath the track. And I'm avoiding the area where the switch points are so that none of the switch points will get any of the glue in those areas so everything will move freely. When it's ballasted and glued down with woodland scenic cement, it'll further adhere everything to the fall. And just as you saw me do on all the turnouts a few moments ago, I'm now soldering all of the track together on the main line. The outside main line so that this will all hold together into one big piece. Again, solid so that I simply have to only glue everything down and keep the layout shape exactly the way I've got the track laid out. That's the beauty of micro engineering track is that when you bend a curve, it retains its shape which helps facilitate designing and building a layout. So as soon as I solder together the last couple of joints right here, one or two more, then we can test the train on this and let it run all the way around. So a couple of alligator clips. And I got the NCE power cap connected to this layout on the outside loop that we just laid main lines not glued down yet. Of course, all of this section here is glued down and the train is running perfectly. So what the next step is, I'm going to glue down the main line with a quick seal adhesive from DAP. And then I'll start laying the inside main line and I'll start laying the yard tracks. We'll have this thing to the point where we start cutting the shape of the foam. So a couple more steps here in the process, another, say, day of work. And we should have a roughed in and scale layout. That's ready to do scenery on after that and wrap all of it in oak and still have to double up the foam. I want to make it a full four inches thick. Of course, I still got to work all the electronics and block switches in. But it's neat to see something running right now temporarily, just to know that so far the effort that we've made is working. Using a metal ruler, I drew a line around the curve of the main line, designating where the layout's curved edge will be. I allowed for three inches from the track to the edge of the layout. Once the outside edge of the layout was drawn all the way around, I used a drywall saw to cut the foam following the line. I used a square steel block with 80 grit sandpaper glued to one flat side, working it around the foam edge to square the foam perfectly. So the side of the layout will have a square and uniform outside edge. So now it was time to add a second layer of foam to the layout, to add structural integrity to the whole layout so that doesn't flex. Also, this is going to allow us to carve a groove under the layout in various areas so that we can run our blocks for track power to the yard sections in the areas where we'll control blocks on and off. Now I use great stuff foam pro to glue this together. The reason that I do this is because it dries in about 30 minutes and there's not very much expansion to it. As opposed to the canned great stuff that you get from the hardware store that comes out more of a cream color, that takes about nine hours for it to set up and there's a lot of expansion on that. So the orange stuff works better for building the layouts in my opinion. Once the foam is down, we then put the two halves together and then I use my weight of my body to kind of press things down, squishing the foam flat in between both sections. So the orange foam is now oozing between the two sections. And then I put weights all over the top of the layout evenly to weight down the foam in the event that there is any expansion at all. And once this is completed, we've got a four inch thick layout that doesn't flex very much at all. But when we wrap it in oak, it'll be stiff as a board. Once the great stuff foam pro set up and cured, I took all of the weights off the top of the layout and then I used the same drywall saw to cut the bottom layer of foam matching the top layer. I also followed this up with the square block just to make sure that everything was square and perfect, ready to accept our wood outside wrap at some point. With that, we've got a completed outside main line. We've got a four inch thick layout that's ready to have its additional sightings and yard trackages for storage laid, plus the inside main line laid. And a future episode of What's Neat, we will continue on with this project, laying the rest of the track, filling in the missing ties at each joint and then adding a multitude of buildings, roads and other scenery effects to finish off the top side of this layout. If you figure the size of this and end scale, it's close in relation to a layout in HO scale that would be about six feet by almost 16 feet long, which as I know, is a lot of real estate to cover with scenery. So just because it's end scale doesn't mean that this project is small or fast. So look forward to an upcoming episode of What's Neat as we continue on with this wonderful end scale layout project. For this segment of What's Neat, I'm with Robert Steers from San Juan Model Company all the way from Colorado. Welcome to our studio here, Robert. I want you to tell us about San Juan Model Company, American Limited Models, your passion for trains. Introduce yourself to the viewers of What's Neat. Thank you, Ken. It's a pleasure to be here. I really appreciate it and appreciate the chance to show what we're offering now, as well as the background of how all this came to be. My business partner, Doug Junda and I have been building model trains, playing with model trains, hanging out in hobby shops since elementary school, basically. And I've been friends and modeling associates for many years. In 2018, we discovered that some wonderful venerable companies, Grant Line, San Juan Car Company and some others, we're going to be closing up their closing their doors. We just felt terrible about that because so many of those parts offered by these companies were fundamental to our love, which was building and scratch building model trains. So we got together, talked with our wives, went out to the Bay Area, went out to Los Angeles, Ken several times, talked with these folks and ended up putting them all together, purchasing them all these companies and putting them all together into the umbrella company of San Juan model company. So within that is Grant Line products, San Juan car company, San Juan decal company and the Leadville shops. All of these companies cater to a different aspect of the model railroad building hobby. And we really wanted to make sure that our love of building model trains, scratch building, modifying, kit bashing was still alive and well with all of these products available to the modeler. During that process of getting all these companies together, we moved them to Denver, Denver metro area. My partner Doug Junda manages our fabrication machine shop. Does a great job. I live in Billings, Montana, and I do a lot of the design work dealing with our manufacturers and working with Stephen Priest, who's our design consultant on many of these most of these projects, I should say. On the table here are just some of our new projects. We have we have projects coming all the way for the rest of 2021 through 2022 and almost almost completely through 2023. All of our ready to run products are an H of scale, high fidelity and wonderful prototype models, many of which have never been modeled before in high fidelity plastic. Right in front of me are some cars that are dear to my heart and to many narrow gauge modelers hearts. We've done these in both American O scale, North American O scale, and they're available with O and three and O and 30 wheel sets. These are the wide frame tall dome conical tank cars in four different liveries representing the four different lettering styles that each car had during its service life extending from 1927 to 1945. In the U.S. 1945, they were sold to Mexico. The will be a bring in 10 different car numbers. Each car number in both O and three slash O and 30 and an H O and three will have each of these lettering styles and liveries, so to speak, available. These are please note, these are pre-production models. There have been changes on the production just for the narrow gauge enthusiasts out there. This little two green, we've had that darkened up a lot. The safety placards are on these pre-production models are going to be upgraded to accurate 1920s, 1930s. Colorado and Southern, Denver, Rio, Grand Western and Conoco safety placards as the prototypes were able to obtain those. We're very excited about these. These will be arriving in July, mid July, 2021. And the front of the table are projects that have just recently arrived. This is our second run of H O scale, high detail, tank cars made for the Santa Fe and also some other railways, which I'll speak about in a minute, Ken, the Santa Fe bought hundreds of these in 1949. And then in 1952 said, well, we need more, so they bought several hundred more. They have very colorful, very colorful lettering styles, excuse me, with these different colored bands on the car ends and on the domes, each color represents a certain product that was only to be loaded in the car. And also we think that the color banding was used to assist in case of an accident, so somebody would know exactly what the car was carrying. Of special interest to Santa Fe and all modelers is the gray band here. They had hundreds of these cars which are dedicated to hauling diesel fuel. When imagine the transition era when moving from oil or steam or oil or coal, pardon me, and steam locomotives to the diesel area era, they needed a lot of diesel fuel. So what the Santa Fe and other railways would do was simply go around the country in their system and say, where is diesel fuel the cheapest? Texas, Louisiana, Southern California, what have you? Ship these cars in a unit train to that area, fill them all up, bring them all back, drop them off at their various facilities and then turn right around and find out where is cheapest again and send them all back down in a unit train to the next place for diesel fuel is the cheapest. Other ones, the yellow band is gasoline. Orange band is car journal oil. This mixed band is solvent. There are many other different band colors that are that are out there that have not been done yet. New to this run are Northern Pacific tank cars, which are nearly identical. And SPNS, Spokane, Portland and Seattle tank cars also made by GATC in 1949. All of these models have railroad specific changes, prototype changes that are different from the Santa Fe. These cars in their operating in the Northern US also had steam heating, which we represented on the cars to keep crude oil warm enough to flow for emptying. All of these have metal, chemically blackened wheel sets with McHenry couplers and all of these are available now at your favorite hobby shop or directly from us online. That's amazing. And you can also find all the wonderful. I know I did this. We've used Grantline nuts and bolts for so many episodes of what's neat, building trestles, different projects for Athern. And those are all available. I used to go through my Walthers catalog and be able to go through the parts and just find out what it is that was available. We have almost 1900 different different Grantline parts, 1900 different molds, all of those parts we can make. They're still available. They're literally all handmade, but they're still available, still there and still at a very, very reasonable price for the quality and for what you get. Those are all available directly on our website. That's Grantline products or our website for that particular line is SanWonDetails.com. The Grant family wanted to retire the Grantline product name, which we are happy to do, although, as you know, it's it's always going to be called Grantline, right? But it's it's the web. These are available on the website as SanWonDetails. But all of these products are available, including the HON3 kits. We have little locomotive kits. We have building kits. It's it's amazing. The artistry of the Grant family over more than 50 years of producing this hobby. Part of this I'd like to mention also is that my partner, Doug, Junda and I were amazed at the history that Grantline played in the model railroad business hobby. They were they were there at the beginning. And we've preserved a lot of all of Cliff Grants, wonderful work and tremendous resource libraries, etc., which we are preserving now as part of our company to really honor the rightful place of the Grant family in this hobby and the fundamental the fundamental part they played in bringing this hobby alive and being able to make nut bolt washers for all of our all of our various needs. It's those little things and it's all the details. It's a great thing that you've done for our hobby by saving these companies. I would look forward to bringing the what's neat cameras out to Colorado and maybe checking out your place of business sometime. You'd be very welcome, Ken, but I must warn you, it's a it's a very busy operating fabrication and metal shop. So you may have to wear some safety glasses. Well, you'll have to wear some safety glasses in a hard hat, perhaps, to come in because we're working like working like crazy to produce these parts. Well, soon we will be going through some upgrade tooling to produce them even faster. And you could also probably expect to see many of our grant line products in a ready to run form, be it buildings or HON3 models in the near future. That's news. That's awesome. Guys, this is the best hobby in the world. And it's because of folks just like Robert and his partner and what they're doing for our hobby. And so we'll get out there. We want to visit with you and thank you so much for sharing your new endeavor and what you've done with the viewers of what's neat. Oh, it's my pleasure. And we'll be back with a couple new offerings that are coming in by Labor Day and by Thanksgiving that we're very happy to announce on what's neat this week. That's right. Check out the what's neat this week podcast for the weekly updates and what's going on. Thank you for helping us support the hobby. Thank you, Ken. Very much. 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.