 Hi, my name is Kevin Rubel. December's What's Neat starts now. The What's Neat show is sponsored by Caboose, sharing our passion for trains since 1938. This is What's Neat for December 2019. I'm your host Ken Patterson and this month we've got a really good show. First of all, we take a look at Daniel Coombs, brand new layout that he's building. This is a modular layout that's designed to take him through his college days and on through his future. This is definitely the youth of the hobby, so it's great to see what Daniel has built for us this month for What's Neat. We also study nighttime photography. James Regear and myself have spent many nights in the past two months shooting a lot of beautiful photographs of different water modules that I've got here in the studio. We shot this gorgeous BLMA bridge the other day, just a stunning photograph. And we go over all the timing, how to set your camera, how to come out doing a photograph like this so that you can enter your local NMRA contests with beautiful work. We also have James Regear featured this month in a super great how-to showing how he animated some passenger cars using LEDs. Now he's very amazing at this and he breaks it down and shows us how to scratch, build a circuitry, how to work with various size LEDs. And it's just amazing the segment that James has produced for us for this month's show. I also would like to thank Bachman and Lionel Trains for helping me do the segues. That's the segments in between the segments of video that are the how-tos with some beautiful train sets that they had sent. Bachman had sent the night before Christmas G scale set and the little big top circus train set also in G scale. Lionel sent two sets, the winter wonderland set in O scale and the Santa freight in O scale. Very robust die-cast models with radio control and Bluetooth control whereas you can use your cell phone to control these trains. Now we're going into our ninth or ninth year now of starting to produce the What's Neat Shows and I'd like to thank Caboose in Lakewood, Colorado for sponsoring the What's Neat Show for the past two years. It's a great store with great service, knowledgeable employees and they also buy estates and collections now. So check it out for your Christmas shopping this year. Go to Caboose in Lakewood, Colorado or order online at mycaboose.com So with that, let's continue on with the rest of December's What's Neat. For this segment of What's Neat, I'm at Daniel Coombs' home and I'm looking at this beautiful home layout that he's built and the amazing thing about Daniel, you'll remember he's on the podcast. He's the youth in the hobby. And Daniel's designed a new layout down here. I've shown photographs of his old layout in the past, which I'm probably running right now, of when it was a layout that was more or less a couple of 4x8 sheets of plywood with a lot of track and scenery and it was essentially your learning curve. Now you've designed something whereas you're at that age when you know you're going to be moving out of your home and there's a lot of other young modelers that are in the same shoes that you're in. So tell me about your design on this modular layout you've built Daniel, it looks great. A segment on What's Neat. Just, you know, my old layout like Ken stated it was just a typical in the middle of the room you had to walk around to get to anywhere and as I said on the podcast when I first told you guys that I ripped it down I was like, I was tired of it, it was old, it was time for it to go, new change. Modular design is what we got here. The layout height is about I think 48 inches with the L type legs that I'm using. And then my max radius is about 28 inches and minimum 22. And also of course with it being modular I can have each module, well not interchangeable but the fact of it is with it being modular like you said I can take it when I finally move out of the house and then I can start a new fresh layout for the second time after building this one. You know you've built this where I bet you can take these outside and photograph them at some point. Now you were explaining to me earlier what kind of a scenery you're planning on this. Yeah so the scenery I'm planning is just a little bit of hills countryside in the corners and maybe the back area maybe a little valley or a ridge. I honestly when I just put the track down and I realized two days ago that it's like I don't really have enough room for suburban setting so I might make it kind of rural-ish kind of out there countryside I might put a tunnel somewhere, I don't know maybe back here, it's still in the works. Right and now I noticed your bench work you spent some time building these legs you worked on the bench work tell us about these legs in the bench work. Yeah so the legs design came from the old layout that I had and it's of course the two pieces of wood that's a 90 degree angle but with three 45 degree triangles top, center, and bottom so it gives the leg the extra durability and stability and another thing I got on the bottom of these legs is furniture glides and we actually got some somewhere I don't know I didn't bring them out. They're like leg levelers right? Yeah leg levelers are just simple clockwise right that's fantastic so you can adjust the height of each one in the event that these modules can be made up with other modules down the road right? That is correct. Now tell us what kind of track you chose to use and why? Code 100 Atlas Flex Track and I know Code 83 is more popular but Code 100 Flex Track yet it's a little bit more inexpensive than the Code 83 Code 83 prototypical yet it's very pricey so I decided just to go with the track and start out because this is technically my very first that I have actually done myself because that original one that I had before that were standing like it was right here it was basically my dad built the bench work and then it was just my learning curve of first doing my first building a little layout now this one laying out the track and I'm using Woodland Scenic's foam roadbed because I didn't really want to fuss with the cork and now going back to the Code 100 Track it's less expensive and then it's basically a track I can just start with learn how to lay a flex track and then with my next layout plan to do Code 83 I've used cork before it tends to dry out after a period of years this foam black roadbed from Woodland Scenic's in fact does work I used it on my home layout back gosh 20 2007 I think it was when we were shooting a catalog cover and I wanted to get something done quick on the outside wall so it's great, great roadbed now your scenery you've got that covered you've got everything where it's movable now at some point when you want to take this and move on to your next location where you're at tell me what's the biggest thing that you've learned from design of the first layout that you've got to what your modular layout now is what's the most what's the best advantage of what you've built now there's a lot of things I'm flashing back to but the one main thing I found is plan and do one step at a time the other layout I kinda just went it was built track was laid and I just went right to scenery and after that it just quit for two years and it was kind of just getting on kind of a crappy crusty state and I just didn't like it so one thing I would suggest plan ahead like do one step bench work, foam, track wire it up, make sure it works then go on to your scenery what are you using to power this layout well I'm actually using Digitrax DCC and however I do have the NCE power cab that I use over my test track over there with my Digitrax PR3 programmer Digitrax wireless wifi system that I think I did December 2017 I think on how to install the LNY with the Digitrax Evolution DCS 210 command station and a few wireless throttles here and there. Well that's amazing when I was starting out we used tech 2 power packs or the Tyco power packs I mean I'm talking 1976 when I did my layout and you're so far advanced that you've got two systems Digitrax and NCE so you understand the difference between which one I'm guessing right now you've got blocks you've got this all set up so it can come apart what type of signals are you planning on using on this have you thought about that yeah well actually the company's been around a while it's called AZATRAX.COM and they're basically a simplified signaling system almost not Tywi plug and play but they're boards you basically don't have to get a gigantic signaling board all used to like Digitrax SE8C and have to spend about a hundred dollars for that and complicated wiring it pretty much simplifies it more to where you take your signal wired into the board then you take your track feeders or your detection blocks and then you individually insulate the different blocks that you want the signals to occupy and show status to where a train is now I'm going to go a little further down in scenery are you going to use static grass, ground foam are you going to use the Woodland Scenics pecan ballast type ballast are you going to use real rocks what are your thoughts about the future on your scenery design oh yeah you know we are thinking ahead um I'm just going to use Woodland Scenics and I actually my influence static grass because I think Campbell Rice talked me into it static grass yeah yeah as he mentioned I think on his last podcast with him just building it out but we're going to go ahead and just do Woodland Scenics ballast and other Woodland Scenics products but I'll try the static grass and patches here and there to see how I like it amazing and what do you think the overall size of this whole layout is it's similar to what you already had but just guess the area you're taking up yeah um so in this corner here I got in the basement it's about 10 and a half maybe 11 feet by I want to say oh seven feet across that's amazing double track with a passing siding it looks like are you going to have any type of industry do you model for the run by effect are you going to eventually make an operating layout what are your thoughts on that probably 50-50 both as enjoyable to run it and then I'm in part of an obsession group every Tuesday night here and saying well not every Tuesday night St. Louis but Tuesday night ops group we go to these gentlemen's layouts that they have of course you had experience but you're not an operation I don't have the attention span to operate people know that yeah and then James who's holding the camera also goes to the Tuesday night ops sessions and I kind of just been around it for about two and a half years now that it's like you know what I'm going to give it a shot I'm going to think about maybe getting micro mark car card system that they've got and I know micro mark is a sponsor long time ago right podcast so I might grab the car set a rooting system from them and give that a shot that's very interesting so here we are here's the youth in the hobby designing a brand new layout from the ground up based on what he knew before from the old four by eight plywood type layout and I gotta tell you what Danny you've got a great start so thank you very much for doing this segment with us for what's neat for the segment of what's neat I'm in the backyard in the middle of the night you guys know how that operates and look at that beautiful moon right behind me right there and tonight we're trying to take full advantage of this moon I've got James your gear with me you'll remember James from the podcast the what's neat this week podcast that we do every single week but for this segment of what's neat tonight we're going to do a segment of what's neat for what's neat for the segment of what's neat for this segment of what's neat tonight we're going to do a segment on photography and James is using a Canon camera tell me James what kind of camera are you using tonight this is a Canon 5D Mark 3 SLR and it's a fairly stock lens that I have on it so what I'm doing right now I'm doing a shot of the locomotive coming down the track so hopefully we'll get the rail reflections we'll get all of that going on so what we're doing tonight is a photography session on night time photography and you've seen me do that in shows in the past one time we used flames to light up the background of this athern shot which is kind of really cool and other times I've been just out here explaining how I shot some sound tracks and track photographs one night and I was explaining the timing on things James and I are both using bulb on our cameras we're using these manual DSLRs that you're very very familiar with I've been using my Nikon D2XS for going on Josh gosh since 2007 and it's still a great camera for shooting great ad photography for the model press but tonight's different it's night so that's when we set the camera on bulb and we're using our minimum aperture of each lens I think James's lens which bring it down to f22 and my Nikon brought the lens down to about f28 which gives you ultimate depth of field on the diorama which is very important to keep everything in focus as you see tonight we're shooting some fp45s and an f45 and these locomotives both have LEDs installed which is part of a video that we made for the December what's our November 2019 what's need on LED installations so we're shooting these locomotives tonight just to expose how amazing the LEDs do look and taking of course full advantage of our moon in the background now to further illustrate exactly how to set your camera up for a shot like this and I'm not talking cell phones although if your cell phone has manual parameters you can do this and that is shut your aperture all the way down f28 f22 whatever your smallest aperture is set your asa on the camera for 100 that'll give you absolutely total sharpness in the grain on the shot and then you set it for bulb and James has been shooting four minute exposures for the last couple of days out here and they've been working out really well for him and with my Nikon at f28 I've been shooting six minute exposures and so let us share with you a couple of shots that we've gotten off of these shots here's a shot of the locomotives from one side looking straight on I think we put this one on facebook didn't we James oh yeah it's going on facebook and then James tell us what you did with these walkers passenger cars you set up some shots you shot three beautiful shots tell me each one of these shots well so I just took the observation car from the super chief the Cotto business car that I had I did up with LEDs and the El Capitan tail car and so I did all three of them along with a couple of the other cars in the consists and just set them up and shot them you've got to love that red crimson on the water so again same timing on your cameras same exposures we've just discussed experiment and make sure make sure you remove any filters because you'll get some nasty camera lens flare if you leave those filters on and the and the light reflects off of the lens and onto the filter you know that reminds me of one thing well over here in coyotes in the background right now but the fact is if you do have a lens outside at night you've got to quantify that there's going to be do settling on your lens and during the exposure you can actually wipe that off and that won't be picked up in the shot so other than that James we want to talk maybe about lighting we used a flashlight to light up the side of a lot of these locomotive shots that we've shown you we also use the house lights in the back of the house here these very bright spotlights that are on the house for about ten seconds we turn them on and turn them off just for some fill light on this water scene that we've been using which is a long trestle scene but otherwise experiment have fun with it there's no better way to win a photo contest at your local NMRA event than to come up with something really interesting other than just straight daylight photographs so James Regear and Ken Patterson on the bluff we're signing off for this segment of What's Neat Hi I'm James Regear and for this segment of What's Neat we're going to take a couple of Bachman old-timer passenger cars and we're going to convert them into Christmas cards I have here a combine baggage passenger coach and I have a regular passenger coach we're going to use LEDs we're going to use rectifiers we're going to use resistors to convert these into well-lit Christmas coaches I made the original Christmas coach from a Bachman old-time coach that was sitting on a siding at the Magic House it was a lone car on the layout that did not seem to match or fit with any other rolling stock yet seemed too nice to take off the layout but a Christmas train seemed to fit the bill for this car because it has a lot of non-traditional cars, non-traditional loads to begin with while the old-timey feel is kind of a neat touch the techniques I'm using can be applied to a wide variety of cars or coaches the only limit is your imagination the first step was to figure out exactly how I wanted the model to look I knew I wanted to simulate a strand of Christmas lights around the top of the coach and I wanted a scheme that would capture a Christmas-like feel meaning red, green and some gold, maybe some white lining and before I did anything else with the model I drew a mock above it using a graphics program on my computer to allow easy experimentation with different color schemes, different stripes different hues and even lighting arrangements before actually putting anything down on the car once I had the basics of the paint scheme figured out it was time to return to the model where I began with thoroughly dismantling it removing screws holding the couplers then screws holding the trucks and I was sure to keep all parts and screws in a safe place since I would need to be using them again the body is held on the chassis by a clasp on either end working on one end at a time gradually push the clasps toward the center of the car and push them downward to pull the shell off once one end is free work on the other end after the body is removed locate a screw on either end of the interior and loosen it to free the roof with the roof removed working from the top remove the window assembly it's a tight fit kind of a clear plastic box that will slide out easily enough with constant level pressure once you've removed the clear window box go ahead and put it in your scrap box because we will not be reusing it for this car because it will actually interfere with the LED wiring finally returning to the car's chassis take a pair of needle nose or even tweezers nose pliers your tweezers won't actually give sufficient grip and pull the trusses out of the chassis and set them aside do the same for the handrails use enough pressure to get a good grip but not enough to crush the plastic pieces similarly use enough pull to get them out but be careful not to use too much pull because they could break as always put these parts in a safe place so that you can use them again later at this point it's a good idea to get the car's measurements for LED placement use a caliper to measure height and length of each side then measure the gap between the end of the car and the first window then the height and width of each window the distance from the top of the car to the top of the window and the spacing between each window for the combine you will want to measure between the last window and the baggage door and then the baggage door height and width and then from the baggage car door to the end of the car and of course from baggage door to the top of the car be sure to write down each measurement later use. I thought it would be neat to have open baggage doors on this model, which meant cutting them out. Using a number 4 X-Acto blade, I scored the outlines on the passenger door carefully and lightly until I was able to push the blade all the way through with minimal effort. Use care during this procedure so that you can preserve at least one of the doors for later use. Once the doors are cut out, place the coach bodies, roofs and doors into a bath of 91% isopropyl alcohol to dissolve the paint. Allow it to sit in the solution for about 24 hours. While the coaches are soaking, we can use a computer graphics program to recreate the coach side with the measurements we took to create a pattern for LEDs. The basic pattern we are using is a line of LEDs all along the roof line of a car alternating between red and green. For the coach, this is a fairly simple arrangement with one LED centered above each window, one above each gap, and one on either end for a total of 27 per side. Since the windows provide a natural reference for spacing, I did not find a printed pattern necessary for the coach. The coach baggage combine is a different story because it has only half the windows, so a pattern for the light string across the top is helpful. Besides, the baggage portion of the car offers a great deal of space that can loan itself nicely to an LED image, think dot-to-dot, similar to what one might find on the Canadian Pacific Christmas train. Better yet, with the right hardware, we could even do an animated image. I thought a ringing bell might be neat for the project, and I found something suitable by googling Christmas bells, and I copied and pasted the image into the mock-up and drew an 11 dot pattern to represent one of the bells. Once I had a pattern, I copied it, pasted, and rotated 45 degrees, and moved the pattern so that the top dot was shared between the two bells. The idea is that with one set of 10 LEDs, plus the common LED led at a time, flashing back and forth, it would look like a bell ringing. Once the pattern is satisfactory, we print it, cut out the car sides, and set them aside. After the car bodies have soaked for about 24 hours in the alcohol bath, we can go ahead and remove them and begin scrubbing them with an old toothbrush to remove any remaining paint. It should come right off. Dispose of the alcohol as it will be full of dissolved paint and unusable for future paint stripping. Once the cars are stripped and dry, use painter's tape, I like using frog tape, to cover your car sides up completely. Spray the back of the masking tape with 3M Super 77 adhesive and apply the car side patterns, being careful to align the windows and doors to your car bodies. Cutting out a number of the windows with a number 4 X-Acto blade is a good confirmation that your patterns are aligned correctly. Once everything is set up to satisfaction, we can begin drilling our holes with the number 78 bit along the top of the car. Be sure to angle your holes slightly downward so that you do not wind up going into the plastic that stretches across the top of the car body. You will run out of throat before you run out of plastic if you wind up in the mouth. Also drill our bell pattern on the coach baggage. I find that a pump action pin vice is very helpful for drilling these small precision holes because they actually allow you to concentrate most of your force on the very tip of the drill bit and in the direction that you're drilling rather than lateral side to side forces for many other pin vices that I've dealt with that can often lead to broken bits a lot quicker. Now because we're drilling so many holes there's no way to avoid a few broken bits so be sure to have extras on hand. Once drilling is complete we can remove the patterns and the masking. At this point we should make a few body modifications to the coach baggage. We want to take one of the doors that we cut out sand it to remove any burrs and using the chopper we want to cut about one window's worth from each side of that door. We are going to want to remount the doors to simulate that the doors are open having been slid backwards about two-thirds of the way to reveal the interior of the baggage compartment. Once we've test fit we can go ahead and use plastic to cement the doors in. To make sure that the doors are flush mounted we can use small scraps of sheet styrene glued to the inside of the coach body. Make sure you do not cover any drill holes during this process. We will also want to cut a piece of styrene to form a rear wall for the baggage compartment. The main function of this wall will be to help keep the wiring corralled into the coach portion of the car and keep it from view. Use your caliper to get the interior height and width of the coach. You can then transfer your measurements to your chopper and go ahead and chop an exact wall for the back of the compartment. Be sure to use a block to make sure that the back wall of the baggage compartment is a square fit and then secure it with plastic. Using a similar process cut strips to close off the windows and the clarestry of the car. With that we give everything one more soak and isopropyl alcohol to remove any residue. An hour or so will suffice this round. Once everything is dry we are ready to head to the paint booth. To me a sky gray acrylic provides a nice neutral base paint. Once the space coat has had a chance to set we get the coach body and frame a coat of Tamiya white paint. I like to thin my paints with 91 percent isopropyl alcohol until they are the consistency of milk. I use a pipette in a nearly empty canister of same colored paint. I don't have to worry about the paint residue in the container nor do I take that into consideration if I use this to mix usually one to one paint to alcohol. I use a Grex dual action airbrush with pistol grip with pressure set to about 18 psi. The precise control over air and paint flow that the dual action airbrush gives allows for a light even coat of paint. With the correct mix and light enough coating the paint will be ready for recote and touch up within minutes. Recote until satisfied. After dry time of at least six hours we can begin masking. With an oven things might go more quickly but I generally like to be more conservative about dry times because if the paint is not solidified the masking can pull it up. We want a white pinstripe helpline to go all the way around the coach. I decided to use an actual vinyl pinstripe for this purpose that I laid down and carefully burnished with a piece of styrene as I went. I did this for the coach in the baggage car. I wanted to have white steps on the chassis so I masked them off with masking tape and scored the masking tape into the crevices with a toothpick. Use care so as not to tear through the masking tape. Once everything was masked I gave the coach one more coating of white to allow the white to seal the masking while ensuring that any bleed underneath the masking would be the white that I was wanting. Dry time after this coating was considerably less only about a half hour to an hour. This gave me time to thoroughly clean my airbrush by running pure 91% isopropyl alcohol through it until it's sprayed clear. The next coat was Tamiya Red with similar procedure to the white. After dry time I masked the ends and the steps of the chassis. Several strips of tape and careful burnishing were helpful in bringing the masking into conformity with the complex shapes of the steps. I masked off the windows and doors of the coach and burnished. I gave the coach body and chassis another coating of red paint to seal in the masking. I cleaned my airbrush and allowed everything to dry. I applied a coat of Tamiya aluminum paint to the trucks and roof. In cases where hitting all sides at once proved difficult I allowed for a few minutes of dry time until I could touch it with my latex glove without paint rubbing off, before flipping the part over and spraying from the other side. I also decided that I wanted the undercarriage to be aluminum. When these parts were dry enough to handle, in this case only enough time for me to clean my airbrush, I transferred the aluminum painted parts to another piece of paper to dry completely. Finally I gave the coach body a coat of Tamiya Field Green. I took my time and made enough coatings to make sure that no red paint was showing through. As always many light coatings are better than one or two heavy coatings. Then it was a matter of cleaning my brush and giving it about a half hour to dry. After that it was time to unwrap the present. Using a pair of tweezers and a great amount of care to avoid scratching the fresh paint, I pulled the masking off the car. Watching your ambition paint scheme come into reality as the layers of masking come away is one of the most satisfying parts of any painting project. And with that it was time to call it a day to let the paint dry completely over the next 24 hours. Once things had dried sufficiently, I decided to line the window and door frames as well as the trim and car braces in gold leaf for added flair. I tried this with a Molotov paint marker, though I ultimately found I preferred using Tamiya gold leaf applied with paintbrush. Just be careful to use a very light, precise touch. The final step to the coach before we get into the electronics was window glazing. For this I used clear plastic packaging. I airbrushed it with several clear Tamiya acrylics including smoke, green and blue without cleaning the airbrush between coats. Finally I airbrushed with 91% isopropyl alcohol to make sure all the colors blended well. The goal was to create a bluish green tinted glass that would be transparent but still be dark enough to conceal the electronics inside. I then cut it into strips and glued it to the inside of the car using micro crystal clear. Our next step is to adapt our wheel sets so that they pick up power. We use katie centering spring plates for this straighten and spread their sides with tweezer nose pliers so that they extend straight out from the sides of the spring plate to form the wipers. Cut the spring plate at the mounting hole and use kester 186 liquid flugs to help solder three to four inches of gray awg wire to the back of the spring plate. Best helping hand may help you avoid burning your fingers. Glue the assembly into place on the truck frame with CA adhesive. Repeat the process for the other side of the truck. Reinstall the wheel sets into the frames taking care that the insulated wheels for both sets are in the same side of the truck. Test for connectivity with a multimeter and adjust as needed. The wipers will add some friction to the wheels but make sure that the wheels still turn freely. We will want to repeat this process for both trucks on the car so that all eight wheels are feeding power to the system. These Bachman coaches already have a single one sixteenth inch hole next to the truck mounts. We'll want to drill another one on the other side of the mount to accommodate the second wire. Remount the trucks on the coach and string the wires through. For the coach baggage we'll want to take some 130 second inch shrink tubing and make a conduit long enough to route the wiring into the passenger compartment. Cut about one inch for either side of the weight and install with CA adhesive. Once the adhesive is set we can route the wires through it. Once the truck wires are through the final step is to solder a quarter inch piece of K&S number 8160 brass rod to the ends of the truck wires. Solder the wire before cutting the rod to make the process easier. Now let's look at the circuitry going into the coach and combine. The coach's circuit is basic consisting of a rectifier and two strings of 27 LEDs each wired in parallel. Each string has its own one kilo ohm resistor. In our fritzing diagram we see each string of parallel LEDs represented by a single LED. The circuit will have no trouble handling all 54 LEDs in the car however. All incoming power is routed through the rectifier which will provide correct polarity for the LEDs while the resistors will limit the voltage of to the LED's three volt design tolerance. Regardless of whether we are running with DC or DCC we should have no problem using track power. The circuit board for the coach actually serves as a starting point for the circuit that we'll use for the coach baggage. We will add an alternating LED flasher circuit based on a 555 timer chip. Place a 22 micro farad capacitor bridging from positive to negative. Always note the capacitor's polarity when installing. Place a 555 integrated timer chip in the center of the breadboard. Note that the divot on the 555 is to the left. Wire pin 1 to the ground or negative. Wire pin 8 to the positive. Add a wire connecting pins 2 and 6. Place a 2.2 kilioam resistor to connect pins 7 and 8. Place two 47 kilioam resistors wired in series between pins 6 and 7. These dual 47 kilioam resistors dictate the rate of flash for the LEDs with the flash rate increasing with resistance. Place a 10 micro farad capacitor with its anode on pin 2 and the cathode connecting to the ground. Finally connect two 1 kilioam resistors on pin 3 with one resistor going to an LED anode whose cathode is connected to the ground, the other going to the cathode of an LED whose anode is connected to the positive. The behavior of this circuit when powered should be exactly like the breadboard I've set up on my workbench. The two LEDs representing the strands along the tops of the car remain steady while the two LEDs representing the bells alternate. With the circuit boards all set up it's a matter of assembling the LEDs. For this project I am using all 0402 warm white LEDs that I paint to desired color. I find it helpful to line up the LEDs with their anodes all facing away from me. That way the blue wire always goes to the side furthest from me and the red goes to the side nearest. Working in batches of about a dozen I solder the LEDs twisting the wires upon completion. I use a toothpick to paint the LEDs in the clear acrylic color of the batch, usually alternating between red and green. Those smaller batches of 10 for each bell are painted orange. While the paint on the first batch dries I solder the next batch. And after painting that second batch I add a drop of micro crystal clear to each LED from the first batch as well as another drop of paint. Now be sure to keep your LEDs separate for the drawing process because they will adhere together otherwise. The next step is to place these LEDs into the coach. As a rule I work on one side of the coach doing one lighting function at a time. This helps avoid accidental wire crossing. I use the number 78 drill to clean out the holes I drilled earlier since the paint may have narrowed some of them enough to make passing wires through them difficult. Working along the top of one side I put in LEDs alternating between red and green carefully threading the wires through the number 78 holes. Once the wires are through I gently pull them from the other side until the LED is snug against the car side. If the timing is right the micro crystal clear will still be tacky enough to serve as an adhesive to secure the LEDs in place. I also put in the top LEDs for the bells. Because it is constantly lit this top LED will be on the same function circuit as the light string LEDs. Once I have an entire lighting function laid into the side of the coach I solder them into parallel working in batches of four to six LEDs. I twist the light colored wires together blue for anode, red or green for cathode, smear with flux, and solder. Once I have a batch soldered together I use my tech 3 to test the connection being sure to set it to about two volts. I make replacements as necessary and when all LEDs light then I cut all the loose wires above the solder joint except for one of each color. I paint the exposed tin wires with silicone and move on to the next batch. Once that batch is completed and tested I use the remaining wires from the first batch to splice into the second batch and continue until the lighting function for the side is completed. With the final splice I cut off all the loose wires and solder a one kili ohm resistor and red wire to the blue function common and a black wire black for negative to the red. I cover the exposed wire and resistor with one sixteenth inch shrink tube and then solder the ends of the wires into the female side of the pair of sip pins. The procedure is similar for each bell function. I place the LEDs as I want them. I splice them together in batches of five. I test them and then I solder in resistors once the circuit is together. In the case of the bells I use orange for the four bell and pink for the aft bell instead of red to denote the positive function. I always make sure I solder the red and the black from each function together into a pair of sip pins so that I do not confuse any of the wires later on. Once all circuits have been installed successfully and tested well then we can use double-sided foam tape to attach the circuit boards that we've been working on into place on the sealing of the coach body. Then you simply plug in the sip pins into their correct outlets. Then we plug the brass rods from the truck wires into their respective sip pins. We take care not to cross wire and then we are ready to reassemble the coach. Snap the body back on careful not to pinch the wires then replace the handrails replace the body trusses and put the katie couplers into the pockets. Our Christmas cars are complete and ready to roll. James you made this project look so simple and to me it's very complicated. Well you know there's a lot of tips and tricks out there on youtube and out there on the internet. In fact this bell flasher was simply a grade crossing flasher redone and you can get the grade can get the formula for these flashers on youtube including some videos from model railroad hobbyist. And from there it's just a matter of being creative, being patient and not being afraid to make a few mistakes on the way. That's amazing so that ends this segment of What's Neat? So Merry Christmas and Happy New Year to you all and let's start year 2020 off on the right start on the What's Neat videos. Yeah 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