 Hi, I'm Kevin, Michelle, and Kylian, and we're here at the Colorado Moderero Museum, and December's What's Neat starts right now. The What's Neat show is sponsored by Caboose, sharing our passion for trains since 1938. This is What's Neat for December 2018. I'm your host Ken Patterson, and this month we've got a really good show. First of all, Joe Hudson shows us how to paint figures, but not before he makes a lot of paper clips first. It's pretty amazing to know what it is his art. Brad Joseph, we look at his gorgeous Union Pacific layout. I shot this layout a long time ago back in 1995 for the Annamarie Bulletin, and boy has this layout changed. Jeff Meyer stops by and shares with us a really cool boxcar that he weathered up for us, and of course George Bugatuck. I interviewed a really great segment with him, where he actually prepared all the video for us doing a install into a Broadway limited M1 locomotive that I had had. And in fact, it just came out fantastic. So most of this show, about 45 minutes of this hour long show, we are going to spend in Colorado. Of course, George is in Durango, but we also share the Colorado Model Railroad Museum on this show. It's an absolutely fantastic layout in the beautiful town of Greeley, Colorado, a nice town with all the quaint little shopping districts, and of course the Union Pacific mainline runs right through the center of town. This is an absolutely magnificent museum built by David Trussell, the founder of the Colorado Model Railroad Museum in Greeley, Colorado. He definitely has a passion for trains. A model railroader since his childhood, he has built many home layouts. Building on his experiences, he formed the Greeley and Tahoe modular layout. Now, I remember this layout well. When I brought the Midwest Valley modelers' layout to Kansas City to that Annamarie show, I remember Dave's modular layout was just set up two layouts away, with realistic scenery, brown skirting, model ships, and a port that I will never forget. Dave started working on his life's masterpiece, the Greeley Freight Station Museum layout, by planning a very detailed track design. The museum's name was later changed to the Colorado Model Railroad Museum. This layout's principal railroad is called the Oregon, California, and Eastern Railroad, which took over 10 years to plan and construct and complete with its own 10,000 square foot building to house it. The building is filled with a life's collection of over 1,100 railroad artifacts and collectible memorabilia, including the 5,500 square foot double deck layout, measuring about 60 feet by 98 feet. Additionally, there is a prototype Colorado and Southern caboose number 10583, fully restored to its original condition. This caboose will turn 100 years old in July 2019 with a birthday party sure to draw a crowd. The layout itself is an engineering marvel with over 21 scale miles of track and a mainline run of over 1,300 feet. It's a double deck point-to-point design for operation with a fully functional CTC panel via dispatcher dictating all the train movements on the entire layout. The layout has an array of scale trestles and bridges, which are all hand-built with thousands of pieces of individual scale lumber. Minimum radiuses on the mainline of 48 inches brings the train through the 2.5% grades very smoothly between the levels and a viewing track height of about 40 to 98 inches from the floor. The tracks run between towns with the lumber industry being one of the main industries represented on this layout. From the forest to the lumber mills to the shipping and transportation ports, the lumber industry from tree to finished product is modeled in its total entirety on this layout. During a normal operating session, operators run 14 freight trains with 8 or so locals in both directions on the single track mainline with passing sightings that can easily hold the 80 car freight trains as they pass each other on their way to their destinations. An elevated viewing platform runs for the entire length of the building, giving a bird's eye view of the layout, which is quite interesting. There is a 95 foot long staging yard under the full-length viewing platform, and I gotta tell you this area is a beehive of activities as the operators depart and arrive with their long freight trains. The shipping port is complete with petroleum transfer facilities along with lumber and general freight. The ships are simply magnificent. Radio controlled, they are fully functional with full lighting and propulsion when floating in real water. They are on display on rolling platforms right next to the docks, which can be rolled into place and rolled out of place as they're loaded and emptied. The full scale model of the Edmund Fitzgerald, it's a total work of art. Complete with a full crew, really detailed cranes, superstructure, even the clamps on the deck lids are there. It is totally tricked out with detail. It's an equally impressive ore dock as you see runs the full length of this ore freighter. This is just an absolutely beautiful model to witness. I spent two days at the layout and I never really got a chance to see all of it, or even have a time to grab a throttle and try my hand at operation. But what I did get was a great interview with the executive director of the museum, Michelle Kempema, in the final hours of my visit right before catching a plane back to St. Louis. And I gotta say, thank you very much Ed Dressel and Kilian Rubel for some fantastic camera work. It really turned out to be a great interview. So with that, let me present to you the Colorado Model Railroad Museum. For this segment of What's Neat, I'm standing with Michelle Kempema, the executive director of the Colorado Model Railroad Museum here in Greeley, Colorado, and what a magnificent layout that we are standing in here in all of its ambience. Michelle, this has got to be absolutely incredible to have a job where you work in a place like this. I do love my job. I have the best job on the planet and the best hobby in the world, right? I do love what I do. I definitely have a passion for what we do here. You put in a lot of hours and you have a lot of interaction with a lot of great individuals. Tell me how that feed, how you feed off of that. Well, I love the people that come through the door and I love our volunteers and I try to know everyone that comes in here because it's an experience and we want you to come in here and be immersed in this world. Yes. And so part of that is interacting with people because part of your experience here is not only seeing the trains but hearing them and the people around you and seeing the engineers with their trains and just the whole experience all goes together. That's absolutely fantastic. And you put a lot of hours. You not just work the trains but you work this entire business and you do very well. You guys have got some fantastic programs that I've learned about in the last two days of spending time here at this museum which while I will say as a fomer, dude, this is awesome. I love it. You all have got to check this place out. I am so overwhelmed. This is awesome that the fact is you run a very professional outfit here that actually helps the community and supports the hobby of model trains. Tell us about that pleasant seat. Well, what we have is a model railroad experience that sets in our community and our state and we try to be a part of our community in our local area and internationally. We want to be a part of the world of model railroading and we want to bring people joy with model trains. It's in our mission bringing people joy. And what better way to bring people joy than to come in here and look around and just fall in love with model railroading in here. Now, Michelle is on the podcast with us when you watch the What's Neat This Week podcast and one thing that we're going to talk about that I found fascinating is that on this 5,500 square foot layout, the maintenance, which I asked her about in podcast 51, we touched on lightly. But I saw us here. You all have a three page aircraft flight checklist on a procedure to maintain this layout. And that's something that in future podcasts I'd like to talk about. But this layout is so large. This is not like a home layout. It's not just humidity that they worry about, which they've got that controlled. It's the constant air systems control of the environment. The lumber underneath this layout is literally that of a home construction. You've got to build levels of platforms for the public to walk in, sustain the weight, and then sustain the layout. I've shot all of this and it's absolutely amazing. And tell us about the gorgeous scenery on this layout, Michelle. This is some of the finest scenery you will ever see. And it is all handmade. 28,000 handmade trees around us right now. And they're of all kinds. And I made an aspen and it took a long time. So when you're in here, you will see that our rocks were made from molds we made. Everything was hand painted and done. And so it really is just excellence in scenery. When I look at the layout, I really enjoy all the different types of bridges. Yeah, we have 14 bridges on this layout of many different kinds. They're all hand built and they're just beautiful. I love the bridges because the photograph you get, even visitors, can get that quality photograph, like a Ken Patterson photograph in our layout. I love it. Now you've got this gorgeous caboose that you refer to as she. Tell us your passion about that. I call her a she because she's beautiful. That's all you could say. She was built in 1919, Colorado and Southern. Her first job is running beer from Coors to Denver. I mean that's got to be fun, right? And then she ended up on the Colorado and Southern line that runs right alongside her building. And so in her history, she actually worked right where we are right now. And so we were able to restore her and share her with the world. And she turns 100 next year. That's fantastic. Now, when I was here earlier, they were doing a nighttime operating mode that I didn't really shoot a lot of b-roll up. But the fact is you have complete control of the lights. Tell us about that. We do. We have a theater lighting in here. So we can do day, night, and then we've lit much of the layout except when you're out in the country, it's a little dark. But that's the fun, right? Right. And so we do night-ups for our volunteers that come in and do it. It's fun. How many volunteers would you guys to meet you have? We have about 100 active volunteers at any time. And I've met so many of them, some of the best people in the world. And you've got, I've met a couple of people on the board that run this incredible operation. You've got some really good people behind you. We do. We have, I think, the most excellent people here. And I think part of that is just our philosophy of we're all here to provide this experience. So we're not like a club. We're totally different. We're made up of people from so many clubs from all across the country. Well, we had New Mexico in here today. I have a group from Iowa that comes all the time. We're really a national volunteer base. Right. And this is just the beginning of what's going to be a larger presentation of trains. Would you like to elaborate what some of your dreams might be for this? Oh, dreams would take a long time. Okay, we'll pick a couple. Well, our youth programs, we were teaching in public schools, we're building layouts with kids at Boys and Girls Club. We have after-school programs, summer camps. We're doing all kinds of that, so we need space. I need a massive creative room that we can make messes in and build amazing layouts. We also have exhibits we want to tell the story of model railroading through history in really interesting and creative ways. And so there's going to be a lot in what we build in our expansion. It's really exciting. In my couple of days here, one of the most famous model railroaders that we're going to have on the show in the third week of November is Rand Hood. And Rand Hood's going to help you with this project. Is that right? He is. He's coming to help me do some dreaming. It's awesome. I'm excited. This is going to be so great. This is going to be the center point in Colorado of model railroading. In between you and our sponsor, Caboose, there's a lot of great things to come. So look forward to that. Also, I want to thank Michelle so much for being the new podcast member of our crew. We're going to share a lot of experiences here from the museum with all of our viewers on that podcast. But for this segment of What's Neat, I don't know how we can make it any better than what it is. This is one of the best, most massive layouts that I've seen well organized and it's got great leadership, right? Well, I hope so. I do my best. Thank you so much for being part of this segment of What's Neat. Thank you. Thanks for having me. Thanks for coming out. And so you can come to Colorado. You can go to Caboose and you can come see us all in one day. It's awesome. This is the best hobby in the world. For this segment of What's Neat, I'm with Brad Joseph here in O'Fallon, Illinois, and I'm standing in this gorgeous double deck Union Pacific layout, Brad. Right on. This is awesome, buddy. Now I shot your layout way back in 1995 for the NMRA Bulletin and boy, has it changed. Yes, it's changed a little bit. I've redone a lot of the scenery. I had more hair then, a little bit less stress, but I've been working on it a long time. Too long, some may say. You know, looking at all of this, you have a passion for trains. Where does this come from with you, Brad? Oh man, that's easy. It came from my dad, Ken. Literally, my first memory was sitting on my dad's lap while he was working on a brass steam engine. I know what the steam engine was. It was a PFM Sierra 2662, which was his favorite engine of all time. And every vacation trip was riding fan trips, photograph and locomotive, steam trains, official guide was always in the car. That's where it came from. No doubt Osmosis, I think they call that if I'm not mistaken. I've got a picture of you in one of my real grand books in my library, writing to Zephyr. Tell me about that moment. Oh wow, that was our honeymoon. That's David Goodhart's book, right? Zephyr through the Rockies. David Goodhart and Harold Edmondsson. I wrote the real grand Zephyr seven times. First time was 1972 with my mom and dad. And I actually did a video slideshow on that that's on YouTube and I got to present at Beecher Fest a few years ago. The real grand Zephyr was a real passion of mine. I really enjoyed it. In fact, my wife and I just recently rode the Silver Solarium and Silver Rapids, the California Zephyr cars, they're still running. Everybody loves the California Zephyr, right? Now looking at your layout, you've got so much colorful scenery. You've got this gorgeous winter section where it's really kind of like this reddish scenery of, you know, the Rocky Mountains. Is that what they tell me about the winter scene? Well, the winter scene is little unusual. As you know, not many people do winter. I love winter scenes. I love to play hockey. I'm a skier and I really enjoy that kind of scenery. But that is representative Echo and Weber canyons coming east out of Ogden, Utah, which is where the big boy was built to climb up the Wasatch grade. Those are the Wasatch Mountains. And an interesting thing about that part of the country, depending on the time of the day, the light or the rocks are redder. Sometimes they're grayer. But all those scenes are modeled after actual locations, a place called Devil Slide, double bridges coming out of a tunnel called Taggart's. So that's what that all is. I kind of skip. I cut about 300 miles from West Allermy to Wasatch, Utah. We just kind of zip right past there and head right into those canyons. As we go down your single track main lines, you go from town to town through the beautiful, colorful scenery. It does look like Union Pacific Territory. And then we end up at this gorgeous roundhouse that you've built. Tell me about that scene. Wow. That actually was the toughest thing I've ever built in my life, because the whole thing is scratch built. And it's all exact scale measurements of the Union Pacific Roundhouse in Cheyenne, Wyoming. And steam locomotives are my number one passion. So I've got a lot of them. Most of them reside too much time in the roundhouse. But no, I love roundhouses. I seek them out to photograph them now. There aren't a whole lot left. And so I built that a long time ago. I think it looks pretty good if I'm not mistaken. One aspect of the hobby that you pointed out to me tonight is that you really enjoy operation. Talk to me a little bit about that. And is it the fellowship that it brings that you like too? Well, a combination of everything. The operating part, it's the culmination of this thing, right? We build this, then what do we do? We sit back and look at it and think, well, what do we do next? So the operating thing, my dad and I used to operate our layouts back in the early 70s. In fact, I still got a rulebook from that my mom typed it up that my dad wrote up the rulebook in the early 70s. But regardless, the trains that I run are representations of the real trains, the passion train numbers, the consists are right. I really enjoy that sort of thing. And the fellowship, of course, is great. Ribbon everybody over running a switch, which apparently my operators are the only guys that ever run a switch. I've never seen that happen elsewhere. But yeah, it's a tremendous amount of fun. And it's very educational. It's a lot of fun to research what trains ran when and where. And not only are you really into the hobby based on what we're standing in right here, which is absolutely exquisite, but you also support the hobby overall. You've been in the NMRA for years. Tell me about the support and the dedication that you have for the hobby overall. Well, you know, that's a subject, Ken, that's near and dear to my heart. I got into the hobby because of my dad. It has been a huge portion of my and my family's life. I have two daughters, both of which who grew up going to model train shows, who grew up riding trains. It's now part of their life. My youngest daughter is getting married in Nashville next week and she's getting her wedding photographs taken from the Nashville, Chattanooga and St. Louis locomotive in the city park in Nashville. Her decision, not mine. I didn't even suggest it. But so it's very, very important, I believe, for all of us as modelers to support the NMRA in general and the hobby in particular. I guess I got that backwards. Because we want to see it grow, we want to see it continue to be a vibrant hobby. And that's why I'm involved in the NMRA 2020 in St. Louis with John Schindler and Bob Amsler. And, you know, wow. I remember it was at the NMRA convention in St. Louis where PFM introduced their sound system at the Chase Park Plaza. I was there with my mom and dad. Wow. So, yeah, that's been a huge part of our family's life for ever since I've been around. Brad, this is absolutely fantastic. We really love your work. I want to thank you for sharing this with all the viewers of What's Neat and I say it over and over again. This is the best hobby in the world and it's because of people just like this. This segment of What's Neat, I'm up here in Mark Twain Hobbies and I went into Joe Hudson, an incredible painter of what you call Historical miniatures. Not only does he paint military figures, but Napoleon, the incredible Hulk, you name it. What a diverse way to share the hobby. Not so much model rarity, but this is what we do in model rarity. We try to make our characters look just like what you do with yours. Now, you were showing me some pictures. You said some of these are scratch built figures and paper clips. Show me that. Explain kind of the paper clip idea of creating the frame of the human. You start with a mannequin. A mannequin, yes. And then you build up the shape of the pose and then you start layering it with different putty, which I use a bit of AIDS epoxy putty. And then I'll get the basic shape. I start shaping it and then I use different types of putty, some foils and stuff to make the bell straps and all. So you must have an amazing amount of, like, dental tools and picks to form the putty or do you prefer wooden tools? I use toothpicks. Okay. It's toothpicks, I'm saying, to points that have super glue covered on it to help stop the putty from sticking to it. Well, I know the G-scale guys would love to have some of your talent on their lap. Do you make these for people sometimes? Have you done this as a business? I used to work for Berlin Productions and I still can see masters from them and I've still got a couple of freelance masters. But I normally just do whatever the magazine is asking me to do for that particular month. Joe, this is absolutely amazing. We're looking at some of your models right now that you've got on display at the hobby shop. So those folks that want to see these can come up the Mark Twain hobbies here in St. Charles, Missouri, the suburb of St. Louis and see some of Joe's great models. And Joe, I'd love to have you on the podcast sometime to share some of your, you know, live mannerisms and explain what it is you do. There's another gentleman that comes up here. What is his name? Chris Merasco. Chris Merasco. We had him on the show. What an incredible, he's got the same talents as you have. I've known Chris for a long time. You guys are brothers. That's why this is the best hobby in the world. Thank you very much Joe for this few minutes of your time. This is awesome. And that's this segment for what's neat. Got a beautiful blue freight car here that you weathered up. Tell me about this gorgeous model. What did you do here? Well, this was the car. You got three of them. You said from the Colorado Model Railroad Museum and you want to get them weathered up. So I think it was, I got it last Saturday night. You said you needed it back right away. So I did it about two or three days. I had to work pretty quickly and plan it all out. It probably took me 10 to 12 hours to do. I started out doing an airbrush fade on it to really knock down the blue on it. Before I did that, I patched out, I taped it out and did the patches. So that's the original color to look like it had been patched. But did an airbrush fade and I even went back over with that with a zinc white oil fade. And then while that was drying, I did the roof. Those are just brushed on acrylic browns. Then from there, started doing the rust. Did the pits, then the streaking, and then came back and added the COTS label and FRA reflective striping on there. And that was pretty much about it. Obviously I added some newer couplers and did the trucks and wheels and everything too. That's beautiful. Did you say about how long you thought it took to do this? About yeah, about 10 to 12 hours maybe. I've worked a couple hours. I think Sunday night and then some pretty long, almost five hour sessions on Monday and Tuesday night because originally you wanted it back Wednesday. That's fantastic. I love how you must have masked over the blue original color before you did the fade airbrush work. But yeah, awesome job, Jeff. We love it when you weather stuff and you bring stuff over here. This one is just, it's just you outdid yourself, brother. I love this car. Thank you for sharing this with the viewers of What's Neat, Jeff Meyer. Thanks for having me, Ken. Hey guys, George from SoundTracks here. And on this segment of What's Neat, we're going to upgrade this Broadway limited M1A to a Sonami 2 sound system. Now the first step we're going to do is we're going to remove the tender shell. Now in this particular locomotive, on the tender there's two screws right here in the middle that we're going to remove. And then that will allow us to quickly remove the shell. Now once we've removed the tender shell, we're going to take this connector and we're going to thread it through the opening here so we have access and we can set the tender shell aside so that it doesn't get damaged. So in order to continue to complete this installation, we're going to take the tender and set it aside for the moment. And we're going to open up our locomotive because we're going to make some changes inside the locomotive to allow a little bit more operation. So first thing we have to do is we have to find the screw that's located here under the pilot truck. And we're going to remove that screw. Then there's two screws here underneath the cab. And these two screws will allow the locomotive shell to easily lift off of the body. Now we just have to very carefully now lift the body shell up and off and away from the frame. And you're going to notice a bunch of wires heading up into the body. And a lot of these are going to be controlling the smoke unit which we're going to be removing here in just a few moments. Now once we get our shell off you're going to see a whole lot of wires in here that are all going to control the smoke unit that we're going to remove in this particular installation. So first off we're going to take this shell we're going to set it aside and we're going to unplug each of these harnesses here that are going to the shell. So this way we have the shell now separated from the body. Now the second screw is going to be located here under the feed water heater. We're going to take the top of that off and it's going to reveal a screw right here inside of the body. So we're going to remove that screw now and grab a pair of tweezers and we're going to pull the screw out of the hole. This one we can set aside we're not going to need that one again. Now before we pull our weight out we're going to take our smoke box plate off and unplug the wires for the headlight out of the circuit board here. So we're going to unplug this harness we're going to take this and we're going to set this aside for the moment. Now our weight is free to move out from inside the shell and it just comes right out. We'll take our body shell and set it aside for safe keeping because we're going to work on this unit next. Now to remove the smoke unit we're going to remove the two screws here this front little small PCB that mounts the smoke unit and the electronics on top and we're also going to be able to remove most of the mess of this wire. So we're going to take these two screws and loosen them up. We're going to pull this up and out of the way and we're going to take our smoke unit out from underneath and like I said most of these wires are going to go away. Now we need to replace this circuit board because this is the one that the headlight plugs into but we can't just simply screw it down to the base because these two terminals on the bottom of the plug will short against the frame. So we'll take a small piece of insulative tape double stick sided foam tape and we'll put it underneath in that small section so we just need to cut a small piece. Put that in place and then now we can replace the circuit board with the screws. Now they don't need to be real tight just enough to hold it in place but the tape underneath is going to insulate that and protect it. Now the rest of this we can cut away the wires that we don't need. So once we've untangled the wires we'll go ahead and cut the wire that we don't need at this plug. We can discard the plug and now the smoke unit. That'll leave us with the weight that'll go back into the boiler and this beautiful area that we're going to use and we're going to mount one of our mini cube speakers up inside the boiler here to help distribute the sound over the entire model instead of having the sound just emanating out of the tender. Now with Soundtracks part number 810154 mini cube you'll see that it fits perfectly right there where the smoke unit was. So we're going to take a small piece of our double stick foam tape we're going to cut it to about the size of the speaker we're going to mount it to the back of the speaker here we're going to peel the backing and we're going to stick it into place. So once we've got the backing peeled we're going to place the speaker into place and we're going to make sure the terminals are facing backwards towards the model so that that way we have a shorter wire run. Now the next step is we're going to add wire to our speaker and we're going to take our purple wire part number 810144 from Soundtracks. Now while we're doing that these wires for the headlight are also going to be a little bit short so we can add a little length to them or we can just desolder them here at the circuit board and replace them with a little bit longer. I recommend a wire about 8 inches in length that'll give us plenty of room to go there and to the connector on the motor that we're going to be attaching to. So when you're soldering you want to make sure you have a fine solder a very small diameter because you can always add more but it's a lot harder to take away excess. You also want to make sure to use an electronics compatible flux and use it in small amounts because the flux will help the solder flow onto the connection. Now we can strip and tin the end of the wire before we solder the joints so simply remove about a sixteenth or an eighth of an inch of the end of the insulation off of the wire you're going to apply a small dab of solder flux onto the wire itself you're going to take a little bit of solder you're going to tap touch it against the end of your wire the flux will draw the solder off of the iron and into the joint so now that we've done our soldering we want to make sure and identify positive and negative so on the card that comes with the decoder you'll identify your positive side. Now in this particular installation I used purple wires for both terminals so I tied a knot in the positive side to identify positive versus negative. You can also choose to use two different wire colors so now we're going to go ahead and reinstall this body weight we're going to put this up inside of here and we're going to mount it back into place using the screw here on the bottom of the shell now once you get the screw hole lined up you can just simply place the screw in place we're going to grab our screwdriver and we're going to screw into the bottom of that weight and that's going to lock that plate in place now to help clean up the installation we're going to take the colored wires and we're going to twist them together so that they're paired up so we know which wires go with which. Now that will help clean it up and keep the wires from interfering in the driveline inside the body now once you've twisted the wires we can take our smoke box we can plug it back into the small circuit board up here on the front and then we can replace the smoke box front onto the body shell and now for the moment we can take this set it aside and we'll work on the chassis next so next we're going to work on the chassis the first thing we want to do is we want to remove a lot of these extra electronics that were there to control the smoke unit now to do that there is a small PCB that is located here under the cab and that's going to be where the plug from the tender connects in. Now what we want to do is we want to verify which terminals are for which purpose and desolder the wires that need to be out of the way and leave the wires such as the motor leads and the track wires that do need to be in place so what we're going to do is we're going to draw a quick diagram similar to the circuit board that's located on there. Next we're going to take a multimeter set to continuity so when you get a direct short you get a tone so we're going to take this and we're just going to run along here and make sure which terminals connect to which to which wires so that way we can make sure the wire this up properly the first time so before desoldering everything we're going to remove this black insulated piece of electronics by removing the screw we're going to take this and lift it up out of the way and that will give us access to our desolder joints now once we've determined which wires are what we're going to fill this in on this document on this diagram now we're going to go desolder the wires that we need to remove and now with our wires desoldered we're going to remove a lot of these electronics out of the way so since we've already unscrewed this one the next one to unscrew is the on off switch that triggers the smoke unit on and off so we're going to remove that screw we're going to lift that up out of the way now the last one is this isolator board up here two screws off of the front of it we're going to remove it as well now once we've removed our screws our circuitry just simply lifts out including the piece of electrical tape that's holding everything in place now look at how much cleaner this installation looks already now once we've removed all the extra electronics now it's time to wire the boiler and our headlight and the extra speaker into that circuit board so let's bring this in and remember we've got our four wires now the headlight wire is color coded red and black red is positive black is negative and our speakers we've got both purple but remember we tied the knot in the positive side of the speaker so now going back to our diagram that we've drawn up before we're going to follow this plan and now we're going to solder the wires to the circuit board when doing this you want to make sure that you've got enough wire so that you can remove the shell later if necessary so you'll want to probably about a couple extra inches so that you can remove the shell so at this point we can go ahead and cut our wires here and we'll solder them to the circuit board now once we've finished this we can put the locomotive together again so with our extra wires we can take them tuck them up inside the body shell and we can set the body shell back in place and then we can replace our screws now we can take our locomotive and set it aside while we start on the tender so now we can start on the tender now the first thing we're going to want to do is we're going to want to remove the factory installed circuit board so we're going to take our set of wire cutters we're going to cut these wires as long as we can make sure we've got enough room to add on the extra wires for the decoder we're going to put this connector aside because we're going to have to use that to connect back to the locomotive now we can simply remove this out of the body shell so there's two screws that will remove the circuit board and we can take that pull it up out of the way and then you're going to notice the two speaker wires are there also so we're going to want to cut those again as long as we can and we have our front and rear track pickup wires attached to it as well again we're going to cut these to give us as much length as we can now we can take the circuit board and set it aside the next step is we will need to make sure that these speakers are wired in series they're 8 ohm speakers but this way we can have a 16 ohm load on the decoder because we're going to take that speaker that's up in the locomotive and wire it parallel to these two speakers so we need to make sure that we don't overload the amplifier to do that we're going to have to move these wires out of the way and there's two screws here that will allow us quick access to the speakers we're going to take these out and we're going to move this plate to the side for the moment now we're going to take the wires that they've given us here and we're going to wire them up in a series manner that's going to be the decoder to the speaker positive from the first speaker's negative to the second speaker's positive and then from the second speaker's negative back to the decoder so let's go and make that change now now once we've wired these two speakers in series then we can replace the plate that holds them back in place now there's nothing left to do but wire in the decoder so the next step is to actually install and wire the decoder in place now in this installation we're going to use our TSU 2200 for steam decoder we're going to take it out of the package then we're going to take some of our double stick tape and we're going to mount it to the top of this plate that's holding the speakers in place we don't need a whole lot of tape just enough to hold it in place and this is where editing is going to come into play because this tape is hard to peel the backing off okay and now with the decoder mounted in place we're going to wire it into our plug again following the diagram that we drew in conjunction with the locomotive side and make sure that the connections match that of the locomotive now the first thing you want to do when doing that is make sure that the plug is oriented the way it needs to be when it's plugged into the locomotive or your plug and wires are going to be backwards so for this locomotive you're going to see that the side with the pins visible is going to be the top so when we made our diagram we want to make sure that this matches where it's going to plug in so that that way we don't get anything wired up backwards now when we're making our connections we're going to shorten the wires and we're going to attach them to the appropriate terminals we're going to shorten these wires because we don't need quite that long a wire so we're going to shorten these up make sure that they match and leave them at about that long leaving behind we're going to strip and tin the ends of the wire we're going to tie them together we're going to solder them and then we're going to put our heat shrink tubing over the connection to make sure that it's a nice solid and insulated connection so now that we've made all of our solder connections now is a great time to test the locomotive plug this into the model be careful to make sure none of the loose wires touch any of the live rail plug it into the model, put it on the track and then turn on the track power and verify and make sure everything works the way it's exposed to what we found during our testing was that the motor wires were actually opposite of what the decoder is rated for so the positive was actually the negative side of the motor so what happened was when I went in the forward direction my model moved backwards while my headlight was on a simple switch of the orange and grey wires made it very quick and easy to make this change now once everything's finished up and we've tested it and everything works the way it's supposed to, let's button up the model so to help keep the wiring clean I've got one of these small little zip ties that we're going to take and wrap around this harness and that way we can kind of keep all these extra wires loose so the only part coming out will be the intended part of the harness that plugs into the locomotive so we're going to take this and we're going to wrap this up about like that so that should be more than enough to be able to connect to the locomotive so we're going to cut the excess of our connector we're going to set that aside now these other loose wires that are sitting around what we want to do is we want to tape those up and out of the way to make sure that they don't really touch anything that they should to make sure that they don't touch anything that they shouldn't so we're going to fish these wires out and we can use any type of tape a simple piece of scotch tape is just as good there's other tapes like capton tape you might be able to use and what this is just going to do is this is just going to help keep these wires from floating around loose I would not recommend using electrical tape since electrical tape especially the black electrical tape comes unraveled after years and this is just something that we don't want to have to deal with so we're going to take a small piece of our scotch tape we're just going to connect this and like I said it's just to hold the wires in place and we can trim off the excess wire the excess tape now once this is done we're ready to put the shell on so now we're going to grab our shell and our two screws remember we have to fish the connector through the opening in the front of the tender so once that connector is through we can simply put the tender shell back on in place and then re-insert the two screws on the bottom of the body that holds the body shell in place and then we can push this back up and in if we need to we can pull this out then we can say now let's take it for a test spin and plug in our connector make sure the plug is fully seated and then we can push the extra wire up into the tender shell there now let's go take it for a run so before we button this thing up this is where we want to add a current keeper now the TSU 2200 that we've selected actually has a two pin current keeper connection right here so you can simply trim the insulation back just a little bit plug in your current keeper tape it down either next to or on top of the decoder and then proceed with your shell installation and there you have it we've done our installation now let's get our locomotive let's plug it in and take it for a test run so now let's test it out and make sure everything still works looks like we're all good to go so now there's nothing left but to sit back set up a few of the CVs and enjoy the fruit of your work 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