 The August What's Neat starts right now. The August What's Neat starts right now. So we got a point too. Ready, set. I don't know. Okay. Hi, I'm Holly Ann. And I am Scotty Hex, and you are about to enter the wonderful world of model railroading with your host, Ken Patterson. Because the August 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 August 2022. I'm your host, Ken Patterson, the host of this, The What's Neat Show over at Model Railroad Hobbies Magazine. And this month out of August, we've got a really good show in that. Our first segment of video is Jennifer Kirk, all the way from the UK. She shares with us Trevor Jones, amazing garden railroad layout. And this is not in G scale. This layout is all HO scale designed to be run outside. There's a lot of very interesting techniques that he has designed in order to make this happen. And it's sure to be a pleaser this month for the What's Neat video. Also this month, our drone pilot, Dan Scheidel, he shares with us some magnificent footage and modeling ideas from above. Whereas we're flying over the burnt landscape of the Union Pacific Railroad in California, where trestles have been burnt down and rebuilt, where the trees are blackened from the fire. And it's absolutely amazing. And it's actually made me think about how interesting it would to be modeling a segment of layout that would represent what it is we see in this drone footage. Because the way it's filmed from the air at just the right height and the way we view our layouts, it's very easy to understand how to build our scenery to look just like that. Plus there's some amazing nighttime drone footage. Now when do you ever see folks flying a drone at night? With the mountains and the blueness of the sky, I've seen so many people put blue lights on their layout to represent darkness and you can see that hue of blue in this nighttime footage as the ditch lights and the headlights on this Union Pacific mainline light up all the territory in front of the locomotive. Also this month we've got a great segment from Larry Harrington of Bachman Industries out in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. He shares with us again some amazing new products from Bachman. It's always a pleasure to find out what's new first on the What's New show that we run every month. I'd also like to talk about the What's New this week podcast. As you've heard me talk about it before, it's a show that we shoot every Saturday night down here to keep you updated on what's new in the hobby. We just recently passed a milestone of show number 200, whereas we reflect on all of the 132 guests that we've had in the past on the show and the more than 90-something manufactured products that have been represented on the show. You can look this up on the What'sNeat.com index, whereas you can guide through and look at all the personalities and their names and their photographs and all the subject matter that we have covered broken down per week, per month, all the way through. It's an absolutely amazing website to check out at What'sNeat.com. It's an index for just that. And so with that, I'd like to say let's continue on with the rest of this August 2022 What's New. So I've come here today to what is actually a really different way of thinking about model railroading and it's to use the outdoors rather than in a basement or an attic. And I'm here with Trevor Jones who's very kindly invited us to see his garden railway. And have you found any great difficulty in modelling in HO in the garden? No, the main thing is to have sound engineering principles for the construction of the track bed. And I've used reinforced concrete with piles every three or four feet. And then a topping which I developed using three grades of cork chips and some rubber chips, cement and SBR. That means that the track can just be pinned down with stainless steel pins. And of course, being outdoors, it's going to be subject to a lot of the same things that a real railroad track would in terms of heat, cold, expansion, contraction. Have you had to make any special allowances for that? Well, I don't have quite the extremes that you may have in America on mine, but it has worked satisfactory. And we have had temperatures up to the 100 mark once since it's been laid and it has happily survived that. Each yard of track is soldered to a copper paxil and sleeper. And I've left a one millimeter gap between the rail ends where the fish plates are. Some are insulated and some are the normal stainless steel fish plates. And obviously they have to be linked across to conduct electricity. And that's served as a test of time. And I think what quite a lot of model railroaders think about when they think about building a layout outdoors is that it dominates the garden space. And one of the things that's really quite apparent here is that you've made the railroad very much a feature within a garden rather than being the main feature itself. And how important has this been and how practical has it been to do that in terms of choice of the vegetation and the plants that you've got around it? Well, you have to choose your plant material carefully. And of course, there's a terrific range of alpines that you can plant and dwarf trees, which are bonsai-like. But there are specialist nurseries that provide them grafted onto rooting stock. And if you plant them in small holes and crevices in rocks which you've used to build around the railway, this will help restrict them as well. And how practical have you found it running HO scale trains in the garden for the actual, the locomotives, the freight cars, the passenger stock as it stood up quite well? Well, I haven't had much problem with the stock. Obviously the track has to be kept very clean. And here in the UK, where we have all weathers on one day, one looks for a forecast where you've got three dry days together. You spend one day cleaning and then you can sit out in the garden for two days and watch the trains go by in the landscape. And one of the things that a model hobbyist might find as a real advantage of modeling out in a yard or garden is that you've got a lot more space to play with. You don't have to negotiate with domestic authorities for exclusive use of a room and that you can actually run prototypical length consists through the garden environment and get a really effective, prototypically correct look to things. Has that been a major consideration for you? Yeah, I wanted to watch full length trains go by in the landscape. So the actual layout is 2.79 scale miles round. And of course, it could be a lot longer if you've got the garden space for it. And that gives you the opportunity to run full length trains and to watch them passing through the landscape. And of course, one of the big advantages with making very prudent choices of the plant life is that actually you can change the geographical location or even the continent very easily so you can run US or Canadian or even Australian outlined stock out here. And it doesn't look out of place. So it gives the model hobbyist a lot more variety in the stock that they could collect. Yes, I do run American and continental stock from time to time. And for most of the layout, the background could be anywhere in the world. Obviously, I have created these little cameo settings which include resin buildings, which are typical British, but you would just do the same if you were building in the USA but with USA resin buildings. Absolutely. And Backman do produce a really good range of scenic accents, which would be perfectly acceptable to use outdoors in the yard. Well, I've even experimented in the small station areas outside. I do have covers on when the train is not operating. And I'm now experimenting with indoor call it scenic material just to add into the corners of the layout. And have you had any difficulty with little garden critters maybe trying to make their home in tunnels or just secreting themselves away in areas of the model? Well, I have several tunnels on this layout and of course frogs do turn up in them. You would have to watch that you're not running into a snake in the USA. Make sure that the tunnel is not longer than double the length of your arm to your elbow so that you can clean inside. My construction has been a ferris cement over the tunnel using polystyrene formwork on top of the track when the tracks have been laid. Then you put mesh over the top of that and plaster three to one rendering cement and sand onto it in two coats. And it will stand you walking on it. You can then cover the area up with proper landscaping and plants even. And one of the standout features for me on this garden railroad are the bridges and trestles over the water features. And it really strikes me that it gives a great opportunity more so than if you were working indoors to have these vast trestles that you can watch trains go across. And what have you actually used to make the bridges and trestles that we see here? Well bridges and viaducts and trestles are a great feature for outside. But obviously you've got to construct them in a way that they're weatherproof. Many of mine have used ice section brass as the main part of the structure infilled with sheets of aluminium. And then supported by structures made from copper pipe and other brass structure to some extent a real bridge. You can then of course infill the top with the cork rubber topping and then pin the track down as normal. Then some of the superstructure above has come from plastic kits. One of the things that model hobbyists might tell you that you can't have in the garden is turnouts. Because where are you going to put that switch machine to make it all work? But here is the perfect solution. We've got the switch machine hidden away underneath this lift out rocky outcrop. And there's just a little plastic container that keeps everything water and critter tight and it all just works. And if you had some advice maybe to yourself when you first started but certainly to any hobbyist who's looking to their yard and thinks this is a great space to be able to produce a huge layout. What advice would you give them? Well one of the important things is alignment with the sun. You do not want a rocky cutting which is in shade and therefore takes a long while to dry out after a storm. And that would be the main thing on the setting of how you lay out the layout. Also you will need to excavate because it's nice to be able to get down to its level. So you'll see in mind that some areas of the garden have been excavated so that you're lower down and you're in more context with the level of the railway. So thank you very much for inviting us down to take a look at your garden railroad that proves that even in the smaller scales such as HO it really is practical to be able to build a vast miniature landscape and actually make it not a dominating feature in the yard but to actually complement the other wildlife that's out there. And it's been brilliant to come out here. Thank you so much for inviting us down. It's been a pleasure, Jenny. Thank you. For this segment of What's Neat, I've got Larry Harrington from beautiful Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, out at Bachman Industries. We all love it, Larry. When you're on the What's Neat show at Model Railroad Hobbies Magazine because that's where we get to learn about all the new products which a lot of people are going to be learning about now this time as this video comes out because this video will come out as the Anamari National is now in its full schedule and launch. And I know that you guys are going to be debuting some amazing products. Tell us, what have you got to talk about today, Larry? Well, today I can't talk about the top secret stuff ready for Anamari but I'll share some paint samples we got in over the last couple of weeks and it's a variety of scales and sizes here. So start off with we have a continuing to expand on our Ringling Brothers line. We have the, this is the pie car for the blue train. Nice. And I don't know exactly how many products we've done over the years but it's been a good number. And then we also did the pie car for the red train. These are an HO scale, by the way. We do other scales as well but the HO is primarily the, now this one I really love, this is the advertising car. It's got a lot of color to it. We did some neat effects with the screens over the windows and it's based on a prototypical car. So it's pretty neat. So again, we've got these three passenger cars to go along with our multiple items we have in our Ringling Brothers line. We also have Ringling Brothers and large scale some items and also in William's O scale. I love it when you call it neat because that's the whole name of this show. What's neat. And you're showing us what's neat. So, yeah, the Ringling Brothers is, you know, unfortunately the circus is no longer around but we can still relive all those memories we've had when we were kids and a young adult or whatever and going to the circus and seeing all the neat things. So again, neat things, right? So going on to, we have some, a number of large scale items in this segment. Oh, cool. Tell me we're going to talk about the Dash 9 somewhere in there. Well, we can talk about them a little bit. I don't have any of those to show with me but we are finalizing things and running into production now. So we should see those later this year. Nice. So, nice. So those will be, but to go along with the Dash 9 we made the 53 foot Evans box car and what we added to it this time was the end of train device. So we also sell this as a separate piece. This is a fully decorated sample that we have. So I'm going to show you this. What we've done with this is we know that a lot of people not only run track power, they run DCC but they also run battery control. So we made this unit so that it can be underneath there is a battery holder, holds a button battery. Okay. And then on the back of the thread we have a little switch. So you can actually see it flashing. Oh, that will look fantastic out in the dark. Yes. And what's neat about it is it will work on track power if you do have track power and it will automatically switch as long as the switch is on where the light is active the power will switch to take it from the track instead of from the battery just to conserve your battery power. So if you are running on a regular analog battery power and you stop the train, your end of train device will stay on as long as you have the battery installed in the thing. Oh my God. So that's pretty typical. Well thought out. Because it's not just, you know, folks run their trains USA and they run their old aristocrat and so many other different large scale cars and you can adapt this set of trucks to them. Right. This truck is sold as a single unit with all the electronics already installed. It has, it's a, since it's an end of train it's a dummy coupler, it doesn't operate. It will couple up to another coupler train but what we did is we hit all the wiring and electronics inside of the coupler so that you don't have any unsightly wires or anything when you train or anything to get snag going out in the garden while you're running the train. That is awesome. Now that's cool. So switch is real easy. Just turn it off on the back and there we go. We're set. So now for the funds. Secondment of our large scale. We have some very new egg liners that we've just Oh, yes. Yeah. So this is, we've, we've had a fourth of July Independence Day version before. This is the latest one. It has our founding fathers in the window. It has a, I don't know if that's showing up too well. I do see the fireworks. That's beautiful. In gold. In gold, exactly. That's pretty. And these are self-propelled units. They have interior lighting. They also have a, some people run large scale type of track or NMRA standard. So we have a polarity switch on there. So it goes in the proper direction when you're sitting on the track. So these are, these are, and they have operating couplers on both sides. So you could put a small couple of trains behind it or you could couple the, the egg liners together and make a little mini consists like a training train. There is a prototype for that. They made a yard tower for the railroad taking two tail ends off of two passenger cars and actually made a tower that way. Yep. It was New York Central. I believe we showed that in the previous segment. Right. So now this is a little bit of fun Halloween here. It has all your ghoulish characters in the windows this time. And on the roof of this one, we have ghosts. And what's neat about this is they are glow in the dark. So you charge this up, you turn the lights out, and the ghosts will glow in the dark as it goes around the track. Yes. What a great way to bring the youth into the hobby with some fun and color. Exactly. Now this one was completely off the wall. This is Egg Force One. Egg Force One. Egg Force One. So this is a parody of the Air Force One with, we have United States of Egg Merica on the side. We have the chickens flying the plane. We have the head guy in charge there. And the two secret service hens in the back of roosters or whatever. Secret service hens. And there's the new presidential egg seal in Eggs We Trust. So trying to get a good, it's hard for me to see with this delay, which way I'm trying to say this. In Eggs We Trust. Oh my God, it's perfect. You guys have got some imagination going on out there now. We did. It was a lot of fun. It just kept growing. We had an initial concept of this, and it just kept getting bigger and bigger and more crazy. I bet you guys were all smiling during that board meeting. Yeah. It wasn't really a board meeting. It was kind of a, you know, a brainstorm between the offices occasionally. And a couple phone calls. It's got even the tail numbers prototypical for Air Force One. So there's actually two. It's 28,000 and 29,000. So I did a little research there when we did this to make it look like the real thing. So they should be coming out shortly. I can see the kitbashers putting wings on that. Yeah, there you go. One thing we did a little bit differently with this. It won't show up in the, but the tail light is, a little light red, just like the tail light on an airplane would. So, and so, and finally some more fun. This is not my area of expertise. This is normally Doug handles this. This is our Thomas large scale line. We have a couple of new box fans here. Okay. So this is Beckham Bay shipping company. And also we have Mr. Jolly's chocolate factory. So Mr. Jolly's was a chocolate factory is in the stories. It's every day. One of the engines goes to the factory where they pick up trucks full of chocolate for, I guess, the town of Sodor. Sodor, that's right. Doug Blaine is king of Sodor. He told me one time on the phone. It's king of Sodor. So I always defer all my questions to him. So hopefully that gives you a good idea. I think we're going to have some really exciting announcements at NMR this year as we always do. And can't wait to share them with everyone. But that'll be middle of August. And we're getting ready for our print brochures as we speak. So finalizing all the selections for this year. Very cool. How many folks are coming to the NMR Asia? I believe five of us will be there this year. Very good. I so look forward to hanging out with you guys. You guys are always so astute. I know it's top secret. We can't talk about it. But maybe next month we'll have all that out there as well. Oh, definitely. We'll have a live announcement on our website and Facebook pages and all that good stuff. Now I've said it before to you. You've got one of the best jobs in the world in that you are in a job that is your passion. And you've been with Williams for countless years and then joined the Bachman team. And there's so many folks out there in their teens that are watching this show. They're aspiring to go to college and get a degree. And maybe someday being able to be in our industry. Is that something that you could talk to in that? What would you say to those folks? How would they go about even getting into our industry like that? It's just about being ready when the opportunity strikes. We did recently hire a young man, Tyler. He's my assistant product development guy. He's great. And he told me, I can't believe I got my dream job. He's applied for the job and he really impressed me. And so we're going to eventually pass the baton to him. So once we're all getting up there in years, I'm going to eventually retire. But it's going to be a few years off. But we've got to prepare the company for continuation. Absolutely. And the Williams line is strong, isn't it? Well, I've been with Williams and Bachman. It will be 25 years this October to combine two companies. So that's a big anniversary for me. I originally started in the associated with the train business with lifelike products in Baltimore before Reuters purchased them. So that was my first job. I was working as a production planner for an associated line. We had a line called, I don't know if anyone knows about, DARTA race cars. They were matchboxes that have wind-up motors and they were stunt sets. So that's where I started. But we all had product meetings that covered the entire line for trains. Also, we had styrofoam coolers and stuff at that location. So I got to be in on the conversations with the trains when it happened. Right. And then I had an opportunity to go to Williams afterwards. One thing that I've noticed in this industry in the 33 years that I've been privy to work with the manufacturers and present my portfolios and get to know everybody, and I've seen already one and a half generations retire and then new folks come on. But one thing I've noticed is when you work for a company like Bachman or lifelike or like Athern and just go down the list of so many different companies that we are aware of, you don't actually leave the industry. A lot of people simply step stone from one company to another and their experience builds that way. Exactly. So it's always been a good industry in that. We don't really lose people. They're always still the same faces at the trade shows, but they're just that much more seasoned. Well, actually, if Bachman hadn't purchased Williams, I'd still be at the helm at Williams these days, I'm sure. There we go. So that was an opportunity for both companies to grow. At the time, the only O-scale items that Bachman had was Plasticville and also our own 30 line. Yes. So the three-rail O-gauge just fit in perfectly with Bachman and I believe that was probably the best for the legacy of the Williams line because if it would have went to another three-rail manufacturer, it just would have gotten absorbed into the name and no personal identity with the line anymore. That's absolutely awesome. And the opportunities don't just end with being able to go from a company to another one in our industry, but a lot of the folks learn the business so well as we've seen in the last seven or eight years. Various individuals from companies have actually started their own manufacturing business in our industry and really launched some neat new products. That's why the hobby is so diverse and so many different scales and it's like it used to be if you wanted something really great, something very detailed and specific, it would be in brass. And it's not like that anymore now. You can get whatever you want in plastic and the detail of plastic these days rivals what brass was in the 80s. Well, you can get whatever you want if there's enough demand for it. There's still definitely room for brass in the market because of the startup tooling costs for the items are so much less expensive. The unit cost is usually more expensive to produce, but when you consider the cost of making tooling for something it has to be considered in the final price and that's not always a good business decision to do that. And the next revolution that I'm sure makes your job that much quicker and easier now is this 3D printing to create prototypes much quicker than cutting die work and then re-cutting the die work with changes. Would you agree? I do agree. We used a good number of that for the development of our end scale charger. Yes. So we printed some 3D parts in order to test the fitting because it was such a much smaller locomotive to work with than the HO version, so we had to make sure we could get the electronics and the speaker and everything in there and work on conjunction. So we're excited. We're well past that stage now. We've actually have test painted samples. I showed them in the last, it's probably airing right around now. Those are beautiful, yeah. I've got the HO scale chargers, the three different various paint schemes here on the table and on every podcast when we're in the show we always say, let's go run some trains. And more times than not the folks grab these off the shelf. This is a locomotive they want to see, simply because the lighting effects are so amazing. It's just like the real thing. Oh, the lighting effects, the sound, everything is 100% authentic with those locomotives. There's even a feature with the strobe lights. We've had customers call that didn't fully read the manual about the strobe lights. I can't get my strobe lights to come on. Well, in the real locomotive the prototypically the strobe lights are only on when the headlights at full brightness and the ditch lights are on. So if one of those two is not on or fully full brightness the strobe lights don't come on just like the real locomotive. That's amazing. It's very important to read the instructions and the instructions you guys write are very thoroughly thought out. Well, thank you for that. So this is the best hobby in the world and you know what, it's because of folks just like you Larry. Is there anything else that you might want to say to close out this segment of the August What's Need video? Just, if you haven't signed up for NMRA and we're going to be out there in person so it's a good opportunity. We love going to shows. We've missed going to shows. It's when we get the best feedback. Some feedback is a little personalized for a certain person but most of the times we get good ideas or we can explain why we're not doing something a certain way and people are very understanding of that when they hear it in person. The most thing we get is like, well, I can't do this prototype but it's like I said something might have been only made by One Railroad and had maybe two examples of and they no longer exist so it's more difficult to even find any information on them but that's something for the brass market. We would steer away from something like that. You're awesome Larry. Alright folks, when you go to the NMRA National be sure to say hi to the folks at the Bachman booth and tell them that you saw Larry on What's Need. See you next week. We'll see you next month when we're out there. Alright brother, thank you so much for doing a great segment on all the new products for this month. Anytime, I'm glad to be here. Thanks again. Perfect. Next time I'll get a second pair of glasses so I can be just like you. I know George Bogatuck did that to me once too and with that said that is a segment for What's Need. Alright, take care. All of the products seen on this episode of What's Need is available from Lombard Hobbies in Lombard, Illinois or order online at LombardHobby.com Bachman Trains Now that's the way to run a railroad. Check out their website at BachmanTrains.com