 I'm Connor. I'm Jeff. I'm James. And I'm Daniel. And the August What's Neat starts right now. The What's Neat show is sponsored by Caboose, sharing our passion for trains since 1938. Isn't that awful? You're sitting there doing a perfect run by and the train stops on the switch points and the sound stops and your light stops. It's exactly what we don't want. And it's a simple cure. When I run my layout, I usually run it about every week or so and my switch points tend to get really dirty. And that's exactly what has just happened here in this situation. I'm running across the switch and the switch points are in fact all gummed up with oil, which causes a sound to drop out and the lights to flicker. I like to cure this by using a simple diamond file. And I generally just take the diamond file and I file the switch points clean. I just working the diamond file carefully. You don't want to file away too much because you don't want your switches to get thin over time. But just keep your switches clean with a diamond file and then take a little bit of rail zip and put rail zip in between the points. And that'll ensure the fact that as time goes by and you don't run your layout that often, odds are good, your switch points will stay clean. And so with that, this is August 2020, What's Neat? And in this month's video, we're going to have some great drone footage from Stephen M. Conroy, modeling ideas from above. There's nothing better making your layout look great than the look at drone footage and use the visuals as examples on how to make your layout look good. We also have a really neat layout tour with Campbell Rice this month. Campbell has just finished building his new layout. He's got about almost seven or eight months into construction and it's amazing how fast the layout construction got finished. And in this video, we're going to have an expose of all of his work up to this point. Also in this month's video, I do a segment on decoder installation. I install simple, non-sound decoders into locomotives, eight pin, nine pin, and 21 pin decoders. And so that's the lineup for this August 2020 What's Neat? For this segment of What's Neat, being locked down here in Missouri with this COVID going on, I found plenty of time to get some projects done that I generally always like to put off. And today, I'm installing decoders, non-sound decoders into DCC ready locomotives. I've got some Ather and SD50s here, some wonderful Missouri Pacific canaries. And I've got a GP38-2 that I've just actually removed the couplers on. And what I'm installing today are two types of decoders, 21 pin decoders and nine pin decoders, which actually are adaptable also for the eight pin installation. And I'm going to explain that in great detail. First of all, for the 21 pin decoders, I'm installing these NCE D16 MTC decoders into this SD70 ACE locomotive. In the last four years, a lot of manufacturers have gone over to the 21 pin decoder because it allows more functions and more lighting effects on the locomotives. Prior to that, for the past 10 or 15 years, generally, it's an eight or 10 pin, or eight or nine pin decoder installation, which I've got both types of decoders here. This Digitrex decoder is a DH12, DH126PS decoder, which I've been using in my locomotives for years. And of course, these are non-sound decoders that are used in DCC-ready locomotives. And what do I mean by that? What does that term DCC-ready mean? Generally, it means that they've already got a motherboard in the locomotive, as you see right here, that's got either your choice of an eight pin plug-in area or, of course, the nine pin plug-in area. And let me explain further what that means. This Digitrex decoder, the DH126PS decoder, as you see, the decoder itself is what's wrapped in this blue plastic right here. And then there's the harness cable that also comes with it. The harness cable on the end of the harness is an eight pin plug, which is the standard for the eight pin decoder installation. But yet, this is a nine pin decoder, which plugs into the harness. So if I'm doing an eight pin installation, I simply plug this into the locomotive and then plug this directly, this harness directly, into the decoder. And I'm ready to rock and roll. But if a lot of manufacturers also allow the option of simply plugging the nine pin decoder directly into the locomotive, and on this athern unit, it gives you a choice of both types of installations, you simply pull off this motherboard that's already on here, this pin, this plug, and then I would plug the Digitrex decoder directly into that, and this locomotive would then be ready to go. For the 21 pin installation on this ST70 ACE demonstrator locomotive right here, the way I went about that was, first I removed the coupler boxes on each end of the locomotive. Those actually hold the shell into place. But on the ST70 ACE, there's also two additional screws that you remove on either end of the fuel tank. So I pulled out each one of these screws, which were right next to the fuel tank shell. Once that's done, you can successfully remove the shell of the locomotive, pull it right off, which reveals the 21 pin removable circuit board, which then I unplugged, and then I plugged the NCE decoder directly into that 21 pin decoder, just push it right into place, and it plugs right in and the motherboard and the locomotive is pretty much ready to go. At that point, it's then time to put the shell back onto the locomotive, carefully pressing all of the wires in place, making sure you don't pinch any of the wires. And then once the shell's on the locomotive, again I'm using a cradle to do this, and I want to show you this for example. I like to put these in a locomotive cradle. I've got this GP38-2 in a cradle, and this is simply a wooden structure designed that I built to hold the locomotive so that you can get to it from underneath to remove the coupler boxes and the screws. I also like to put a piece of sponge sometimes in the cradle, so that when the locomotive is laying directly on top, the top of the hood in is laying there, I don't break off any firecracker antennas or any of the exhaust stacks. Going back to this SD-70 ACE once again, once I had the shell put back onto the locomotive, it was then time to put the screws back in on each side of the fuel tank, which holds the shell into place, and then put the couplers back into place. Now at this point you have your choice of couplers, and in this case what I like to do in my layout, because my track work isn't that perfect all the time, I like to use Katie Number 5 couplers. I keep them in a storage container here, which keeps them all separate from each other, whether it is Katie Number 58's that you like to use, the Number 5's, I keep the springs and the box all in compartments, and of course I've got upper shelf, lower shelf, and a couple of long shank type couplers that I keep stored in this container. In order to put the couplers back into the box, one thing I like to do ahead of time is to actually glue the coupler box together. As you see here, I just simply take some cement, some liquid glue cement that slowly eats away at the plastic, and allows me to glue the coupler box back together prior to installation. This just makes installation much easier in the locomotive, and then of course after you've got your coupler boxes pushed back into the locomotive pockets, then you put the screw back in. One thing that helps facilitate installation of the coupler boxes and the screws is a screwdriver that's magnetized. Now what do I mean by that? Here I've got this Phillips screwdriver here that's used for most of the screws on this locomotive project, and a magnetizer is something simply you can get at any hardware store. It's got a plus and a minus side, so it'll magnetize or demagnetize the screwdriver. Just simply run the screwdriver through this area just like this, and what it does is it magnetizes the screwdriver so that the screws, as you attach them to it, stay attached. This makes pulling the screws out of the coupler boxes much easier and installation much easier than trying to fumble around with your fingers and put the screw and the screwdriver into place all at the same time. So that's just a couple of tips, something that I'm going through while I'm sitting here at home doing lots of different projects, and that's this segment of coupler installation and decoder installation for What's Neat. For this segment of What's Neat, I'm standing here with Campbell Rice. You'll recall the last time we saw this beautiful layout was when it was just under construction and it ran in the maze What's Neat. And Campbell, you had this thing just getting put together because you had just moved into this beautiful new basement. And now you've got this thing that runs all the way around the room and a lot of the scenery is finished on it. Tell me about this layout. You built this relatively quickly. How long did it take to actually get to the point where you're at? Well, let's see. I started in September of 2019 when we moved into this house. So kind of worked on it through the winter. And, you know, here we are today in June of 2020. And so a lot of it was already done in my previous house. So I kind of moved it in and assembled it here. And then, of course, this is a lot larger space before it was 30 feet. And in here, I'm a little over 50 feet. So I've had to actually do a lot of expansion. So a lot of what's done scenery wise was done before I moved it. And the module was basically removed from that place and set in place here. And I've just kind of integrated that into the new part. What kind of scenery base did you use? How what's your scenery made of? It's it's styrofoam double stacked. So four inches of styrofoam on basically one before and went two by two legs. And then the skirt around it. But that's what it's basically that's what I do. It's just all light work, lightweight and easy to work with. Right. It appears you've modeled sort of the Midwest. You say that we're standing in front of Campbell'sville here. Step back and and I'll get some b-roll of this. But this is this is an example of the type of scenery you like to do where you like different levels. You've got the streets below the tracks, the tracks come through the town a little higher up. And it really gives a neat perspective for the buildings. Tell us about why you designed it like this. Well, it was kind of a last minute deal. Back this way is the yard. And I needed a track to work freight cars in and out of. And if it would have been street level, then there would have been a road blocking issue. So I decided what I would do was would do is to elevate the main line through town. And this was kind of done kind of if you if you've ever been to Nashville, there's an upper line like this that runs all the way through the city. So I thought I would elevate the main line and in the siding here. So that way it allows traffic to free flow in and out through town without causing any congestion. So that's kind of where all that idea came from. And it appears the way you've designed this. And I'm going to show this. We're going to walk around and look at the different areas of your layout that are semi-finished. You've built scenes and then there's trackage where there's there's farmland and there's just you feel like you're going somewhere from location to location. Yeah, that was pretty much the idea. And it's it's I always like to have a purpose for the railroad, not just something to turn turn on and just let it run. However, I can do that if I if I want to. But I semi get into operations, nothing real technical with cards and all that. I just kind of use my imagination and say, well, all right, I want these cars to go here and these cars to go here. Right. Tell me the track work looks fantastic. What type of track do you use? I do use Atlas Flex track and I use Pico and micro engineering switches. Wow. And when we walked in the room a few minutes ago, you said you you said Siri or Alexa or somebody turn on the layout and everything magically went on. Yes, I actually have it hooked up to a Google Home Hub so that I don't have to crawl under the layout and plug things in. So it's hooked up on a Wi-Fi unit. So all I have to do is tell Google to turn on the train and the other side of it is railroad. So since it's on two set, two different power pack units, one's called train and one's called railroad. Now just tell it to turn on whichever one and it turns it on and off. That was amazing. I was impressed. And the next thing that you did as soon as it turned it on was you grabbed the throttles which are mounted here on the side of the layout. And this is not your standard DCC Digitrax NCE system that I'm used to looking at. What is this that you run the layout with? Well everybody knows I'm a Rail Pro fan and I came over from Digitrax to Rail Pro because I got so frustrated with trying to figure out how to speed match and link everything together and I just got frustrated because I had athering engines that I wanted to run with with another brand Atlas or who knows what and it just wouldn't do it. And at the time I got everything speed matched I would buy a new locomotive then I'd have to start all over again because it wouldn't fit into the system and Rail Pro automatically does it so I can run a lifelike with an athering if I wanted to because they will actually speed match each other automatically. The system so when you put engines on the track the system identifies what they are and it makes them run at the same speed so you don't have to get on you know decoder pro or anything like that. No don't have to have any decoder pro jmri or anything like that. I find that interesting. And the thing is the way it works is the power for the system is brought up through the tracks. The signal to the locomotives is done over the air. So the second third fourth however many locomotives you have synced together basically it's reading what that first locomotive is doing and if it gets bogged down it tells locomotives number two and number three push harder. Okay. So that's the way that basically that works. Now I could put a battery in a locomotive and run it across the floor if I wanted to. I don't you know as long as I have some type of power source in the locomotive that's all it requires. That's amazing and I also noticed you had sound on this layout so do you what kind of sound system? It's all Rail Pro. Rail Pro sounds. It's their complete system. Now I can take my locomotives to any club it doesn't matter where they're running plain DC or if they have DCC digit tracks NCE or whatever I can put my train on their tracks it'll run just fine. I can you I can take an NCE controller and I can run my locomotives just like they were equipped with a regular DCC. That's interesting that's fascinating that's something we should look into and check out it sounds very interesting to me. So what we're going to do now is kind of walk around and check out the various parts of your layout. Okay well let's do it. So Campbell we're standing next to this eight track yard that you have. Would you call this a staging yard or is this an operation an old yard? Tell me about your design on this. Yeah this is a full yard um this is this is uh the area where I can put the trains together on this side and eventually over here will be all intermodal. I'll have uh double intermodal tracks over here with the with everything so that I can bring my intermodal trains in over there and put them together and take them apart and this is just general freight classification area here. Now are you going to block all of this and turn off the power or does rail pro allow you to do something with that? It's just like DCC uh unless you program the locomotive it's not going to go anywhere so I don't need to block it off everything's powered everything's hot I don't have blocks at all. And then this yard's got a diesel facility on the end of it doesn't it? Yes it does and and a car shop as well. So it's functional it's functional from the standpoint of you can make up a train right if you wanted to do operation at the same time you could stage a train for running around for an open house or something like that. Is there anything based I know this is probably your your I don't know how many layouts you've had but you this isn't your first rodeo with building a switch yard. Is there anything about this now that you've built it that you would have changed? Not yet I haven't found anything of course I would always like a bigger yard but you know it's for the amount of cars I have I don't I don't go into collecting tons and tons of cars I don't do tons of locomotive collecting I keep it at a fairly minimum if I decide I want more I sell more but I don't buy a bunch of equipment so I really don't really need a bigger yard this is functional for for what I do. It appears now you're standing near more like a country setting with a lot of trees and scenery no switching just I feel like I'm going through the countryside tell me about this area. Yeah this was based off an area north of Nashville on the Henderson sub of the CSX there was a rock cut where I used to like to railfan a lot and I always wanted to bring that into my model so basically that's what I did. This was part of the old layout um before it was moved up here and the road that way it is basically all new but yeah just a just a general farmland area with a with a rock cut through it. I love it the way you've got all the hay rolled up in the balls here just like they do when they're harvesting it and also I noticed you're doing a corn field. Working on the corn field it's it's the bush corn field and and you have to basically you have to turn every leaf and and everything so it's it's quite consuming and time consuming and a little frustrating every now and then so it's one of those things like you like you have to remind yourself that yeah this is my hobby and I just have to kind of do a little bit each day but yes I'll have a up in the front there I'll have a corn field and I'm also experimenting with a soybean field by using pipe cleaners and then covering them with knock leaves so that sounds cool and it looks easier to model than corn it looks good man the ideas are great for countryside so now we're going to check out your industrial part of the layout. All right. As you've explained to us your layout's designed so you've got a main line that runs around first you can just run a train and then the layout is set up in a second section where you can break it up and have an operating train work the areas and that's part of the area we're standing in front of now is that right? That's correct this is a little four by eight peninsula that's coming out and I think I redesigned this two or three times is I just didn't seem to have room to do what I want I originally had a Y in here and that didn't work out real good because I couldn't get all my industries in right so I ended up kind of coming around and in with a with the main and a siding so when I bring my trains in I'm allowed up able to place my cars then run around the train and head it back out to go back to the yard. You know I like this you've got like an oil industry there that's one whole set of car cards eventually right and then you've got these other different locations which are complete different spotting locations and you've got a long track lead that comes into this. Yep so I can run this as a second railroad which I typically do with a modeling basically modeling Union Pacific and CN and IC about the merger time so I can run this as a second railroad if I'd like. But one thing I like is the height of this layout how high is this built? Got no clue. I'm gonna guess about 37 inches. I think it's up in the 40 something 46 to 48 I would I believe that's a really good height because not only can you see everything overall you can get to it easily and if I go out and drone photography I'm usually about two to 300 feet above it which works out scale wise about this height the viewing height so it kind of gives me an idea how to put things together. So now the area we're standing by is part of the yard lead that leads into the industrial area that we just looked at and this appears to be a grain elevator? Yes it comes off the main up this way and then comes into my grain area and I have a friend who's who used to run a feed meal so he told me all about how to work it and to make it more accurate and and he'd always say you don't have enough tracks there's not enough room so I wanted to make sure I had enough room to give it as much of an accurate look as possible so it is you know I what probably 10 foot here and so that gives me room to get my cars in staged and unload and yet the the main or whatever comes down beside it and so I still have room to work the cars. I love again how you build your areas and finish a scene first as you go on through the layout what I see here is a lot of static grass that's just well placed and the roads are weathered so beautifully around this grain elevator. Yeah you know I get tired of doing one thing at a time that's probably why you'll see that a lot of the scenery looks finished in some points and then some points it's not because I'll lay track while or wire for a while and I'm like okay I gotta take a break on that let's let's do some scenery because scenery is my favorite part of it and I enjoy that more and I do run in trains so I'll take some time and go back in and decide I want to do some scenery and you know everything from individually painted ties that that I have down here you know it takes time to do that but it's the tension to the little bit of detail that really make the difference and that's what I really enjoy doing the most. The coloring of your walls are beautiful and you also use prototype photographs for your background buildings. Yes some of them I've purchased some of them I've taken myself the Bass Pro shop that's up here and that that it's like eight or ten photographs that I did stitched all together and then took it to a printing shop and had them printed on on paper so that just kind of gives it a little bit of atmosphere. The end result is great it makes a great looking background for all the freight cars. Thank you. So now we're standing by your river and you've used a lot of beautiful resin to pour this you've got a boat ramp I mean this is just exactly the way a river looks what did you what how did you come up with the ideas for doing this. I just looked at Missouri rivers and most of them were rock and had a good friend that gave me some good crushed stone this is the microengineering stone and I put down and then the resin is actually magic water. I did a lot of research on the different types of waters and decided that I wanted to use the magic water got good reviews people really liked it and you didn't get any fading or cracking with it over years so that's what's here. The colors are great when you see microengineering stone you're literally talking about a creek that runs right next to microengineering's factory where we've discovered we could sift. I've used it for narrow gauge ballast but it gives you just the right Merrimack type river coloring of a Missouri river and at the same time I see you were using quarry rock to do the filling area of the boat ramp which is exactly how they would build something like this around here well. Well thank you I just wanted to add something a little bit different so that's what I came up with. No it's really cool another thing I've noticed and you've created one of the most simple lifts out you want to show us how the lift out works? Sure be glad to. It looks like it doesn't have rail joiners right there are no rail joiners and basically it's just duck underneath it there you go it's and go around how about that? On the bottom what I have is I have these these holes and and each one I have pegs so and then I've got power points here so all you have to do is pick it up and then drop it in and I just wanted something simple and easy that I could get in and out of without having to do rail joiners and things and and this is what I came up with. This is awesome Campbell you've built this layout in a very short period of time less than six months I would guess everything seems functional the lift out works the scenery looks good you've got a nice workshop that you work in it's comfortable it's air conditioned I mean this is like not only the best hobby in the world but one of the better layouts that I've seen from the standpoint of simplicity and functionality. Well thank you that that means a lot coming from you so yeah it's just it's all in my head and nothing's planned out on paper and I just kind of go at it by trial and error. It's awesome listen thank you so much for sharing this layout with the viewers of What's Neat Campbell. Thank you glad too. All of the model railroad products seen in this episode of What's Neat are available through Caboose in Lakewood, Colorado or order online at MyCaboose.com