 The October 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. And by Bachman Trains. Now that's the way to run a railroad. Check out their website at BachmanTrains.com and thank you for helping us support the best hobby in the world. This is What's Neat for October 2022. I'm your host Ken Patterson and this month we've got a great show in that we go to the NMRE National here in St. Louis with seven great interviews including five manufacturers and two layouts. And so this is going to be a pretty good show that Lego layout is absolutely amazing. Also be sure to check out the What's Neat this week podcast that we shoot down here every Saturday night keeping you updated weekly on what's new in our hobby including new products, special guests and a lot of other great information that is this the best hobby in the world. You can look up the What's Neat show at WNIndex.com or you can Google WNIndex and there you will find an index for all of the What's Neat shows that we've done including the how tos, subject matter and everything else. But before we start this show I'd like to introduce you to Larry Harrington out in beautiful Philadelphia, Pennsylvania that's going to update us on a lot of the new products that Bachman Industries now has. Larry, how are you today? It's great to have you on the show. Great to be with you today too. It was nice stopping by your actual studio the other day and getting to see how everything really works out there. It was really nice. Today we have a tremendous amount of items to go over. We've launched our annual NMRA announcements which is usually tooling or improvements to tooling or improvements to products. So we have a tremendous amount of products to share with you today. That's awesome. So I can start right off or if there's anything else you want to discuss before we go we'll just go into it. No, I'm very impressed with the new Assella. I was impressed with the new Transfer Combuse from Missouri Pacific in the paint scheme. It's totally killer. And that end scale narrow gauge locomotive that doesn't have a face on it. Now it's got a prototype front on it which lends itself well to people that want to model narrow gauge on their HO scale layouts. So pardon me if I look away but I'm going to use my second monitor here as a cheat sheet to see what I'm going through. The first announcement we have is and you can actually tell you for all the watchers out there and listeners go to our website www.BachmanTrains.com and in the upper right hand corner there's an icon says catalogs and brochures. You click on that. That'll take you to a digital version of all the products that I'm going to talk about today. So you can see the actual illustrations, you can zoom in, you can get all the information. So being new announcements we don't have a lot to share with you as far as the actual physical product at this point. But we're working on them actively. I did share a few with you when we were last month. Actual the girder bridge from end scale and the large scale announcements that are on the brochure. So I'm not going to repeat those again today for time purposes. But again go to the brochure, check it out. The first thing you were talking about was the Arcella 2. The new version of the Arcella that you're going to see in service soon. They're doing some testing on it right now. And we're going to sell that as we have in the past with a set. It's going to have several cars and two powered locomotives and a dummy locomotive. And that'll be the starter set for you. The basic you can run that, everything will work together fine. It'll come with the power pack and controller and also the loop of 22 inch radius concrete tie track. So that's one thing we just introduced last year was the concrete tie track. And it makes sense to have them with all the passenger service on the Northeast Carter because that's what the track is. Then also along with that we have the additional cars that you can purchase to actually make the entire nine unit train if you wish. So those will be separate sale items but those will be more for the modeler that wants to get the actual complete set. So we figured it might be a little large for a starter set for the beginner even if they like it. But now they have the five piece and then you have the add-ons to make a total nine piece. So going in the next item we have an HA. We have two more paint schemes in the ACS-64. One people were screaming about was the Phase 3 train sim World 2 wrap that Amtrak has put on their locomotive. And as soon as that hit the rails, when are you going to do it? So we had to work through some licensing with train sim and dovetail and we did that and we were able to introduce that for this brochure. So we have that and along with that we're also going to do the tribute to the gun unit for the David Elgun number 600. So we'll have that. A lot of people have asked for that one as well. So that will come as the previous one with full sound from Well Sound. It's got the keep alive and all that good stuff and lots of sounds. So very good quality. The next item we have is either love it or you hate it. This is the HO BL2. It's always been kind of a model that I thought was a pivotal model and a pivotal prototype in the industry that got us all the jeeps. If we didn't have the BL2, we wouldn't have the jeeps these days. So BL2 was not the most successful locomotive, but it was on a good number of railroads. I think there's at least nine different including demonstrator plus there's multiple paint schemes so that the model has some life. It's one thing when we pick a locomotive or piece of rolling stock, we have to be able to have multiple paint schemes in order to pay for the tooling expense down the road. Very cool. Very cool. Next item, we're chock full of passenger equipment. So the Amtrak modelers and passenger models will be real happy. We've announced it previously but not officially. We're doing the venture cars for both the VIA rail so that you can make your complete set because we did announce the VIA charger locomotive previously but not the cars. But now this will have all the cars in the consists including the cab car that will have prototypical details. And then we're also doing at this time the coach for the Amtrak Midwest or the i.coach. That's the only one that's currently on the rails. We probably will do additional models as they are delivered but right now that's the only ones out there. Also an HO, next is a chemical tank car with platform. And we're doing this model. We did show this at the show so I'm going to go over quickly but it does have two different domes for the different prototypes. So that's it for that and let's see what else we got here. We got as you said before with the transfer caboose and I got numerous emails from Missouri Pacific modelers saying this is not a transfer caboose. This is a short bay caboose and I am aware of that. But we have to kind of have one name for a product when we introduce it in the catalog. So we're doing it as a transfer caboose. You can call it, when you put it on your layout you can call it whatever you want. But we do know that that was a mainline caboose. So as you mentioned in the narrow gauge line now we're taking the narrow gauge Fletcher Jennings 042T locomotive. We got one in front of you there. I love this locomotive. It runs really good. Now are you anticipating putting DCC in this or will that be DC? Right now just DC. It's awfully small. It is small. I'm sure that it's possible to get DCC in there. We've done it with small models before. We've done it with an in scale 44 tunner. So I think it's possible but I can't promise that until I actually look at it. Okay. So also in H.O. and Thomas and friends we have Bow which is a 440 American character that was in one episode. And we have Rebecca. And then we will be introducing some, excuse me, I can't read the screen here. Some narrow gauge box fans. No, not narrow gauge regular. No, it is narrow gauge. I'm sorry. We have these box fans in every gauge and scale. So it's Thomas's Doug Blaine's realm of expertise. I'm not always as up on the products as I should be. But I should be able to read. We love Doug Blaine. He is the king of Sodor. Oh yeah, king of Sodor. So we're doing, this is by the way, our first introduction into the train business was Plasticville. If you know the history behind Plasticville we made, I believe the first thing we made was a lot of people used to make Christmas gardens, especially people from Germany and Poland and they used to make, they call them putzes I think, where they used to make a little diorama under their tree. So the first thing we did I believe was like a garden fence. And then we expanded the line to include houses and numbers of other things as well. Telephone poles, light posts, things of that nature. That happened 75 years ago. Yes. So that's when we really started getting involved in trains was 75 years ago. So we're in tribute. We're making a special addition in both HO and end scale for models in each of the HO using the box. People have the original artwork that we used when we promoted the items. It'll never be out of date when I was in fourth grade for Christmas. I got my first Plasticville buildings that came in a set of six and that absolutely made my four by eight Tycho layout for me. And you know to this day, I mean I personally have model train collection and I know lots of other people do it. If you acquire a collection of any kind, of any size, you're going to find Plasticville of some sort in that box. So it's been around for a long time and it is the standard. A lot of modelers have made serious models out of the gas station because that is the one kit that as I recall it's based on a prototype. Well actually if you've seen our Thomas layout at some of the shows that we take it to travel around and usually the world's greatest hobby. My colleague Ray Butoe built a really neat mining thing out of the coal tower. So it's pretty neat. So I'm sure you can look online to find it somewhere. So to continue on here we have an end scale. We kind of had a soft announce earlier with the ALC 42 because there was speculation since we did the SC 44 that we would be also doing the ALC 42. So we'll be doing the ALC 42 and four different items. One would be the day one paint scheme as we did in HO. Then we'll do the phase six and then we'll do two of the phase sevens that just hit the rails. So you have the in front of you the SC 44, the phase six, and then the day one in front of you. But we'll do the phase seven soon to follow in HO as well. That wasn't officially announced but you know it's coming. Yes. Some of my favorite Amtrak locomotives. They're killer. I'm so proud of that project. We worked very closely with Siemens. We worked with TCS and between all the companies we got probably one of the best diesel models we've ever built. With the sound and light functions it's incredible. Next end scale item is SD 40-2. We'll have that available in four road names. The Santa Fe, CSX, Norfolk Southern and Union Pacific. Now we've done something and we get criticized for this sometimes but darn it, it's fun. And you know what, fun should be part of the hobby and we've done it in HO, we've done it in large scale and now we're doing it in end scale. It's the animated stock car. It has the two animals that Bob in and out and you know what they sell very well. So the critics out there are the purists that say it's a bobblehead car. It's fun guys, come on let's have some fun. I agree. And they'll see all that will bring excitement to your layout. They're not going to care what a prototypical locomotive is but if they see that horse bobbin in and out you may have a new hobbyist there. So we're going to induce those in four paint schemes. CBNQ, Union Pacific, Baltimore, Ohio and a famous Christmas reindeer car. So while we're at it we're also going to do the stock car which hasn't been in our line for a while Actually I made a mistake, I'm sorry the animated car will be rear grand not B&O the B&O will be in the standard stock car. We'll have C&N, excuse me, Canadian National New York Central and Pennsylvania will be the other three road names in that gathering there. End scale continues. We'll have the drop-end gondola, 52-foot 6-inch gondola. So we'll do that in Frisco, Great Northern, New York Central and Union Pacific. Nice. And we'll share some of these images with you so you can put them up on your screen when you are doing the actual final cut here. And the bridge I talked about, we'll skip over that. We've got the Gordon and End Scale and Toad and End Scale for the Thomas End Scale fans there. Now on to our O&30 line. Yes. We're bringing back with some improvements the O&30 280. Consolidation. Consolidation. So we're doing a painted unlettered version. We're doing a United States Podash version and a White Pass and Yukon version. Nice. All will feature details to the prototype and this model will feature our first Tsunami II decoder from Soundtrack. So it's going to be a very nice sound package and this will also have some upgrades to the drivetrain as well. And then as I mentioned with Plasticville we'll have four items in O scale as well as HO. And then on to large scale we made the announcements at the show of the GP-40. Yes. That'll be in CSX, Norfolk Southern, Santa Fe and Union Pacific. We also, people, we did the end of train device and the large box car, the 53-foot Evans car and people said, I want the car too. So we decided to introduce another number without the end of train device for the ones that we had the end of train device for and then we also added two numbers of the Tropicana Orange juice box car. Nice. So that's, and then also pairing up with the 129th scale, large scale items the 100-ton Bethel and Ames steel hopper which will have the Pennsylvania Power and Light, CSX, Norfolk Southern, Union Pacific and each one of those will come in two road numbers. Nice. So, and then we'll have the, in Thomas' large scale we'll have the museum coaches and the museum brake coach. So, and then winding it all up here we have some items in our O gauge line, the Williams line where we continue to add on to the Easy Street line which is, we'll have a vehicle, kind of a morbid thing, but it could be for Halloween to hearse an ambulance and a station wagon. So we will introduce those sometime next year and also we'll have a track pack for the Easy Street to, so you have everything you need right out of a box to make an oval of track. That's cool. And finally, last but not least, we have the much anticipated upgrade to Easy Command. It's the Easy Command Plus model. Okay. This will allow you to do more things than everybody, a lot of people grew up with Easy Command. We've probably made tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands of units of the Easy Command. And it's got a lot of people into DCC but there was always some limitations and now we have less limitations. So this model will have feature the ability to address all 28 function buttons. It will have 128 speed steps. It will have an emergency brake option which just will address the current locomotive that is being operated. And it'll still have the emergency stop for the entire layout which kills power to everything but the emergency, the e-brake as it's referred to will just stop the one locomotive you're currently controlling. And it has a speed indicator as well. So when you switch between locomotives you can see approximately how fast you're going when you go between different locomotives. It still supports the one analog operation so those people are transitioning from analog to DCC can still take advantage of having it on their layout. And then it also has the ability to control our turnouts with the, you can turn eight different turnouts with the Easy Command unit. That's very cool. That's a lot of new products and that's what I've seen. It's a lot of new products. One of the most I think we've ever introduced at NMRA. So it's going to be a busy year for me. It is. It's going to be. I look forward to that Osella. I can't wait to see that running down here. That's exciting because on the last podcast 207 we in fact talked about the Narrow Gauge ON-30 consolidation that's coming out with sound. That's exciting. I want to start a new project layout for that which I think will be very entertaining all through 2023 as we build that. But this Osella again is very exciting. It's a beautiful model and I can't wait to see it. We can't wait either. It's going to take some time for development because it's a complex model but we're going to make sure it's right and deliver it. By the way, that is sound ready. That'll be DCC sound ready. So we'll have a speaker installed and a 21 pin plug so you can plug your favorite decoder in there. That's very cool Larry. So that rounds it out for the Bachman New Products for this month of October. Is that right? That's right. Hopefully we'll have some samples of new stuff the next time we talk. We love it when you introduce our viewers to all the new products like you've had. So with that now let's continue on the Annamarie Show 2022 here in St. Louis for the October What's Neat? Hello, this is Michael Gross and you're watching What's Neat with Ken Patterson. Today we're at the Annamarie National 2022 convention in St. Louis, Missouri. Right now we're in Collinsville, Illinois at the Gateway Center and I've got Joshua and Daniel from the podcast with us today. Guys tell me you've been here for one day so far. This is our second day at the show. What do you think starting with you Josh? Just amazing all these layouts so you can see all the functionality of all the trains, all of the vendors that are here. It's just amazing all the things to see here. You need more than one day. You need all three days. Right. I agree. Daniel have you spent any money yet? Not yet. Maybe tomorrow. What do you got in mind? A lot of things in mind. I might have that new Blue Dummy Decoder soundtracks came out with which I think we're going to have an interview here with George pretty quick. Yeah that's some pretty exciting news. The Decoder that works on Bluetooth with your phone. You can optimize all the settings no more CD programming but just stay tuned for that. Right so with that we're going to do some interviews look at some layouts, a few manufacturers and just see what's all exciting here in this show. I'm standing here with Samantha Pogue from Woodland Scenics in Lynn Creek, Missouri and you are the director of marketing of this company that has made our layouts beautiful for years and years because with your products I can do that too is the way it really is. Tell me about your passion for the hobby. I've been watching you do these clinics and you've just got this personality that radiates when you're doing your presentations. Oh well thank you so much. I really do love these products. What I love about them most is that they're so easy to use. We have little kids six, seven years old all the way up to older modelers that have been experienced models and they never even tried their hand at scenery before and they are doing it for the first time and they're all doing it so easily that's what is so great about our landscape products. Anyone can do it, you can't mess up and it all looks so realistic for your model train layouts. That's absolutely awesome. Now you've got a couple of new products that you're announcing here at the NMRA show. Tell us about those. Okay yeah our first one which is going to come out early this fall it's one of our newest built and ready buildings it is our toy and hobby junction and it comes in N, H, O and O scales and the nice thing about the toy and hobby junction is that you can actually see the interior it has a very highly detailed interior with little airplanes on a couple of the scales that hang from the ceiling which is so cool and all kinds of little fun things that you would see in a toy and hobby store and you can see them from each side of the building which is so cool from the windows because it's a two-story building which is brand new for us we've never done that before that actually can see both levels now that kind of joined some of our other recent buildings that came out earlier this year like the Smith Brothers TV and appliance that has little TVs that flash and also our Miss Molly Steiner and our Carver Sputcher shop so both of those it's really exciting to have this new edition we've had a lot of interest about it so far That is really cool and I love those flashing TV screens in that building I know, are they so neat? Yes What a neat concept the design guys hats off to them Oh my gosh that helped design your products now you've also added to the just plug lighting system tell us about the exciting new signals Oh, we're so excited to announce this so we have our brand new traffic lights okay it's a great accessory for any model layout that you have and what's so nice about it is they're kind of modeled after the 40s and the 50s but there's still traffic lights that you're going to see on roads and at intersections busy intersections today we have three different kinds we have the pedestal which is one that you see kind of in busy historic downtown areas then we have a mast arm that kind of hang over the intersection nice and then we also have a suspended flashing so this one actually has a yellow flashing signal like you would see it a rural intersection a kind of poshing to the hey, slow down before you move through the intersection and they're all common NHO and O scales they're all very highly detailed weathered, authentically weathered so they're a great addition and they plug simply plug right into your light hub with the just plug lighting system it's that easy it's amazing the LED seemed to last forever the concept of it is so easy and that you can hook it up we actually made it what's neat video on the entire product line about 2017 and it came out really good good, thank you so much for that so Samantha, thank you so much for sharing all the new products with our viewers on what's neat great, thank you so much Ken, I appreciate it I'm standing here with the amazing Steven Priest and Steve you've made some major announcements at this show including a new wonderful company in our industry thank you tell us about that well, we're actually going into the model rare production aspect of the the great hobby of model rarity oddly enough I've been producing models for other manufacturers for years and years and years we produced hundreds of models for other companies as a contract company for them so at this point we decided hey, you know we're kind of foolish if we don't just go ahead and go the extra nine yards and kick her on off and start our own company so we decided to do that and so we've started Class1ModelWorks.com primarily we're going to be selling direct but we will work with a certain group of select hobby shops that we have been vetting over the last probably six months or so and we have our first products in China being produced and we'll talk about those a little bit today okay okay I'm excited because I've seen them tell us what they are okay, so we've got currently we've got some interesting intermodal cars we've got a TW F10 which is a fantastic unique intermodal car but had a very special place in the intermodal world and if you're an intermodal fan you'll real quickly recognize that these cars look like nothing else they have a special or unique truck underneath them and they were designed to carry very heavy container cars in service because instead of carrying the weight of the car in the bolster which is a center pin they actually carry the cars on the outer edges of the car which is why they have this large structural area around the car around the ends of the car and the point of that is is basically to just distribute the load of the car differently so extremely unique cars and they actually have the names or the nickname of Dreadnought or Battleship in the railroad world because they kind of look like a battleship sitting low in the water Cool cars we designed them they're all metal with plastic detail parts and etched parts on them and they run beautifully and of course they have a never before produced wagon union truck which is something that's never been produced in the hobby before and track extremely well and are really selling quite well we're actually kind of stunned at how well they're moving right now so we're enjoying it the intermodal guys are enjoying it especially so we're bringing them out in three versions as delivered kind of an intermediate service life and then a late service life version that has some built-in weathering to it and some patching on it which as you know as modelers that's kind of an neat thing to do that because it kind of gives them a history through time via paint we also have containers for these we have two types of containers we have a monon and a Hyundai container and that's what these are here a couple varieties each we're going to be doing a lot of these containers and they're have never been done before especially with the raised outer supports and this level of detail so these are selling well as well so we're extremely happy with that I'm going to run B-roll on the next product you're going to talk about tell me about this beautiful center depressed flat car okay so it's interesting heavy duty flat cars had two purposes the first purpose was to obviously carry things that was heavy but the second thing was is to have a center that was depressed so that you can carry a taller load and a lot of people don't realize that part of the design of that was the taller load not necessarily the heavy duty so what we've done with that car is we've basically produced it it's going to have a metal frame as well outside roller bearings and things like that as well that are functioning as these cars do they have outside operating roller bearings the neat thing about the car is is that everywhere it had them I mean virtually everywhere it had that car they generally had one or two some had as many as 15 and they started in 1950 in their production and they're still out there today so there's an incredibly long run on them so you a lot of roads like Union Pacific you can put them in three or four different paint schemes because of just the longevity of the life and you can that's awesome so it's awesome they're awesome now you also made a new locomotive announcement that's coming out tell us about that so we're bringing out a GP40 and he's so anyway we're bringing out a GP40 and that GP40 is there have been a couple models out there produced before but they're getting a little long in the tooth as you may know and so the GP40s are are kind of ripe for a locomotive to get in and produce and I talked with a lot of people in the model rare world Brian Banna and a lot of the other guys and when we were originally doing this kind of ran kind of a an informal survey and Brian and some of the people said hey man you got to do the GP40 first because that's just fresh for picking I'm like okay here we go so we grabbed a hold of that and we're doing a lot of different body styles on it we're also doing things that have never been done in the model rare world industry before such as a steppable height if you look at the drawings over there there are two steppable heights which is basically the height of the stairs on the end of the engine the steppable else from the ground and there's two separate versions of that we're doing as well as a variety of jackpads and some other things like that complete animation in them sound obviously and then some other neat lighting features and things like that so as a hardcore you know modeler man this stuff right up my field and I love it you have a passion like no one else in this hobby I've watched you for years I think we met back in the early 90s at a Santa Fe modelers meet out in Kansas City and it was a joy to see your first layout that was in the condo and you've had so many other since we've had 16 layouts we built 16 layouts you're such a leader in our hobby and we can't wait to see what you do next and we really appreciate you sharing all your new wares with the viewers of what's neat thank you appreciate it I'm standing with Richard Glatter and this is a Lego layout otherwise known as LGMS the Lego gauge modular standard so this is actually a standard that we as the Lego community have come up with we actually came up with it after the Kansas City animal show we got together we filmed our display there we had about six individual layouts there and we decided hey why don't we all get together and come up with a standard so that we can all display together in one big layout nice idea so this is what we came up with so our standard just like any other traditional monorail road standard we define where the track goes we define track height all of that and that's all that we define in our standard we keep it pretty simple there are definitely a lot more nuances just like every other standard but this is our display it's amazing I do recall from that last interview y'all don't glue your stuff together you keep it so that you can make modifications along the line absolutely we do not glue anything I won't say we don't glue anything we do glue a couple of things there are some detail parts that tend to fall off especially in transportation that we might glue on just so that things don't fall apart but for the most part no glue all of our models are also scratch built so the vast majority of our rolling stock and locomotives we design from the original line drawings that we go out and find just like the scratch builders do and they're all designed from there we of course we do have some fun things too some non prototypical trains around too that the kids love but it's also fun to have very prototypical, very accurate models absolutely now is this battery powered? yes, everything is battery powered we use a couple of different control systems we use LEGO's control system which is power functions and powered up the power functions uses infrared control powered up uses bluetooth nice we also we don't have anyone here this weekend that is using it but we do have some people that use air wire okay and now after this weekend I'm sure that most of the people in the Model Rare community are familiar with Blue Rail or Blue Nami sorry, it's Sunday afternoon at the end of the show so we have actually bought those decoders and installed them here at the show fantastic, so you know they work absolutely, they work great walk us around some of the feature scenes on this layout that you like okay, absolutely so across the front of the layout here this is three modules from three individual builders but they work together in a combined scene and it was actually a happy accident that they worked out that way but this sort of factory scene kind of flows throughout the warehouse and then into kind of a more rural town area this was from three different builders one of the builders is from Indiana one of the builders is from Pennsylvania and the other one is from Texas and they all just kind of work together as we work our way more around the layout, you can see a cool beach scene this display has actually been around for a few years and it's been at many of our LGMS displays as an LGMS community display just at train shows like this, we also display at LEGO hobby shows and comic conventions and that sort of thing this display just to give a little bit more information is put on by members from all over the country but we are also members of individual clubs as well that we call LUBS LEGO user groups so we're all various members of our own local LUBS so as we move on into the huge buildings here cranes and the skyscrapers that are under construction so that is built by a member in Wisconsin and he's always built very big buildings and they're amazing on display here he has actually they're actually shrunk they go taller we run out of space here and when they set up their full display with their full log and they can go taller the only reason they can go taller is because they have a six foot six member that stands on the top of an eight foot ladder to be able to put the buildings altogether we actually had some interesting things happen this weekend that one of the towers started to lean so that was fun to try and figure out how to fix that but it is it's very cool what you can do with LEGO yes it's an amazing medium that we can just do anything with you can go from completely prototypically accurate train models to fantastic skyscrapers all with the same bits and blocks that's amazing as we continue to move through the layout we have a scene of a rail yard and that is a local rail yard to the member who built it so it's accurate to his local rail yard okay so he also has a lot of maintenance away vehicles all over his layout including the rail train where they use to lay rail yeah that's cool and it does actually run so moving to kind of more of our fun LEGO scene our amusement park it adds a lot of motion the roller coasters are amazing yes, yes they are one of them is an actual LEGO roller coaster the other one is made by a company called Coaster Dynamics okay and they're a lot of fun they're definitely a lot of work to keep maintaining but it takes a few days long it takes some work but it's all fun that's awesome and then the last module section that we have is a western scene that one of our builders built and also in the western scene he also has an ironclad ship which is actually the Cairo so it's actually the Cairo which was actually built here in St. Louis and it's on display in Vicksburg Mississippi this is a testament to what you can do your passion is obvious all over this work you guys have done a fantastic job thank you so much for sharing this amazing art with the viewers of What's Neat absolutely thank you very much good job hi I'm here with Denny Yelzma from Yelzma Graphics and if you remember in 2018 he was my very first interview on What's Neat and we're here now in 2022 and such amazing array of things you have Denny how are you oh I'm great Josh to me this is homecoming because like you say that was your first interview you did with me and you did such a great job and I'm so proud of you and I see you on the show all the time and I'm proud to say hey I know Josh and people ask me all over the shows all over the United States and they'll say hey what kind of a guy is Josh and so it's a thrill and it's a thrill to be back here in St. Louis this hobby is such a thrill and everybody is so nice and down through the years you know we've been doing this for 37 years wow and people have come by the show here and it's just so heartwarming and they'll say hey I bought a jacket from you 30 years ago and I still have it and I think wow and so it's just great to be back here I see all these hats behind me you have everything from Alco on this side to the Zephyr way on that side it's an amazing array of everything let's talk about this jacket here this jacket is absolutely amazing well this is the 25th anniversary of BNSF and this has been such a great seller the guys just love it it has all the logos and you know like I grew up in the cornfields of Iowa and I watched the Q go by so naturally I like the Q but I just you know watching these trains and you gotta be a real fan you gotta have a good quality jacket out there and that's a beautiful jacket all this stitching I mean this is thousands of individual stitchings on this jacket and that's not even mentioned this stuff down here that's individually sewn and it's just an amazing product this is a great durable material I have two of these actually one is my railroad and one is what's neat and I absolutely love these jackets I can't wait till fall to break them out yeah they're it's just to me it's just a work of art making them for guys and when they combine and show off their jackets and you know we do these for clubs also and it's just a thrill to see 10 guys go by and you know a jacket like this and so this is definitely art this is not just some stitches on there this is time consuming this is you have to have an artistic eye for this in order to get this and this is beautiful stuff and I saw this this is going to go home with me I love these beanie caps you have such a wide array and these are new for you correct well yes we have the you know the beanie cap then we have the traditional stocking cap and we have 1360 logos and you have the logo or you ask me what the logo is I'll have it and if I don't have it we'll make it for you well good it's very nice seeing you Denny I'm glad you're having a good time and come to your local train show because Denny's probably going to be there I'll see you later Hi I'm Dan with What's Neat and today we're with George from Soundtracks and we're here to interview him about a very new product and I think it's going to revolutionize the industry and moderating sound so George why don't you tell us about this new product so Daniel we're really excited this week we've got our brand new Blue Nami product now this is a play on the word tsunami and Bluetooth because it is a Bluetooth control direct from our app on our iPad and iPhone direct to the decoder inside your model so it is a DCC based product so you do still have DCC control but now you also have the added benefit of Bluetooth direct so you can buy a decoder a Blue Nami now install it in your model and run it with your other trains but if you want to have that extra level of control and I'm going to show you some of these really cool features here in just a second you can use the app now right now in front of me let's take a look and see what the app can do alright so show me all the features here of this new Blue Nami app sure so first off we have our app right now I've got our Union Pacific I dialed that up specifically for you so we're going to do our 2045 this is our G scale GP38-2 right here behind me now I have full control through the app so I can blow the horn and it's very responsive so take a listen to this so that's a direct response from the Bluetooth control directly to the decoder inside so I have full throttle control as well so I can run the locomotive forward and then I can run it in reverse and all of it is using this app now as you see this is the very basic screen to start off with operation but if you want to access the higher functions there's a little button right here on the side pulls out a little short menu and there's access to the first 14 functions and then you can go to the next 14 functions by hitting the second button there's the rest of it including your extra lights so you can turn on things like the class lights and the number boards directly on the locomotive just by using the app now this is how you can control it and so with the app open you'll gain access to throttle and direction without closing this window so you'll always have immediate contact control now where this is really going to shine there's two aspects that I want to show you is one down here we have a gear we have a settings this is basically a full decoder setup menu no longer have to deal with CVs directly so if I want to go through and change the air horn for example I just click this here where it says sound settings now I go to main sounds and I'll scroll down here where it says horn and I can click that pulls up the full menu and let's pick a different one we're going to pick that right there if I want to hear it get the sample and you can hear that instantly change if I want to adjust the volume I simply change the volume so that way before I leave the settings menu I can actually hear the sound and make sure I'm happy with the settings so all of this is completely setupable through the app I think I just made up a word there setupable that's great so anyway we're really excited about this because if you do still want to set CVs so let's say you know what CVs you want to do and you don't want to find them in the app great you hit the CV settings you can go through and actually program the CVs directly now all of this is stored in the decoder itself so if you were to set it up using the app pick it up and put it on your DCC layout all the settings are still there so you're not setting it here you're setting it there, you're just using the app to do that now here's one of the added benefits I want to show you usually when you get a new decoder let's say you were setting it up on your DCC system you want to read all CVs that takes several minutes watch this, we're going to hit the button read all CVs and we're done that's it I've just read all my CVs so if I was to program a CV directly using the DCC system and I want to see where that is I just read all my CVs so now I can get that in there so I'm going to show you the last really really cool thing so you have all these settings, actually there's a lot of cool things so I'm going to show you the last one in order to keep this short because we can talk for an hour so dynamic digital exhaust you can auto calibrate using the app what I really want to talk about is Consist so you and I have done a video on Consisting before so we've talked about lead locomotive and their settings, middle locomotives and the settings and the rear locomotive well here's how you can do this now you tell the app which one is the lead unit and you determine which functions turn on and off using the app and this will set it up so like say for example if you're lead locomotive you don't want to turn on something a light for example you can just turn it off we want to change this with our middle locomotives and our rear locos because you'll notice here when I open up the mid-loco there's no bell, there's no air horn there's no short horn it's all turned off, if I want to enable it I can simply just click it so this allows you to build your Consist now let's build a Consist really quickly with these locomotives behind me I have my Union Pacific and I have a small little HO scale Mopac SD40 so of course between you and I we're going to make that Mopac the lead unit alright let's do it so we're going to use this, we're going to use this arrow we're going to go to the control for the Mopac SD40 this chain down here on the bottom we're going to hit this chain link and you're going to see Consist A, B, C and D so you have up to 4 Consist that this unit will be able to talk to unlimited number of locomotives other than your track power so I can have 30 locomotives and a Consist if I want to collect this we're going to select Consist B so now we're set up to Consist B so now I have control of this SD40 so now we're going to go back to the Union Pacific 2045 we're going to make that its trailing unit so we're simply going to click the chain we're going to do Consist number B and look my throttle went away because it's Consisted now so I have two settings this is my rear locomotive and we're going to make it facing backwards so we're going to make sure that it knows it's facing backwards so now I'm going to go back to my Mopac SD40 I'm going to start moving him forward and you're going to notice that they're running in opposite directions because the way I built the Consist they're back to back okay so I have full control when I blow my horn it's coming out of the SD40 but now when I get to the end of my run I'm going to turn and I want to go back to the depot I come over here to my Union Pacific 2045 we'll go ahead and make that the lead so we push the lead button make lead now this locomotive is the lead we have our sounds what there they are we have our throttle we're going to go in forward here we're going to start moving and you're going to notice that the locomotives are now moving as they would if they were to reverse direction but all my horn and bell now have moved to what is now the lead unit Consisting is the breeze with Blue Nami so when you and I did a conversation before we set CV 19 21 22 245 and 246 and just to thank a jam drive what I use it also takes what 30 minutes maybe set up all individual functions and stuff like that so now you can have a fleet of Blue Nami we can run them using the app we only you're using the track for track power so think about this DC or DCC track power will work these Blue Nami is fantastic but think a little one step further battery power onboard battery power those garden railways Ken I know you have a garden railway we're going to have to get some in your hand once they're available but this is an unofficial official announcement of the large scale version coming next so we will have a Blue 4408 coming next so if you're not already subscribed to our newsletters or our YouTube channel make sure you do so that you'll be surprised of when those come out but this weekend we're selling our Blue Nami Blue 2200 which is the HO scale universal decoder retail price is 169.95 and so this makes it so much easier so if you're doing one railway with battery you're doing DCC with track power for you analog guys out there that are still using track power guess what your holdout is paid off now you have access to be able to run this and so maybe we'll try to see if we can get Mike Buddy to actually get some sound decoders in his locomotives because he no longer has to have DCC no he doesn't no George I think it's phenomenal when I saw the first announcement I'm like okay they got something cooking but I look at it bluetooth it makes sense you know as like you said you link it up to your phone and then a guy doesn't have to spend maybe $500 to start out with on his command system you know which they're normally $500 for a radio system like that but I think this is definitely going to revolutionize the sound industry as a whole yeah it's definitely a big change and we're really excited about it we've got a lot of buzz it's been busy I mean it's taking you guys almost two days to get over here it's been so crazy over here but what's really been fun I'll share this little story with you so when we had some of our first customers after the ad went out we started getting asked about this from some of the Lego guys the guys that are modeling in Lego they do some amazing work out there but they're all on board battery control they said oh my god this is fantastic so this morning this is Saturday we came in and I was greeted at the booth with a handful of Lego guys right here at the booth waiting for us they had built a model last night to put in their train so they had it running they came over we played with some settings we got it going and they're in a separate room here at the show as I'm sure you'll see in the video but Sean our marketing manager went over to go take some pictures and they applauded as he walked in the room you want to talk about that and the families are pointing oh my god that one has sound so this is really exciting we're really happy about this and we're hope we're excited that we'll be having more formats coming out soon down the line so this is really but like I said if you're still using DCC you can still use it so we're good to go that's great I'll definitely be getting my orders in very very soon so do so because they're selling fast all right George why thank you very much for your time you're getting a great product and that's excitement for what's neat I'm standing here with Ken Silvestri from Broadway Limited Models that amazing company that makes such beautiful steam power and diesel locomotives both in HO and N scale right and Ken you've been working for this company for many years we've known each other tell me how much fun it is to be in the hobby you love we love what we do you always hear that well you don't work if you do well we still do work it's not a vacation at all it's hard work but we love it at the end of the day I always feel like we're in the entertainment business we make things that bring people joy and the biggest thing the best thing that's ever happened to me is people come in and say you know for Christmas morning I got up and there was one of your locomotives there so we touch these people on Christmas morning yeah how good is that that's awesome it is the best hobby in the world it is now you've got some amazing new products that you're announcing here at the NMRS show tell us and these will be available between now and December okay and we'll start off with the my favorite steam locomotive is the Limburg special Vania E6 the 442 diecast smoke sound all of the Broadway the quality and I think what's special about that locomotive is that it's small enough that it looks at home on every layout it's a huge layout or a small layout it's a nice size and tons of pulling power all our stuff has tons of pulling power that's amazing right behind it is the Commodore Vanderbilt again another diecast smoke sound all the bells and whistles the stream line is beautiful and yeah or it's been called the inverted bathtub which doesn't sound so nice but it's still a good nice thing next we have in the back there is the blue goose which is a locomotive that if it's on any layout draws immediate attention it's just pulls your eye to it and again it's that's a hybrid locomotive and it's our smoke our sound all the bells and whistles because all of our electronics are essentially the same that go from locomotive to locomotive right that's amazing it's all good and then scale we have the Outgo RSD-15 and one of the most surprising things that occurred with that when we went to make it is we looked at our our sales history in HO and that has been our biggest selling locomotive the RSD-15 who thought it was what we all said they went wow okay and the response has been it kind of shows that people how much they want it and how much they're looking for it how much they're ready to order it very nice and then we have in new it's the Norfolk and Western Y6B articulated and scale full sound it has all the same features as the HO the HO locomotive still which to me it's remarkable to get that many we would always call it happenings what's going on in the locomotive there's all these happenings so we get all the happenings that we have in the HO into the end scale except puffing smoke and we just don't have the room to make the puffing smoke that's amazing so what's not on the table is the big boy in end scale which is doing in December and that's going to have a smoke unit in it not a puffing smoke unit but a sooth style smoke unit nice and all is scheduled to be here between now and Christmas I don't know how you do it you guys have got so many different product entries that you've had through the years and I've got so many of your it's just wonderful and I thank you for what you guys do for the hobby well thank you very much and I appreciate your audience and getting to talk to them and we love what we do so again it's still work don't ever get that wrong but of all the jobs you have what a nice thing that's awesome hi I'm David with What's Neat and today we're here at the NMRA 2022 train show and I got Ricky Kyle here with the HL Scale Fremont and Ricky who looks at we've got a fantastic layout tell me a little bit about this absolutely we have modules from 10 states and one Canadian province Toronto is the city actually we have 15 modelers here about 160 feet of mainline and 26 modules all together so we started planning this several months ago when we found out about NTS and so the guys put a lot of work and they're getting this stuff really good looking and we've got it all together and the space is 50 by 25 normally for those people who know Fremont we go a lot bigger than this but I think in this space we've done a great job looks like you guys got a lot of miscellaneous different modules here I guess every club member here has their own module correct so most of these people are part of groups regional groups we've got capital Fremont out of the DC area we've got Minnesota Fremont we've got southern Kansas Fremont Nebraska Fremont and so they kind of concentrate on those regions where they are from and for example behind us we have the Bessemer and Lake Erie Kimball Viaduct and this is from Mark Gelatovic who's hiding down here behind us in a classic module and even though these are all representing different areas they all tie in together really nice so I see the flow and the dynamics of all the scenery like you just said they flow evenly now tell me what's your favorite scene on this railroad well I think we're standing in front of my favorite scene to be honest with you nothing beats a bridge this is attracted to a lot of crowds throughout the entire weekend people are just all inspired by seeing such a faithfully reproduced scene and watching that bridge or the traffic move over that bridge so if you want we can walk around I can show you some of the other ones this is called T&E this is Donnie Berg out of Nebraska just a little industrial spur and that allows us to actually go into another area so we have a Kansas module and in my module back here which is called Transload End so it's for a little bit of switching with Transload Sand and Boxcars this scene is out of Nebraska this is Bruce Hochberger and so this is DPC Industries and US cold storage so we have gas transfer here and cold storage freezer and refrigerator stuff over here and what we have rolling through right now is the Pioneer Zephyr and as you can see looks right at home going through Nebraska which is where this scene is actually filmed as we go on we actually a lot of modules get moved and this one actually started out in California it's called Old River it's David Grounds he now lives in Pennsylvania and so it still has a desert scenery but he's done a great job putting it all together he's still working on it and it makes a great big sweeping curve for us here looks like guys got a lot of run a lot of big equipment now I got to ask what kind of operation system do you use we use Digit Tracks the Fremo standard is LocoNet and Digit Tracks is the biggest user of the LocoNet protocol so we use Digit Tracks pretty much exclusively for the control systems on Fremo and that makes it interoperable with everybody else right and then we go into a couple of what we call the Kansas beer curves they are actually curves we messed up not from drinking beer so I don't want anybody to think that we actually got the measurements wrong on them but we decided we could still use them as Fremo modules and then going in we have a couple of modules out of Capital Fremo Clarence Gunther he's here from Virginia and it's called Mathis Creek and Larry's Farm and you can see how much corn he has put on this thing got a lot of core fields over here I don't want to I never wanted to ask him how many kits he used to make this because it would probably be mind boggling and then you can see his little creek and just to throw in we entered the module contest the overall layout, modular layout contest and we won second place so I'm pretty happy with that congratulations on that this next one is out of Oklahoma this modeler did not come with the module but he lent it to another modeler here that allowed us to put in our layout over here we have this is built by somebody several years ago unfortunately he's no longer with us he passed away but it's a car repair facility and we're using it as a yard to run around and stuff do you guys technically do like operations or do you just have guys run around with trains and have one guy dispatching it's kind of a combination of both we have had formal operating sessions but for setups like this we usually have asked for like four to five people to come on at any given time but because it's single track with passing sightings they have to do operations they can't just take off and not pay attention when it's out ahead of them even if we don't do formal operations we're still doing operations let's see here we can point out a couple other scenes back over here we have one of the kansas scenes it's called bonanza it's actually based off of an aircraft sighting Wichita, Kansas is the air capital of the world and so they used to ship airplanes out of that on rail so he modeled that and he's put a couple of the operational oil wells on there lately I'd say one of my favorite scenes I know I said the bridge was my favorite scene but either tide or a closed second is this one it's called hillside northern and this is by Bill Purcell out of Illinois and it's just gorgeous the location on here he's added on a little trestle bridge and if you look at the trestle bridge around it there's a lot of critters, let's just put it that way so he has done a lot of mini prints type things and he'd make a good advertiser for mini prints I would say that so back behind me the big grain elevator is my module it's called farmers co-op it's kind of a conglomeration of different midwest scenes out of Kansas around we have a module out of Arkansas that has all the pine trees on it and the covered bridge and then we go into another couple of Kansas modules just to again tie it all together with the midwest theme gotcha, gotcha looks like you got a lot of amazing modules here now tell me how long did it take you guys to get down here to St. Louis and are you guys willing to come back here for another show well it didn't take me long at all I live about 30 minutes away I guess it traveled our friend from Pennsylvania he's got a nine hour drive tonight to get home so we're going to try to get him out here at the fastest but so you can see we got the folks from Toronto, the folks from Nebraska they all have a significant drive ahead of us ahead of them and it's just something they're willing to do because getting together with their old friends and showing off their modules is just something they've always loved to do last night we had a big dinner together and we had a good time and it's sharing stories and talking about model trains looks like you guys got a lot of public draw here over the past three days here at the NMRA we want to thank you very much for coming to the 2022's convention well I appreciate it and thanks for stopping by and let me talk about Primo thank you Ricky and that's a segment for What's Neat all of the products seen on this episode of What's Neat are available from Lombard Hobbies or order online at LombardHobbies.com