 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 Broadway Limited Imports, the cutting edge leader in model trains. Check out their website at Broadway-limited.com. 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 June 2023. I'm your host, Ken Patterson, and this month we've got a good show in that we start a new four-part series on building a new layout. And this layout measured about eight feet by three feet, and it originally started out as a simple run-by diorama recreating an area on the Rio Grande Southern Railroad known as Dallas Divide, and I was copying the absolute best I could prototype photographs that I had in books and recreated the scene with very much accuracy. And then the layout then transformed and morphed into a more finished layout, complete with turntable, industries, bridges, and beautiful scenery to run these wonderful models on. And so this is a new four-part series that we're starting building this wonderful layout. Also this month we've got Matt Stern from Bachman Industries, who shares with us some of the newest and late great products that they have just introduced to the market. And also we look at a beautiful Broadway limited K2 locomotive. This is in Chesapeake in Ohio. It's an absolutely beautiful model that we expose on the show this month. With that, let me say be sure to check out the What's Neat this week video podcast that we shoot down here in the studio every Saturday night with guests, new models, expositioning all the fun neat things in the hobby every week. Be sure to check it out on YouTube. And with that, let's continue on with the rest of this June 2023 What's Neat. Hello, this is Michael Gross and you're watching What's Neat with Ken Patterson. This video originally started out as a project for Joe Fugate where we were simply going to do a product review of a Blackstone C19 steam locomotive and feature it in some still photography. What ended up being still photography turned into videography. What ended up being a simple run by ended up turning into an elaborate scene with mountains and a run by loop. The run by loop layout after the project was finished for the photography and the videography ended up turning into an absolutely in depth layout construction project. We cover every topic which can apply to every scale in the industry in the hobby. And that is wrapping the dioramas and oak, the electrical wiring, the top scenery, scratch building a turntable, doing the track work, understanding the topography, looking at the trees. We go in depth and do a very detailed video coverage of the whole process of building this layout. So that's what you're essentially, that's what you are essentially about to watch. You're going to watch me start out flying by the seat of my pants on a project, not even knowing where it was going to go, only having one locomotive and not even any freight cars to begin with. And then at the end of the video we're loaded with trains, a beautiful running layout and an education that I'm sure you're going to enjoy watching as you receive the entertaining knowledge that's going to come through this video to you. So kick back, enjoy. This is a two hour, I don't know, over two hours long this video. So enjoy this, this is my best work to date. Today's project involves the Rio Grande Southern C-19. This is a large scale version of a 36 inch C-19 locomotive from Bachman. The model we're going to be featuring for this project is going to be a C-19 and H-O scale. So this is H-O 36 inch narrow gauge from Blackstone and my project is to get still photographs of this, which is easy enough by simply using a foam diorama like you're accustomed to watching me do. And I'll land up the model, I don't even use a few cars, maybe a box car and a caboose. I don't even have the freight cars yet when they get here. I'll use the freight cars on this scene and here's an example of what that test shot looked like that I did just the other day so I know this will work. But the problem with this photograph is it's freelanced and the people that model the Rio Grande Southern, for lack of a better word, they're like a cult so they know if it's right or it's wrong and so for this project I want to get it right. So the still photography it may be freelanced and it's going to look good just to get it done but for the video on this project I'm going to copy Dallas Divide. This is a photograph out of the Rio Grande Southern I don't remember which volume but this is Dallas Divide where K-27 number 455 had its rack so there's a lot of documented photographs of this scene and books. The fact is what I need to do is I need to model the Colorado Rockies and simply model the 41 and a half inch length of cars that I need to get my run by. Now to do the video I'm going to do something a little bit different. I'm going to model the 41 and a half inches on a foam scene but I'm going to create a run back loop on the foam scene so that I can have continuous running for video. What that will do is eliminate the forwards and backwards and the time consuming stop and go that we have to do it for projects. I've only got five days to complete this project so I've got a 48 sheet of foam here and I've already drawn on it my main line that I need to create the Dallas Divide photograph. On Dallas Divide the curve the train runs off into a curve so this is perfect. My train comes at the camera perfect run by Rocky Mountains back here in the background because the mountains are in one spot they don't follow you like the moon because the mountains are stationary and not parallel to the locomotive I don't have to worry about panning. Once the camera starts panning in video the whole effect can be ruined so the way the mountains are going to be set is simply going to be a pan shot where you see the locomotive the shot will open up and then you'll see the Rocky Mountains as the engine does the run by. This is going to be a good effect so rather than just use a one inch or one foot wide piece of foam cut it out scenic it and do the video because these engines can traverse 15 inch radiuses this affords me the opportunity to make about a two foot wide diorama dog bump which will allow the train to run into the scene do its loop around run through the scene again for this first or second or however many video takes that I need to do. Also what I'm not sure about and we're going to learn as this project goes along is this back side what will this back side afford me for videography and for photography potential. So we're both going to walk we're all going to walk through this project together as I go through it step by step in the next five days. Let's just see how this project turns out. I use great stuff to glue together my foam dioramas because it doesn't eat the foam like liquid nails does. First without and do these two sections together just like that. This will set up in about three hours and it will be rock hard solid up a little weight on top of it so that it doesn't expand and separate and rise we don't want it in the ride. Everything's not quite glued down. I'm using the prototype photos as my examples again because that's the most important guy that we've got and I can see that all I simply have to do is carve down about a about a four foot water runoff from the ballast line. So I'm using a pruning saw to cut my foam because this bends and it's allows me to get in and cut the furniture right away that I need. I want to seal this diorama paint inside the foams cavities get rid of all that paint color so when I apply dirt to this this black will be a good background for the dirt. It wraps this up where this is going to be just seal just right so that the foam won't shrink or degrade quickly it'll take a little more time. I ain't sealing it. You've got the scene outside the black paint the dark brown paint is drying. The camera's angle is set up about where it's going to be for the filming. The dump truck represents the locomotive or about where the train's going to go. These mountains these will not be the mountain used in the actual photo shoot. Well you will match the location for those but this gives me some reference on what I need to do a good pan shot. Now this scene is going to require a great deal of dirt and I like to use fine Missouri sifted clay dirt on all the scenes and I get this year round underneath my back porch where it's dry so when it's snowing out here or raining out here I still got the ability to get dirt and sift it. Let me show you how I do that door form loosen up this hard mound of Missouri clay that's underneath my back porch a box lined at the bottom with very fine plumber screen. This is just wonderful for after you get a large amount of dirt together I sift it. I'll scrape for 20 minutes and get a really large pile of dirt and then I'll sift it through here and every time I'm doing this job you can bet I'm always wearing a mask because this is this is one of the nastiest model aero jobs that I've got that I've got to contend with literally is just sitting here shaving this dusty old dirt out sifting it fine and then using it to perfect for modules at that point perfect for scenes. I sprayed on some hot stuff some foam to give the break line here so what I'm sitting here shooting this at a low angle I won't see the rails on the back side of the return track for the shot now when that dries and after it's finished expanding I'll shave it over just a little rounded and cover it up with a paint and then we'll put dirt on that okay now let's talk about track I'm using micro engineering narrow gauge track three foot gauge HO here and I've spent the last two hours cutting the track and laying it around the whole diorama I've just got this one foot section to go and using atlas scale rail joiners for this they they just they're small they look they don't look as obtuse on this code 55 rail and then what I do is I solder them in the place while they're straight and then I bend the curve into the track after the joint soldered and then I'll go back and I'll replace the ties and then clean up the solder joint so it doesn't look all sloppy and kind of nasty looking so figure in about another 20 minutes now maybe after I drop the wire leads maybe another half an hour I should have this thing up and running and then I'm gonna glue all this track down so far the tracks just floating and secured with pins but I'm gonna glue it down with a trial small trial and just a little liquid nail which won't hurt the phone now that the phone has been sealed with paint I want to get the wires from the track through the phone what you do is you show a piece of copper tubing into the phone here's where my wire leads are soldered onto the track and I'll simply push this wire through the copper tubing that's now in the phone which allows the wire to be thread right through the phone I pull it out underneath the wire is now inside the copper tube so when I pull the tube out the wire is now in the phone thread it through the bottom and read it ready to be connected to track power I'm gluing the track down using a metal spatula and liquid nail what I do is I bring the liquid nail on a spatula right under the rails right underneath the ties follow the line try to make it relatively smooth but thick enough for it to stick to the track for it to snuggle itself around the outside of those ties carry any lay right down gluing it down like this works really well put a few weights on top it won't pull out with the sun and will stay glued down and all the liquid nail be covered up with ballast you won't see any of this any of this peanut butter looking material I've got all the track glued down hooked up the DCC system and lo and behold I got it operating with sound so tomorrow when the day breaks I'll paint this track and we'll put dirt on the whole diorama and then we'll put down the vegetation the individual weeds and this thing would be pretty much ready for the mountains to be built what I'm doing now is I'm putting dirt on the scene the sifted dirt I'm running it through a screen that really helps spread it much faster than opposed to just trying to spread it with an open box like this it's much smoother to break it up with a metal screen and run it along the whole scene I'm gonna cover this entire diorama with dirt like this including the tracks and I'll brush them off and then we'll add just a little bit of rocky ballast and other other rougher type of terrain scenery to this and then the vegetation I'm using some finely screened gravel from a creek for the ballast they didn't use very much ballast I would say that this would be it would have been just enough to substantiate the main line and hold the grade okay I've applied the dirt I've applied ballast which is fine creek sifted rock there's not a creek when I screen rock I've got larger size rocks too and right now what I'm using is I'm using that to spread out for a few larger boulders in the area and then I'm gonna convolue those larger boulders with some of the finer rocks until I get a I get the look that's in the prototype photo that I'm trying to find which is that rocky Colorado type of a scenery which this so far is coming out just the way I want I'm doing a quick once over with a little bit of light green and medium green coarse turf from woodland scenics just to give you that arid vegetation look what we'll do is we'll follow up with individual tuft grass after this has all been soaked with glue and dries and we should have a pretty good looking type of Colorado scenery that should match that photo just right okay this diorama this scene has been textured all the dirt's down the ground foams down the area that represents the creek right here is is represented I'm going to soak this entire area now with this woodland scenic scenic cement I'm probably actually going to end up using three of these bottles possibly four to wet this entire scene put it in a nice fine spray misting bottle and misted on top of this dirt real smooth okay I'm spraying on the woodland scenic cement right now very high very fine mist and it's gonna get very wet everything is gonna get wet and once this gets wet and soaked on good I'm gonna put a nail in it I'm gonna pull out the static grass gun we'll see what happens next what I'm doing now is I'm applying static grass static grass is as simple as turning on this device it's got two cell batteries in it static grass is in the chamber here's the ground clip and a nail I stick this in the scene and everywhere the grass goes it stands up it's almost like magic so this will give right now I'm putting down like a dead grass dead burnt dry type of grass and I'm putting it down kind of everywhere and it'll just look more like inadvertently scraped off some of the coloring that was on the rail I'm gonna go back over it with a little micro engineering rail darkener and what that is an instant tarnisher upon touching the metal edges it'll turn black so the scene has been drying now for about five hours and the main line is clean so I managed to get the locomotive to run real well on the track so far something else I want to talk about in the last hour I made a dam out of clay and stuck some pins in it and mixed a hundred and eighty grams of enviro texts clear you know that clear bar top coating that we like to use for water I've been hitting it with a torch every so often to keep the air bubbles out of it and what this represents here this body of water is the creek alright at least the curvature edge of the creek that runs along this trackage which is plainly seen in the in the prototype shot so this is gonna work out real well I haven't got any leaks and I'm gonna hit this with a torch one more time okay now let me show you how we get the air bubbles out simple torch and you don't touch the flame to it what happens is the gas in the edge of the play okay we've got the foreground scenery completely built I've got the creek in I've got the main line down now what I'm going to do I put the train in perspective so I could trace and draw the background mountains so what I do to do that is I've got a stick with a magic marker on the end and I stand back and I actually look at the drawing where I can stand back and respectively see the whole overall and I focus on every peak every detail and simply replicate them with a stick it makes for a rough line that I can go back and follow up on a little more detail now after these mountains get all painted black I'm gonna take the jigsaw cut out the top I'm gonna carve down the relief of the valleys and then I'm gonna go over it with white white can represent the various patches of glaciers and snow which should make this pop it'll then make it look characteristic exactly of the location that I'm trying to represent I'm using the prototype photo again and I am carving out literally giving some contour and relief to the mountains to make out where each peak is where the background peaks are when this gets painted covered with the white snow it's gonna pop together but this is where you really paint your views. This is not the easiest to work. Alright, here we are all finished ready to set up and shoot outside my shot is gonna be down something like this just to that area here you've got all the pine trees right directly behind me in the shot. Here we are shoot day this is the most exciting part here's when it all comes together we've got Dallas divide set up with the creek I've had a bunch of little bushes little to block the view of the mountains just different little things I didn't know until you get to the final setup we need various view blocks just to trick the eye the point of the shot the point of this shot the whole setup was get about an 18 second video of the locomotive coming around the curve past the creek and through the scene it starts out really tight with the locomotive and the pine trees so that all you see is locomotive and pine trees from most of the clip and then for the last five seconds maybe three seconds it opens up to a panorama it pans over with the locomotive and you see all the mountains just for a few seconds long enough to know they're there but not long enough to stare at them too long so I think I've got my shot this is actually post-shoot right now it's we've already shot it I've probably done a seven or eight takes before I lost my son I actually set up kind of late because this morning I just finished these mountains so here we are flying by the seat of our pants but I'm pretty sure we got the job done now I want to talk a little bit about what's behind the scenes these are the things that I didn't necessarily show construction of during the video because these are props I've got on hand all the time because as a general rule whenever you've got a background prop you've always got secondary scenery in the foreground right before the main scenery right where the camera's sitting all right in this case what I've got is a bunch of trees and this just absorbs clusters and confuses the eye as background footage as the train was pulling away not to convolute the scene but all this greenery back here was actually to represent the growth of rolling hills in the foreground to the mountains okay now I cut and contoured everything the reason I did that was it made it easy for me to understand where the snow pitches were and exactly what it was I was dealing with I'm simply dealing with three valleys three mountains that have eroded into valleys are draining off you can tell by the sun shadow where the snow was copying the prototype picture worked out really well because it told me exactly where they put the paint similar to building a courtroom model in this case I'm simply following the exact patterns from the photo to the mountains and if you do that all the way across and stand back and look at it it should match and in this case we're pretty darn close so two sections 16 feet long we did the whole project in our five-day deadline and I'm going to take an additional day tomorrow to shoot some still footage and maybe just see what other videos on this this wonderful thing we've built here this this essentially what's a layout I mean it's taken up no more space than a normal diorama with two double track main lines running through it it's just in this case because we can bend the 15 inch radius it allowed me to make a return track so I could sit here and fill my run buys every time the train went by rather than backing up going forward dot it out of time or having somebody here running the throttle for me while I'm running the camera this allowed me to be a one-man show in this case and I'm pretty sure it worked out well this special segment of what's neat I'm outside in this beautiful weather shooting an amazing Broadway limited Chesapeake in Ohio K2 locomotive this is an amazing model one of the most beautiful models I've shot in a long time outside this thing comes with Paragon 4 sound their latest premier sound system it's an amazing looking locomotive these locomotives are quickly recognized by the Alaska feed water heaters and flying pumps hanging from the smokebox door all these k2s came with 12,000 gallon tenders but then the railroad quickly realized that they needed larger capacity so they upped to 16,000 gallon tenders and these models will be available with both different types of tenders these things have synchronized puffing smoke juff sound variable smoke intensity and timing there's a lot of features packed into this little locomotive it is a five pole can motor with skewed wound armatures handcrafted brass boiler cab tender heavy die-cast chassis increased tractive effort I mean this is an absolutely gorgeous model prototypical light operation with separately controlled headlights numberboards cab lights factory installed engineers and figures many separately applied details such as handrails grab irons ladders piping glass cab whistle brass bell marker numberboards so many amazing details on this gorgeous k2 locomotive so with that I just wanted to share this this amazing model they're available now at your local hobby shops and check it out this is just I'm just I'm just I don't know what to say on this one I'm blown away at the fidelity of this hybrid brass is what Broadway Limited calls this and it is truly that it is plastic brass in my opinion and that is a segment for what's neat from a special segment of what's neat I've got Matt Stern from Bachman Industries all the way from beautiful Philadelphia Pennsylvania on the show today to tell us about some of the new exciting products that we're going to see here in the month of June Matt how are you today I'm doing great and how are you it's really good to have you on today and you've got a lot of cool models I see on the side of you over there why don't you tell us about some of the amazing stuff for this month's video all right so we're going to start out with some production samples fresh from the factory so we've got some new GP40s here at HO scale these are new painted samples these are going to be DCC sound value models that will arrive later this year we've got the the Rio Grande scheme here and then we've got the the late era New York Central scheme and this is a pretty cool one this is one that we haven't done before so we're excited about that oh that's going to be popular and then we also have some new 282 micatos we have two over here you can see I've got one up here which I'll bring a little bit closer to the camera this is really a fantastic model I love the way the detail looks on this I think this is going to be hugely popular these are DCC ready with an nmri 8 pin plug and they they're just fantastic looking models they have working lighting they have metal drivers and this one here I particularly like because this is based on a locomotive which actually ran in excursion service after the steam era very cool and then we have we also have some freight cars we've got some new samples of our upcoming drop-in gondolas got the Rio Grande scheme here and you can see the the drop-in here which just drops down nice and we've got the classic Tuscan Red Pennsylvania as well those are nice and with the drop-down end you could put an idler flat car on either side and put a longer load of poles or something in that car with the drop-down ends absolutely yeah yeah the possibilities are endless that is so true we also have some new 40 foot box cars we've got this prototypical one which is the this is the root of the 400 one this is the CMO version yes and I think it's a really vibrant nice pain scheme it'll look really good at any late steam era or early diesel era train and then we also have for our Christmas modelers this very attractive north pole ornament artisan's car in a very shiny silver scheme here which will stand out on on any Christmas layout oh that's beautiful yes that'll reflect the Christmas lights absolutely and just worth mentioning both cars also have sliding open doors okay metal wheels too and in end scale we've got two new 50-foot track-leaning box cars to show you okay we've got the great northern in the glacier green which is my one of my personal favorite paint schemes these will have these ones are just samples so they don't have the track cleaning pads on them but the production models will have track cleaning pads here and what these do is they'll run around your layout and it'll just clear your rails of any gunk any dust or anything that might have accumulated on it and it'll look like a functioning freight car at the same time that is absolutely true that's a great idea for end scale and this is the the second one this is the Canadian National I'm going to show you this side first because this is how you would expect it to look okay this is actually from a demonstration train that they ran in the 1970s where they painted up several freight cars in schemes demonstrating industries in Canada and on the other side here so all you'll see is they did one side of each car this one was representing newspapers across Canada and these are actually the the letter heads for various newspapers across the country and I have to give props to our to Tyler who you met last month because he did a fantastic job replicating this and getting it all ready for production because that's not an easy scheme to do no that would be that's amazing that looks terrific and that'll also complement our cylindrical hopper the rainbow color cylindrical hopper that we had was actually part of that same train Matt that's amazing the hats off to Tyler on that job yes absolutely back to your scale here we also have a sample of our new full dome here this is the western Maryland scenic railroad version yes oh my god that's beautiful and this was the Amtrak car the last car full dome the Amtrak had when it retired with Amtrak it was sold to a private operator which then leased it to the western Maryland scenic railroad and just like on the prototype we you can see the you've got the warning symbols and stuff you've got the things for like the you know the what to do in an emergency stuff but i tried to create everything that the real car had so we're pretty excited about that and like you said it's just a sharp scheme boy if that railroad's got a gift shop on that train they could sell those cars on that train well that's what we hope it's cool all right so just a couple more things we'll be the large scale now we have two samples of our new closed streetcar this is a model that we have made in the past but this is going to be a new version with metal gears which is something that i know a lot of the large scale modelers have been hoping for yes we have the united traction version here and then i really like this one this is our Christmas one the north pole rapid transit and what i love about this is you've got all sorts of things that the more you look at the car the more you see so like down here you've got it's root ho ho ho and it's on its way to Santa's workshop and gingerbread hall now on the other side here we got the the traction company slogan which is it's almost as fast as my sleigh it's perfect that's a beautiful piece just like the previous one of these cars these will come with the interior lighting and directional headlights as well dude that just would be perfect around a christmas tree on a are a single track back and forth shelf layout on somebody's mantle or windowsill how perfect is that great or even even if you're brave enough to run your garden railroad out from the snow in the winter it's perfect for that too that is true and that's a lot of fun to do by the way now i'm going to move on to some models that actually are in stock now okay these have been in stock for a couple months now this is our east broad top ho scale passenger car line this is in standard gauge ho scales so if you've been on the east broad top or if you want a memento for the line or if you just like that railroad and want to run it on your ho scale railroad please the cars for that nice we've got the uh we've got the passenger car coach um we've got the combine car and then we've also got a baggage car version as well i've only got two here because you can only hold two at a time no the paint scheme's nice paint scheme's very nice yep it's uh replicating their earlier scheme from uh i believe from the early 1900s when they had the gold lettering but it's also very similar to the cars that are running there now on the uh that's the new iteration of the company that's running now very cool man and staying in the east broad top theme we're going to jump scale here to 0 and 30 for a second we've got two new uh usr or actually not usr but two new outside brace two bay hoppers okay um these are both east broad top cars they're based on east broad top prototypes we've got the uh the no logo lettering version okay and then we've got the uh iconic acorn symbol as well on this one very cool with co loads with co loads yep removable co loads you've got the detail inside if you take them out and each car is actually a part of a two car set so these come these come in two in two car packs with two different road numbers so it's easier to build a longer tree nice work mat and i'm going to pivot back to ho scale again here kind of darting all over the place scale wise but that's okay um also now this is our southern bay window caboose this is the latest pain scheme to arrive in this range we know a lot of people that are really excited about this one because southern railway was one of those railroads that had a ton of these yes and yeah we've had a lot of good reception for these and they're here now and they're shipping to dealers and also cabooses we have our new streamlined caboose the offset cupola caboose this again is a these are new pain schemes for a caboose that's been in the line already but i'm particularly excited about this scheme because this is the actually the last scheme that these the prototype of these cars wore in reality in class one service okay they ran with the burlington northern up through the 1970s and as you can see it's a really nice vibrant scheme i love the yellow ends and you got the silver roof it'll just it'll look sharp on any railroad and speaking of looking sharp we've also got the norther western bicentennial version oh beautiful you got to love that yes gosh that was so that so many railroads did that around 1976 absolutely yeah yeah and this car is uh when we actually had some request for so we're happy to deliver on that that'll be great for the collectors too absolutely and i think that might actually just about wrap it up that's amazing i mean everything every month it's amazing the volume of material that you guys are producing with the accuracy now that you're doing just amazing guys what you guys are doing up there in philadelphia well thanks again so matt thank you so much for being on for this june video and guys ladies and gentlemen that is this segment for what's neat all of the products seen on this episode of what's neat are available from lombard hobbies in lombard illinois or order online at lombard hobby dot com and buy broadway limited imports the cutting edge leader in model trains check out their website at broadway dash limited dot com bachman trains now that's the way to run a railroad check out their website at bachman trains dot com