 Hello, my name is Noah Peeley and January Neat, What's Neat starts right now! The What's Neat show is sponsored by Caboose, sharing our passion for trains since 1938. This is What's Neat for January 2019. I'm your host Ken Patterson and this month we do have a great show. First of all, I start out by sharing with you how I like to do oil paint weathering quickly on a lot of freight cars fast, not spending 12 hours doing it but getting a lot of cars fast that look good. I show you that this month because it's winter time and we're all inside modeling. Also I share with you how to paint graffiti on an auto rack. I do it in large scale and HO scale. I show you in depth how to use the airbrush and go about painting something that looks really neat on a model, adds a lot of color to the garden railroad and also would make a great gift to give to somebody. We also have two great layouts that we look at this month on the show. Richard Gibson shares with us his main central Rockland branch layout and also Don Meeker shows us his beautiful Rocky Mountain Line Railroad that he built in HO scale. It takes 30 people to operate this layout. It's absolutely amazing to see what Don has built. We've got some great drone footage this month from Drayton Black Grove. Thank you very much and that's in modeling ideas from above. Also Daryl Ellis from the Colorado Model Railroad Museum shares with us how he built a really cool fire scene complete with smoke and they put a lot of thought into this and it works really neat. You got to check that out. That's a neat segment this month. I'd like to thank very much Caboose, our sponsor for the What's Neat show for being on board now for the year of 2019. My favorite train store out in Lakewood, Colorado. A lot of folks have come out there and said they've seen us and talked about the What's Neat show when they're in the store and don't forget when you want to order your supplies online go to MyCaboose.com with over 145,000 items available on that website. Thank you very much. We're producing now the What's Neat show for going on our eighth year. There's almost 100 What's Neat videos on YouTube at the Model Railroad hobbyist website. A lot of great information, how to build the layout from the ground up. You can find so much information in those videos. We love producing them and we'll continue to do so. Also thank you so much to the viewers that have made the What's Neat this week podcast a video show that we do on YouTube every week, three weeks out of the month, sharing what's new in the hobby and trying to promote through interviews, special guests and also sponsors that help make it possible the best hobby in the world. I'll tell you what, this is a great, wonderful experience that we're having meeting so many young modelers out there that we've never even known that we're out there plus so many new people that have left comments and read your comments, that they are new hobbyists for the first time, that they've been motivated by all the positive programming that we're creating right now to promote the best hobby in the world. So with that, let's continue on with the rest of this What's Neat for 2019 January. For this segment of What's Neat, we're going to talk about oil paint weathering and how to do an abundance of freight cars very quickly. Now we've seen over the years through the rust bucket gentlemen and all the folks that liked to weather their models with oil paint. For example, I've got a freight car here by Butch Eiler where he spent hours weathering with oil paints and going over a freight car like that. We saw Jeff Meyer do that to the Colorado and Greeley freight car that we did for the auctions. Here's another freight car that I did a long time ago using the same technique I'm going to show you where the freight car simply got oil paint, washes and streaks on it to create the rust effects. And these freight cars have been used in many different photographs over the years as background props, but I'm going to illustrate and show to you how it is. You can end up with freight cars similar to that without spending 10 or 14 hours working on each one. It's great if you can afford the time to do that, but if you've got to do an entire set of PFE reefers very quickly, like I've got a few set here where I have oil paint weathered the same way I'm going to show you how to do it. This is something where when you've got a large train to do, you don't want to spend that much time doing it, but you still want to have a nice effect where the models look believable on your layout. And the way that I do this, I start out with putting a wash on the freight car. And I'll tell you what I've got. My basic tools. I'm using Burnt Umber oil paint, and I put it out here on a tile. So that's my work surface. I've got paper towels here. I've got some one-inch brushes here that we're going to use to pull our rust streaks down with. And I've got some dental picks that I like to use. What I like to do is I'd like to vibrate the pick off the side of the freight car so it just deposits right on the tip. Just enough oil paint to create that splotchy effect that I want. And then we'll show the rust as it starts to soak down the side of the car. So the way I generally start this out all the time is I'll take a freight car and I'll just put a general wash on the car. Let me show you how I go about doing that. I've got turpenoid in this ash tray right here, it's thinner. I like to use this because it doesn't affect the plastic and the freight car, it doesn't degrade any of the parts. If you use turpentine, you tend to see to have your grab irons get a little bit soft. You've got to let them set for about 12 hours before they get hard or else you could damage the car when you pick it up. So turpenoid is a safe substance to use. And what I'm doing now is I'm spreading this around on this tile with a paintbrush so that I can have a thinner amount of oils spread out on the tile. So that as a dental pick comes through and picks up these oils, I'll be able to posit them right on the side of the freight car with my splotches. Once I get my oils mixed out on the stone here, I'm going to dip a clean brush in a little bit of turpenoid and I'm simply going to draw, put a wash on the side of this freight car. Now I'm going to go across the entire car as even as I can, filling all the ribs and the sides. And all this does is creates a rain wash effect on the freight car. Very, very convincing when it dries. Looks pretty good right now. I like to go over the whole freight car this way, the sides, the top and the roof. And this is just your general wash. Once you've done that, you've got an effect like this. So then what I want to do is let it set aside and have it dry. After the freight car dries and you've got a wash on it, I've got this solid gold athern freight car here. We've got a wash on one side of it here as you can see and the other side is completely clean, hasn't been weathered yet. Because the wash is already on this, what I can do is load right into the doubt pick and show you how I apply the rest of the freight car. I simply take the pick and I let it vibrate on the car and it deposits small amounts of oils all over the freight car in a random pattern. A lot of times I like to take a little bit of it and put right up here at the, right where this seam would be. And then what I'll do is take this brush, this one inch brush, make sure I'm clean. And I want to pull my streaks straight down on the freight car. I don't want them to go crooked. I want to try to keep them as straight down as possible. And what that gives me is that splotchy looking rust effect. And when it dries, it looks similar to this. And then simply all I do is I take an airbrush and I will airbrush dust on the bottoms of the freight cars. It gives a really nice dust effect even as you look at it. And you can see the grime. This one's got no splotches on it. It's mostly grime. Here's a PFE reefer with some splotches on it pulled down. So you can kind of see the difference. So it's a great way to weather your cars in a hurry, quickly, wholesale, fast, and effective weathering job. And that's his segment on what's neat. For this segment of what's neat, we're going to do something a little bit different. I'm sitting with Don Meeker in his control dispatching center for his Rocky Mountain Line railroad. And Don, first I want to say what a magnificent railroad you've got. It looks like it goes on for miles. But let's start with the dispatching center. How do you use this and how does it help you run trains? Well, when we have an operating session, one of the positions is the dispatcher and he can control the main line, all the signals and turnouts from here. How many people does it take to run your layout when you operate? Well, we go between 20 and 30. 30 people? Yep. So you've got like 30 throttles. Everybody's got a throttle? Well, there's dispatcher dozen, but yeah, 25 maybe. That's amazing. And that's just how big this layout is. And I'm not kidding you when we show some of the footage of the aisle space. It's just amazing what you've built here. So let's walk around and look at some of the other favorite sections of your layout. OK. Now, Don, I think we're standing in your staging area. And what I see here are 12 or 14 tracks on each level and a whole bunch of passenger trains. Elaborate, is this part of the operation where you've got to store a train before you can run it? Absolutely. This would be the east end of the railroad and this is the west end of the railroad. And it takes 30 to 40 minutes to travel from one to the other. So this is essentially the starting and the ending of a one run. Correct. That's interesting. Now, over here, you've got this gorgeous ferry. And I love this type of models. I see these at the RPM meets all over the country. Is this a way to help you with operating? Yes. One of the jobs, the operator loads cars on the ferry and we carry it over to another destination. They unload it. My imagination is this is a large lake in Colorado. Was this ferry a kit? Or did you scratch build this? That is beautiful. The center cars go out the middle. It looks like there's a steam stack on each side. Steam engine on each side. It'll take about eight or 10 cars. You did a beautiful job on that. Well, thank you. Now, that was a fun job doing the research and building it. The bases wood and the superstructure styrene. So, Don, this is the other end of the layout where the ferry connects to the main line. And I've noticed you've built this bridge system. Yes. So does the water level would change in real life and they'd have to compensate, right? And this actually has wheels, the prototype, has wheels underneath that go down into the water. This is modeled after one in Canada. That's absolutely magnificent. And I believe it operated into the 80s. Now, Don, I see this beautiful brass bridge. It looks like a Lincoln pin and a girder bridge kind of mixed together. Now, how many bridges would you guess you have on your layout? Well, I don't know. A dozen probably. Let's go look at one of your favorite ones. Oh, OK. So, Don, it looks like we're standing at an area called? This is called Beaver Gulch. This large viaduct. Actually, one of the first things I finished, because you're running the track here, you've got to build a bridge. And before you build the bridge, you've got to build a scenery. And before you do the scenery, you've got to do the backdrop. So this is one of the first areas that we finished. No, this looks fantastic. There's got to be a ton of rock here. Now, is there foam under your scenery, or do you use screen wire? It's mostly paper mesh covered with the rosin paper. Very nice. And hydrokelin. Hydrokelin sculptor mold. Now, we're standing in front of a very large sweeping curve going up a grade here. What is this part of your layout called? Well, this is a horseshoe curve climbing up the eastern side of the Rockies. 2% grade. And we have a lake in the middle. And they're said to be yetis in this area. We have a Swedish town up here. So it's the Sven Yeti. He's blond. This is a very large area to fill with light. I've noticed you've chosen to use fluorescent lights. I have. And they seem to reflect off of all of your backgrounds and just bounce the light into the scene. I can see the reflection of the water. It's just beautiful how you've designed this. One of the first things I did was put in the lighting, knowing where the layout would be, and then put the lighting in. Then build the layout. Now, down I see you've got some beautiful control panels that help control the switch yard here. And I see you're also using the Digitrax throttle system. Yes, we use Digitrax, the Simplex system. And all their equipment for the signaling. So you've got signals on this layout as well. Right, a CTC signal system. And you said it's taken you, I want to say, how many years to build this? We've been in this house 14 years. So 14, you started as soon as you moved in. So you've been busy working on all of this. And it's absolutely amazing how you've got the signaling. And it's all set up for operation. You really had a plan when you started this. I did, yes. We had some time to draw the plan before we moved in. So when we moved in, it was ready to go. I see as we walk this way, we see the post office and we're going to walk into a gorgeous train station location here. Right. You've spent some time on this. And I think you might have mentioned that you love passenger trains. I do love passenger trains. This is a model of Denver's Union Station. It's all scratch built. And the final product is plaster. I made styrene masters and cast plaster sections. We have seven tracks. The real one had 10. So we're cutting back a little. The back drops absolutely set this off. It is just right with all the warehouse spaces, the passenger loading platforms. I can see how this would be a very busy layout to operate. It is. It takes two to three people to run this station during a session. A lot of mail trains and swapping cars and it's fun. And you've got Industries Galore. Name some of the industries that we serve on this railroad. Well, this area here is, we call this Centennial Bottoms. This is Centennial City, by the way, instead of Denver. This is one operating position here, doing this switching. We have a whole mining branch with a lot of gold mines. And then they bring cars to Smelter. That's another branch. And there's just normal industries around here. This is absolutely amazing. I've got to tell you, Don, thank you so much for sharing this with the viewers of What's Neat. Oh, we're glad you're here. Yeah. Thank you. Enjoy your show. I'm standing here with Daryl Ellis at the Colorado Model Railroad Museum here in Greeley, Colorado. And I've got to tell you what, Daryl, I'm so impressed with what you are showing me, this fire system escape and smoke. Tell us about that. OK, well, we built this about 10 years ago. And we had a little difficulty because no one had ever built one before, so we couldn't copy anyone. And one of our biggest problems we had, the smokers are actually located about a foot underneath the scenery. And the smoke would not draft naturally. It's just not that hot. So we went through fans and things trying to find some way to get the smoke up here. And we couldn't find anything until I stumbled on aquarium air pumps. That's what forces the drafts through the chimneys and causes the smoke to drop. That's neat. It just goes right up those pipes, doesn't it? Right, it goes up the pipes. They're very crooked pipes. Now, is this one of those projects that you thought about for a long time, or is this one of those 10-minute things that came to you? Hours, days, months. It was a long process trying to figure this out. Like I said, nobody else had done it before that we could find. And so we had to kind of figure it out on our own. Darryl, this is the best hobby in the world. I know I've said that before, but look at the fact that you get to expose what you love to so many people. Tell me when you lay down on the pillow at night what a charge you get from that. I get such a charge I don't go to sleep at night. I stay up night dreaming about this. I've solved problems, woken up out of my dreams in the middle of the night with a solution to a problem. So yeah, it doesn't shut off. Darryl, I love you. Thank you. Sure thing. Thank you. For this segment of What's Neat, I'm gonna show you how I painted Maui onto the side of this auto rack. Now, this is something that we talked about on one of the podcasts. We covered it for about 14 seconds because it's only five colors and the process went really quick. But today I'm gonna very detailed explain to you how I painted this auto rack. Now I got the idea from watching these painters down in Florida paint t-shirts. They always do that very quickly for the customers using an airbrush and they're very fast at their work. And this project was no different. It took less than 25 minutes to completely finish the large scale auto rack, which is the one I'm gonna show you that we're gonna paint on the show. Now I use this Iowata Eclipse airbrush to do this project. This is a very fine painting airbrush with a top feed mount and it's double action. So I've got control over the amount of paint and the amount of air with my simple finger movement on the airbrush. To do the project, I use this RC car paint from the local hobby shop. It's made by Dura Tracks, which is really bright paint. It was very, very bright and easy to work with. Now I started painting the large auto rack white. I painted an area with regular shaped can spray paint and I used flat white for this. After this dried, I mask the outside borders of the model with one inch wide masking tape, protecting the flat car and the rack that it's built upon including masking off the roof areas. I ran a strip of tape across the center of the rack which will form our waterline to the horizon. Using the airbrush, I painted the blue sky first. I used the bright blue enamel paint thinned with lacquer thinner. Now all of the paint cars used on this project were RC car paint and they were very bright and brilliant. The water was then sprayed in the same manner using about 10 pounds of air pressure to the airbrush. The double action control of this airbrush, independently controlling the air pressure and paint flow to the airbrush tip with simple finger movement was very handy on this project. Pulling off the tape reveals our waterline and the sun masked in place. The water then was protected with a strip of tape as I proceeded to paint the sky closest to the horizon bright yellow. Notice the sun is masked out with a circle of tape keeping this area white. I did mix some drops of orange into the airbrush's top mounted cup with the yellow paint all mixed together. I sprayed this around the area where the tape was masking the sun. This will make the sky immediately warmer around the sun. To paint the distant islands in the scene, I used a torn piece of paper torn into the shape of low volcanic mountains. Simply hold the paper against the rack side and spray the paint onto the scene. I used purple for the islands working my way across the waterline until things looked natural as I remembered Maui in my own mind's eye. Using the blue paint again, I airbrushed low level lines of clouds to the scene just randomly painting the light blue color over the yellow areas. To paint the silhouette of a person along the beach watching the sunset, I googled the words sunset person silhouette and found dozens of photos which I could scale out in Photoshop and fit onto the side of the model with the correct perspective. I cut the person out of the photo with a sharp hobby knife, forming a mask that then could be placed into position on the model. Using about seven pounds of air per PSI for the airbrush, I then airbrushed and sprayed towards a center of this mask avoiding getting paint underneath the mask making sure that the edges of the paper were flat so that I would get a crisp edge for our silhouette. Upon removing the paper, our mask and our silhouette was revealed and it looked just right. I then proceeded to airbrush the entire bottom portion of the scene with black paint using a straight piece of paper as a simple mask to protect and finish the landscape. I pulled off the circle of masking tape representing the sun, revealing areas where the mountains needed to be touched up a little bit more with purple paint. With this done, I pulled off all the masking tape around the edges of the auto rack. Now the auto rack had been weathered with a wash of oil paints before the mural was painted. Now you can see the progress up to this point. The project so far taking about 20 minutes. I added four palm trees to the scene just to frame out the sides of the landscape and make the image really pop. I did this with the airbrush set to about five pounds of air and I simply freehand painted this without masking tape just guessing the placement of the trees. I started with the tree's trunks curving them up into the sky and then topping out the tree's top structure with curving palm leaves drooping downwards towards the earth. The trees made the scene look absolutely perfect and finished. I did further rust the rack with front umber oil paint speckled onto the sides of the model with a paintbrush handle. Now these oils were then pulled down with a one inch artist brush forming the rust streaks pulled down by gravity further giving credibility to the model's appearance. And with that the model is ready for revenue service on your garden railroad adding a splash of color to an already fantastic looking model. Again it's simple to do in HO scale or in large scale simply by using your airbrush and that's this segment of What's Neat. Ken Patterson the host of the What's Neat show and today I'm standing with Rich Gibson looking at this beautiful east coast railroad. What is the name of your railroad? It's the main central Rockland branch. Now Rich I see you've got a stone here that says passion on it which is really great because I want to ask you about your passion for this hobby. You have it. Tell us about that. My, I've had trains or model trains around me ever since I was a kid. My dad had to lay out in the basement and so believe it or not I've been doing this over 50 years and just just part of my life. Now you're building tell us exactly what you're building here. Well I'm building the Rockland branch of the main central which was a stretcher era. Well it still exists. It runs from Brunswick main to Rockland main about 55 miles and it was a fairly busy branch line in the early 1950s so about 1952. The layout is designed for operations. It's about it's in about a second year of existence so it's coming along pretty good and this is an area that my family and I used to vacation when I was a kid. So that's kind of how I got hooked on the main central and it's kind of a natural thing. When I started planning this I found a track plan for this stretcher era that I drew in 1970 something and in 2015 or 18 I finally get to build it. I see you've got a lot of gorgeous custom built wooden buildings here. You've got three shelves of them that we looked at a little earlier. It seems to me that you're building a lot of buildings in preparation for what you're doing here. Actually a lot of the buildings that are on the shelves were on my last layout and are probably not gonna have a place on this layout so I'm gonna have to build more buildings to take their place. I'm not sure what I'm gonna do with those but that's why the shelves are over there. This is absolutely beautiful. Your passion for trains is just out loud. It's right here. Thanks. It's a fun hobby. So you get to do a little bit of everything, a little bit of artistic stuff, a little bit of electronics, a little bit of history so it's got kind of everything in it. 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.