 Welcome to What's Neat for April 2016. This month we've got a pretty good show. First Mike Buddy stops by with a roll of aluminum foil and shows us how to make wrecked freight cars and automobiles to scale. Korea Brass has come out with a new U25C locomotive and we do a product overview of that and then we install a TCS wow sound decoder in it and it goes pretty quick. It's a pretty nice segment for Korea Brass this month. Bachman has got me doing a brand new 2016 large scale cover for their catalog this year so I show you a little bit about what into that project. For layout construction this week or this month we look at a shelf layout that I had built about six months ago and I'm making changes to it plus I added LED lights to help light up the area. Now John Deetson comes by with some magnificent drone footage again this month so we've got a pretty good show when you add that to all the run buys for What's Neat for April 2016. But first I want to tell you I got a package in the mail and this would fit under freight car and modeling tips for this month. The package in the mail came from Weathering Solutions and what they sent me was some of their new products their new Weathering decals and graffiti decals I really like their graffiti decals because they're taken right off of the sides of prototype freight cars. But if you look at all of these photographs that I'm showing you right now these are freight cars that were weathered using decals. Now they've got a product line of rust streaks in all scales in O scale, HO scale, various types of scale even large scale and these decals go on really good auto rack roofs The nice thing about them is these decals just slide into place so it's very easy to get your weathering streaks straight up and down which is very difficult to do with a paint brush when you're doing oil paint weathering. So Weathering Solutions takes all the guesswork out of Weathering with this new line of decals they sent me so check it out. WeatheringSolutions.com is the website to go to they've got a full line of decals everything's available to be shipped and there's some pretty nice guys to work with. So that's the modeling tip this month on how to weather your freight cars and take all the guesswork out of the oil paint streaks and rust that we like to do. So that's here we go with What's Neat for April 2016, let's go start with Mike Buddy. For this segment of What's Neat I've got Michael Buddy over and he's going to illustrate and show us how he makes wrecked freight car loads using aluminum foil as the main medium for modeling. So let me hand it over to Mike here for a minute. Hi guys, this week I'll show you something I've been doing for a long time since I was building 125th scale model cars I've always had a fascination with wrecks and junkyards and stuff like that so when I was a kid I started using aluminum foil to make fenders and doors on my car models and now I use it in the model railroad hobby as well and all the vans on this auto rack have been racked using parts with aluminum foil and same thing with this and the ends of the decks are aluminum foil made to look like they were crushed in so I'll show you how I do this. As you can see here on these auto racks one of them has the vans all smashed together they couldn't get out because the ends were crushed in. This one is full of vans that were drivable and that they could put on another rack to take them away then this box car was one that had the side totally torn out of it yet could still be transported on the rails because I have prototype photos of one that looks just like this. So in order to achieve this kind of damage I would cut away part of the existing model and replace it with foil that I embossed and crush it. I take the existing model and cut parts of it away where I want the damage to be and replace it with embossed parts. Alright let me show you how I replicate the torn outside of this box car by using aluminum foil. Alright let me show you how I do this. Take a piece of foil that beer car that I the Southern Pacific beer car was one just like this moped so take a piece of foil that's about the right size. It's a little better if it's a little bigger because then you have more to hold on to but then you just emboss it with like a Kleenex on the end of your fingertip or a q-tip. Take your time and try and get all the rivets. I took the ladders off I didn't put the ladders on here because I didn't want to try and mold over that. But keep the foil from moving and just keep going over it and over it and I'm not going to do the whole thing here but what I did on that car was one side was plastic this other side the whole thing was foil like this and most of this was gone but keep getting every little detail then paint it and decal it so it's like a regular car and then you can crush it. Is that how you do the roofs too Mike? Yeah. I saw you had this roof. There's the same thing here with the roof of this car that other model over there is the whole roof is foil. This I would probably take a piece of Kleenex or a paper towel or something and rub it all down you know all the length of the whole thing fold it over on the edges a little bit so so that it won't slip and then you can take a q-tip or your finger tip wrapped in a Kleenex and I'm trying to rush a little bit too much here but anyway you get the idea. Would you rather this as if it was just a regular free car? And then for a little bit of added strength on these foil parts I would turn it over overnight I would fill this thing up with Elmer's glue and let it dry in the morning it would be hard you know a little bit flexible but hard plastic but add a lot of strength to this. Now I wouldn't do that with the part that I wanted to wreck but the part that I wanted to look pretty good I would do that too so isn't that what sit right on top of that free car huh? Yeah, yeah right. These are very delicate models aren't they? Yeah but like now another trick you could do with the foil is on a boxcar like this you can make a roof or a part of a roof and simulate the forklift you know big bulges where the forklift would hit it from the inside or dense or whatever same thing you take this foil and like those vans over there on that auto rack you just you press it all around it and make an impression of the van or the part of the van that you want to damage just make a real good casting then cut this off with a dremel tool or you know however you do it I use a dremel tool then you trim this glue it on paint it all and then carefully I don't just smash them I plan what I'm going to do I plan the damage and same thing with that free car that boxcar I made fake ribs and everything I added a lot of detail to it other than just the foil but the fact that it was painted and had decals really helped make it look realistic. Mike this is a really cool tip you could do this with a multitude of different types of models what a beautiful convincing effect your wrecked freight cars are thank you so much for sharing this with us on what's neat Mike. Next time we'll show the auto junkyard. For this segment of what's neat Bachman has asked me to copy this photograph of Ward Kimball's real estate his property where he had his grizzly flat railroad and I'm redesigning I'm designing the scene from the ground up on a piece of foam using this beautiful locomotive that is an absolute representation of the Emma, Nevada one of the locomotives that Ward Kimball had owned. Now you know Ward Kimball is the famous Disney animator that did Cinderella or Jiminy Cricket a lot of those really cool cartoons and in order to design the scene what I know I have to do I've already built the water tank and the grizzly flats train station it's a polar kit but it's an identical train station to the train station that was built on Ward Kimball's property. I've also got a small figurine of Ward Kimball here complete with his characteristic glasses that we're all used to seeing. Now when I design the scene it's going to be a floating scene because I built these buildings as per Bachman's instructions but I do know that the photograph is all about the locomotive and if any of these buildings obstruct or take away from the lines of the locomotive they will ask me to remove those. I've seen that before it's all about the product the scenery is generally secondary on a shot like this. Now this is going to be the cover for the 2016 Bachman catalog and if you notice on the diorama here I've got some lines drawn with black magic marker and what these lines represent is what the camera sees so everything that's on the inside of this black line will have to be modeled so I'm going to take this foam and I'm going to cut off about a foot and a half of it here and then what I'll do to save on ballast I'm going to take the track and I'm going to router out the area where the track goes and rubber it down about just a little bit less than a quarter of an inch and that'll sink the track into the scene and this is the Bachman track that I've got to use so I may or may not paint it I'm not sure what I'm going to do with that yet but then I'm going to ballast the scene put dirt down on the scene and keep the buildings so they can slide and be floatable for the photograph so I'm going to work on this project now and let's see how this one turns out so here we go we're going to do the first test shoot for the Bachman 2016 cover and the reason I have to do this is I've got to do a vertical shot and horizontal shot and show the manufacturer the photographs just to make sure it's what they want now they may want a building removed or building slid around forwards and backwards just different things to tweak the photograph it's very important when you're trying to satisfy a customer to get it right so I'm set up now I've done the vertical shot I'll show it to you right here and I've also done the horizontal shot and I kind of like the vertical shot better and I think that's the way it's going to go so I'm going to focus on the vertical shot add some weeds to the scene out here in the foreground rope weeds or just woodland scenic's weeds that I stick in there and him standing up about a foot I'm going to add the station name grizzly flats to the side of the building right here and I'm after a phone call and showing them the test shots I already know that I'm going to shove the station back about 12 inches and I may eliminate the water tank completely because it interferes with the lines of the locomotive as you can see the smokestack just kind of disappears in the shadow of the roof so there's a couple tweaks that are going to happen to this just to get it right to make sure the customer is happy so do all those things inside tonight and then I'll set up again tomorrow and let's see how the shot comes out for the final so here it is day two this is the actual photo shoot day for the Bachman cover shot and I've got the photographs that I've got to work with here I've got the shot from last night and the prototype shot that we're covering here for the shot and everything's all set up out here now the way it's supposed to be you'll notice that a lot of the scenery isn't finished on this diorama simply because what's not going to be seen was it necessary to do everything set up where they want it the water tank's been pushed way far back in diorama the train station's got its name on it it's set up in a position here and I've also got the locomotive sitting here and all of its glory and looking nice so I've got the camera set up in a vertical position I've added a few trees to the background here just to make it a little bit more interesting as we go off to the rear of the shot and it's set up exactly like the corporate customer wants it to be so let's see how this turns out now to the magic of the computer I can now show you this is what the final shot comes out this is what it looks like the engines right where it needs to be everything set up just the way it's supposed to be for the shot so now when you see the Bachman catalog at your next trade show you're gonna know how this photograph was taken large-scale scene cutting a lot of corners but otherwise a very very good corporate cover shoot just like what we want for this segment of what's neat I'm working on one of these 70 degree winter days that we've got and I'm enjoying this and today I'm shooting some beautiful ather and Amtrak locomotives which one is your favorite paint scheme there's just so many beautiful paint schemes that Amtrak keeps coming out with and the models are able to be reproduced and it's just wonderful the various ones that we've got to shoot I'm also shooting a new manufacturer's products today I'm shooting Korean brass I'm shooting they're a brand new U25C locomotive and I've got to tell you these are absolutely beautiful models to work with today here's what the actual photograph looks like that I was able to shoot really satisfied with the great detail on the screens on these models they just look exquisite now these models that I've got are the models that do not have sound in them but what they do is when you order a model with sound in it they simply put it in for you so I asked for the sound system so let's take these inside now that I'm done shooting them and let's put the sound in them and test them on the layout and see how they do to start the decoder installation process I cut open the package with the electronics and dumped this onto the paper towel to find a Ka2 Keepalive a TCS Wow 101 decoder and a 16 by 35 Wow speaker I took the coupler off of the rear of the locomotive with the model safe and a cradle I then took the coupler off of the front of the locomotive making sure the sunshades cleared the cradle by holding the fuel tank and the shell I pulled the shell off of the frame it was nice that there were no wires connecting the locomotive's lights to the chassis I unscrewed the front light contact spring bracket to make room for the Keepalive to be fit into the chassis's front speaker enclosure I then reassembled the light spring bracket I put a small amount of Wather's goo onto the sides of the speaker and then mounted this into the locomotive's rear speaker enclosure facing up I then proceeded by removing the screws that held the DC jumper power circuit board to the chassis I used a small screwdriver to unplug the circuit board from the nine pin harness I then installed the decoder by simply plugging this into the nine pin harness next I then located the harness that the speaker and the Keepalive are wired to and proceeded to plug this seven pin connector into the Wow 101 decoders and jack and that was it the sound was installed in nine minutes and I didn't need to do any soldering so with that I reassembled the shell onto the chassis I then started to install the front coupler and I noticed that these couplers were metal couplers with the spring it appears on the inside so this is a new designed coupler that appears to be very strong I then went ahead and reinstalled the rear coupler onto the locomotive and now it was time to put it on the track and see how it performed and what it sounded like so with that test the locomotive sound absolutely fantastic I really enjoy the way they operate so far very smooth now that I put them on the layout and tested them now I spent a few hours on the TCS website reading about these decoders and how they operate and there's a lot of information on the website about these decoders and all the features that they have got in them that I suggest strongly that you go at their website and look at I take me an hour to explain everything that these decoders can do I can tell you that they're different from most of the decoders that I've used in the past in that for example let me show you in order to toggle between sound right now I've got my throttle set up so if I hit the buttons on it I'll get the bell and I'll get the horn but in order to change the lighting effects you toggle f8 twice hit the button twice and now the lighting effects are set up where I can take these locomotives and hit turn on the cab lights turn on the headlights by controlling the lighting now right now I cannot honk the horns or blow the whistle but if I hit f8 twice again sound mode active so now I can run the decoder and the train and still have my sound effects on the throttle that I'm used to having now one more thing that I want to talk about that I find absolutely interesting about these decoders is the fact that these things will talk to you and walk you through the programming process and to illustrate that I want to turn these down because I work at night a lot in the family sleeping and I want to give these things a good hour run on the way out and see how they perform and when they're running right now they're at factory volume which is pretty loud so what I'm going to do is turn them down and show you how the automatic voice programming walks me through the process of turning down the locomotive and in order to activate this you hit f8 four times okay so I'm going to use button one so that I can get into the sound mode that's what I want so now I'm going to hit and I'm going to hit button one and I'm going to turn it down it's a good sound level for running at night I understand this is a ringtone that you can get on your cell phone by the way now to save the sound I hit f8 one time and then to exit to exit this programming mode I'm going to hit zero and she tells me goodbye and we are ready to go and they're really quiet now I like that so for so overall I would say that these Korean brass locomotives are really nice surprise they're beautiful they photograph well the TCS decoders in them are very interesting and have a lot of features I'd say this is another winner so that's this segment of what's neat looking at these new beautiful brand-new locomotives that have just come out the shelf layout that was 78 or 71 inches high up on a hill a narrow gauge shelf layout and in fact I did a two-hour video at Ken Patterson dot-com on shelf layouts with it which showed how the shelf layout also fit into a 12 by 5 foot standalone layout the problem was I never ran trains on the shelf layout because it was simply too high and I had lost interest in it and this was driving me nuts so I decided to tear into the project and spend two hours removing the shelf layout and lowering it to a height where I would not need to step on a step stool to view it maybe then I could use it more I worked quick and I hit it down in about 15 minutes and as you know I do work pretty fast I then test fit the shelf layout to a height that I could see comfortably standing on the floor and yet still have room to access my HO scale staging yard I used a red laser level and a level that gave me percentage of grade numbers to figure out the grade that I would need to bring the existing tracks back down onto the shelf layout scene I simply pulled the plywood roadbed into position with the track still glued into place onto plywood using the red laser line again as my guide to line up the rail to the shelf layout tracks once things lined up perfectly I reattached the roadbed to the walls with drywall screws now the height of the shelf layout was perfect but the staging yard underneath seemed too dark and it needed to be I stained an 8 foot long piece of oak corner stock to create a one half inch lighting valance I test fit an 8 foot strip of LED lights onto the inside corner of the stock and I turned them on and this was going to work out really well is the trim piece to the underside of the plywood shelf slash bench work and I attached this with small wood screws by hand as the power drill would not fit into the confined space the LED light strip stuck to the underside of the trim piece with a self-adhesive peel and stick backing so this was pretty easy to put up I hope it stays then using the dimmer switch that came with the lighting strip I turned on and adjusted the lighting on and off and I'll tell you what this worked really great so now I've got an operating part of the layout that's been lowered down to 64 inches and it's a pleasure to run trains on it now and I still have room underneath for my staging yard my HO scale trains so that's the segment of layout construction for what's neat