 Hi, I'm Kevin from Mark Twain Hobby and February What's Neat this week starts right now. This is What's Neat for February 2017. I'm your host Ken Patterson and this month we've got a great show. Our friend from Soundtracks, George Bogotoc, stops by and shows us a beautiful 440 locomotive that Bachman makes that he's tricked out with details and sound. It's a very beautiful model to see this month. Also, we take a look at a Bachman trolley that's recently been introduced to the market that has complete full sound and HO scale and the sparking effect on the end of the trolley electric cantonary pole. It's kind of a cool product to see this month. We do an installation on the new Digitrax DCS-240 this month, showing step-by-step how to set it up, how to program Decoder Pro to work with it, and it came out to be a pretty quick and easy project this month. So I think you'll enjoy that if you're looking to upgrade your DCC system. We do an athern photo shoot this month, creating this beautiful snow scene, and we get our hands dirty because we've got to build a trestle complete with all the details on that, and some icicles hanging on the bridge too, which looks kind of cool. Now, I want to do a quick follow-up on the last month's track cleaning tool, as I have done further experimenting with this. First, remember the head that tipped because of the higher pivot point. Well, the six inch long head that I suggested did not work that great in HO scale because it was simply too long to be functional. The best working head needs to be no longer than two and a half inches. The solution was to cut down the length of the breaker bar square tip using a belt sander. Then I drilled out the block of wood with a bigger hole to fit the diameter of the breaker bar's complete head. Then simply assemble the tool by pushing the wood block onto the shorter breaker bar's head. And now the tool works great in HO scale with the two and a half inch long wood block that doesn't destroy things when you slide it sideways. So it's a very functional track cleaning tool. And I also came up with a few other ones this month. This one with a very interesting bent shaft on it. I have found to be extremely functional because it puts your hand above center of all the freight cars as you're pushing it through the yard. It's not really good for getting in the bridges, but if you reverse the head around, it's got a great field to it where you can exert a lot of pressure onto the track, not too much to break anything, but still it's a sturdy tool with the bent shaft like this. Now I've experimented further with this five-pound, that's right, it weighs five pounds and this is a three-quarter inch head breaker bar. It still accepts the two and a half inch head in HO scale, but this puppy, I'll tell you what, what a conversation piece for cleaning a modular layout at a train show. It's functional and it still works. And one of the prettiest tools that I've made, if that's the right word for it, is this gold head. I picked this up on eBay. It's a gold breaker bar head and it is just, it's very nice to look at. It's one of those things where if you ever are at an NMRA meet and you know they give out plaques, why don't you consider giving out a breaker bar head for first and second place models or photos? This is a gift or a something that's actually functional to the model railroad or it would make a nice award and I'm sure some form or fashion you could probably have it engraved. Now I'm creating a new sawmill on my layout. I'm gonna build the new BTS sawmill complex. I've decided to take on that project and I've dedicated about a nine foot long by four foot wide area in my layout room where I can build this and have it on wheels and move it out of the way when I have to do other projects. I want to thank all the customers that have purchased videos from Ken Patterson.com in this past year. I've got two new videos that I'm making for 2017. One on how to make 14 different kinds of very realistic trees. That's gonna be a two hour long video and I'm going to introduce building craftsman structures volume two in which we're going to build the hide, I'm sorry, not hide, but the BTS car shops on my layout. A very nice project. Another two hour long video. And so with that, let's continue on with the rest of this month's What's Neat? For this layout construction segment on What's Neat, I'm getting ready to upgrade my DCC system. What I'm going to do is subdivide my layout into different power districts, whereas each individual module and there's about 14 of them on my layout are going to be their own separate power district for the DCC system so that we can introduce signaling to this layout and then cover that on a future show and show exactly what goes into installing a signaling system on a full blown layout. But what I want to do today is discuss some of the upgrades that I'm going to make to my Digitrack system. I picked up this brand new DCS-240, which has got a lot of features in it that I really like. This is the newest, latest and greatest from Digitrack's. And one of the features that's in it that I really am looking forward to using is the USB port on the front of this unit where I can plug this directly into my computer for using Decoder Pro or for programming my locomotives on the programming track. Now, by bypassing the PR3, which is what I'm going to be able to do because that's built into the system, I'll be able to clean up the wiring on this part of my work area, my workspace where I have all of my Digitrack's, my command control system all centrally located here on the layout. What I also am going to be able to replace is the SoundTrack's power booster. And what this says, this is the PBT-100 for the programming track. And with the locomotives these days with SoundEndom, they require just a little bit more power for programming that my DCS-100 just didn't quite have. And that's what this extra module was far with adding more power to the programming track. Well, a system like that is also built into the new Digitrack system where I can eliminate that. So that's going to go, this is going to go, the wiring will be a lot cleaner. Something else that I'm going to get rid of, I've got an old DC power pack here that I've used for years whenever I wanted to run regular DC locomotives on the layout. But I've got to tell you I haven't done that in about five years. So I'm going to eliminate this power pack, which will open up a little bit more space on the layout. Now, if you look here, you'll see this wooden box that I've got. And what this is, this is something that I did an article for Bob Schleicher in Railmodel Journal back in December of 2003. And by the way, Bob Schleicher is still in the industry as an editor. He's working for Modern Railroad Hobbyist magazine, working for our own Joe Fugate. So I'm really glad that Bob is still in the industry working with us these days. But I did this as an article in this magazine back in December 2003. And what it was was an article about building this box to include a Tony's Train Exchange ramp meter, which gives me voltage and amperage, a nice clear readout so I can see that. And I also put in it a UR91 radio controlled unit. So I'd have radio on this portion of the room. There's another one hanging up on the other side of the basement, which I also built a box for for that and included that in that article that I'm referring to. And I outlast thing I've got in this box is a UP3 panel for my LocoNet system. So I can just plug my throttles directly into the panel mounted system here and do my programming whenever I needed to do that. But whereby this is going to stay, because this is very functional, it'll be nice to get rid of again the wiring that's on the outside of this. Now there's nothing wrong with my DCS 100. I've been using it for 17 years and it's worked reliably on my 157 foot main line all the way around the basement. But again, the layout's never been broken up into sub districts. And so every time there's a short, the whole system would shut down intermittently. So I'm not going to get rid of this completely because there's nothing wrong with it. But what I will do is I'll convert this into a power booster and I'll use this on the other side of the layout. So as things start to get divided up into little districts, and this will be the power booster for one side of the layout. And then this will be the power station for my other half of my layout. So that'll break things up power wise. Now in order to break up each individual module, I'm going to use this Digitrax PM42 board. And this allows me to break up the layout into four different segments. So by including four of these boards on the layout, I'll have enough segments where I can break up the layout and then introduce the layout at some point down the road to signaling. One last thing I've got here. I've got my old Zephyr that I use and I'm going to convert this so that it's not a power booster and it's only a throttle. So I'll be able to have a knob throttle just like the old good old fashioned days. If you look at the way I've got this designed, it's not set up in the sense of how we used to design layouts in the 70s where we ran our layout from a central control panel and sat back and watched the trains running. With the advent of DCC and the local net and the ability to walk around, it's really changed the configuration of how our power areas kind of look. And that's why I've got mine at my workbench here, because this is the one central location where I do operate the entire layout. So with this, the computer, all the wiring cleaned up, I'm really looking forward to the improvements that we're about to make. So let's go ahead and install this DCS240. It should be just like replacing a light bulb, whereas I can just pull the wires off of the old DCS100 and put them onto the new unit. And let's see how this all operates and if this turns out the way I think it will. I disconnected the program wires, the power wires, and the local net connectors from the DCS100, removing this from the system. I removed the three amp power supply and the cooling fan, exposing a dusty shelf. I removed the screws holding the PR3 in place, freeing this from its location. I also removed the soundtracks PTB100 programming track booster from the system. After cleaning the shelf, I installed a Digitrax PS2012 20 amp power supply with a fan and the DCS240 next to that. I reconnected the local net with the six wire plugs into the command station. I modified the Digitrax power harnesses a little by removing two of the four wires, keeping the inline fuse in place. I cut off the crimped on wire connectors and replaced these with simple banana plugs. The banana plugs simply get pushed into the power supplies front power jacks. The other end of the black and red power wires were installed into the DCS240's front terminal, held in place by screws. I attached the two track power wires to the unit. I plugged in the USB cable into the command station. I attached each of the two wires that lead to the programming track to the unit, and that pretty much completed the installation of the hardware with all of the wiring looking much cleaner than before. Upon powering up the system, I had track power and sound right away, allowing me to start and run a train with no problems. Everything works smooth, so far so good. The new equipment looked great with a rainbow of colorful LEDs as the power supply was delivering a solid 14 plus volts to the system. I changed my Zephyr power booster to a simple local net throttle by pressing the program key, then the switch key. I entered number two, the number of the option switch, which needed to be set to closed. Upon exiting the program mode, the BR was displayed, confirming my Zephyr was now a simple programming throttle. I plugged in the local net cable as the walking L's further confirmed everything was set up correct. Upon turning the knob, the train started running smooth again with no problems. The last step of the process was to connect the DCS 240 to the laptop computer with the USB cable. Upon launching Decoder Pro, I got a prompt that COM 3 port was not found. Upon further investigation into this, I found that the DCS 240 wanted to communicate through the USB COM 5 port. This meant that I had to program the preference setting in Decoder Pro to match the new hardware. I did this using the multiple choice dialogue boxes in Decoder Pro's preferences. Setting the serial port to COM 5 and the command station box to DCS 240 Advanced Command Station. And just like that, the JMRI Decoder Pro opened up with the green icon indicating I can now program decoders and run trains on the layout using the computer as a throttle. In a future show, we will divide up the layout into power districts, getting it ready for signaling. But for now, I've made a good investment and a nice upgrade to my DCC system that should last for another 17 years. And that's this layout construction slash DCC segment on what's neat. For this segment of what's neat, I've got something kind of cool. I'm shooting this model in the dark. This is an HO scale street car that Bachman makes. And it's complete with sound. And I'm doing the photograph in the dark with it running. I've got the model taped into place so it won't move while the throttle set up in about notch eight. And you can see the arcing effect that the cantonary wire, the flashing effect you'd see, it's kind of a neat feature on the model. And I just wanted to share it with you because this is neat. And that's kind of the whole point of the show is when I find something really cool like this and I'm photographing it and it's a job, I have to share it with you. So this is something different, something you don't see every day. And it's pretty cool. Pretty neat effect. For this segment of what's neat, this is going to be more or less a layout construction slash photography segment in that Athern has asked me to reproduce another photograph. And this is a shot that they had found on the internet. And we are going to do this shot with a steam locomotive on it. So I took a pencil drawing of the shot, a sketch, just to represent on how it's going to look with 10 trussel bands hill and then a steam locomotive. We are going to use this beautiful locomotive from Athern. This is that brand new Northern Pacific articulated locomotive. And I am plotting out the scene on a sheet of foam like I always do. Except for this is a little different in that we are going to be building a bridge on this. So I've got to build 10 trussel bands and I've got them at 15 foot on centers, marked off and plotted out. I've already cut off the corner of this diorama so that I can get my camera right in here and then start filming or start laying out the scene and plotting it out. The back of the hill will be here, the trussel will be here and the locomotive will be placed on the scene with all the trees. And it should come out just like the concept drawing that we've got. So let's see how this project turns out. This will be kind of a fun, quick project. We'll build a jig and make some trussel bands real quick. To start the project, I drew lines to the size of the diorama and cut this section out of the 4x8 sheet of foam, revealing a photo diorama measuring 28 inches wide and about 40 inches long. To stack the foam and build a topography to match our concept drawing, I glued 2 inch thick pieces of foam into place with great stuff foam pro. I set weights on top of this and let it cure for about an hour. I carved the foam scene using a pruning saw, a chainsaw and my Stanley shore farm planer, working my way around the diorama and checking measurements for the bridge's placement into the scene until everything looked prototypically accurate to create a realistic-looking scene for our photograph. I sealed the diorama with a coat of flat latex paint and let this dry overnight. The next morning I noticed the foam had warped as the latex paint had dried. This would be a very unstable base for our wood bridge and make it hard to build at level. The solution to this was to cut another layer of foam and glue this with the foam glue, making the scene about 4 inches thick where the bridge will go. I then placed a lot of weight on top of the scene, letting it cure and set up on a perfectly level surface for about an hour. I measured from the bridge's deck location to the foam, understanding how long the trestle vents needed to be, figuring I would sink the vents into the foam about a half of an inch. Going through my doll rod stock, I was looking for poles with a scale diameter of about 13 to 14 inches, and this came out to 3.16 of an inch, so these doll rods fit the build perfectly. I used 80 grit sandpaper and with this I cut wood grain into our doll rods, along with making the diameter just a little smaller, about 12 scale inches. I then cut 60 doll rod pieces using a table saw, measuring each to be about 2.5 inches long or about 18 scale feet in HO scale. Using prototype photos and dimensions taken from prototype railroad standard books, I had built the first bent by hand, which this one will be used to make our trestle jig. To build the jig, I glued HO scale switch ties to the jig's surface, placing them on each side of each doll rod tight, leaving no space for slippage or movement. I took my time with this part of the process, as this will determine the quality of our model throughout. After the glue started to set up, I carefully removed the trestle bent from the jig with a razor knife, revealing our new trestle bent building tool. To build a trestle bent using the jig, I placed 5 doll rods into the jig's grooves. Then using a file, I filed the tops of these to create the angles, so that they would match up with our 14 foot long top cap stringer. I glued 3 by 10 cross braces into place. Then I attached the pre-cut 3 by 10 sway braces with wood glue. I then added cross braces and sway braces to the other side of each bent, attaching these with wood glue. The building process got quicker after I built a few trusses, working my way through the bridge, one bent at a time, until I had 10 completed, ready for super detailing next. If you study prototype photos of trestles, you'll see that they are not glued, but instead bolted together, and I wanted to include this detail in our photodiorama. Using a drill press, I drilled holes with a number 65 drill bit into 11 locations where the bolts would hold the structure together. I then glued grant line 2 ¼ inch nut and bolt castings into each of the holes, gluing these into place with CA glue. To build the bridge's top deck, I followed prototype standards of just under 8 feet wide, and cut this part of the bridge from a ¼ inch piece of oak plywood. It scaled out to be 16 inches high, that of a standard stringer, without having to lay each stringer board individually, adding strength to our bridge, and saving a lot of time for a detail that will not look out of place in the final photograph. I glued scale bridge ties across our bridge deck, keeping everything square and evenly spaced. I did cut down one of the bents, using a reverse saw guide on the bandsaw. This bent will be at the end of the bridge, where the topography moves uphill. I placed a level atop the deck, just to make sure everything would line up, ensuring level rail and a perfect transition from track to bridge, along with understanding how deep into the foam the trusses will be placed. I glued the trestle bents to the bottom of the bridge deck with wood glue, all at the same time. I used steel blocks, just to make sure everything would set up perfectly square to the bottom of the bridge's deck. I placed the bridge onto the diorama, and marked where the bents would meet the earth, so I would know where to cut and carve the foam to sink the trestle into our scene. I used a dremel with a router bit attached, to cut the channels into the foam. I test fit the bridge into the foam, making sure everything lined up perfect and level, on both ends and in the middle. So far, so good. Everything really lines up and fits level. The bolt castings look great, and things are going together pretty smooth on this project. I painted the trestle with a can of Rust-Oleum Comiflash Brown spray paint. This will drive flat, and it will be a good base coat, as we further color the bridge, with a little bit of weathering and some black spray paint. I filled the grooves cut into the diorama with a bead of Gorilla Glue. I then placed the bridge on the scene, sinking it into the glue, lining things up level and straight on both ends. Now I'm going to walk you through, putting the bridge into the diorama real time, because I want to explain exactly how I've done this. The most important dimension on this bridge is the top of the rail. It's got to be level all the way across through the whole project. So what I've done is, I've made sure that this table I'm working on is completely level, so that when I put a level in the diorama, I'll know that I'm laying the bridge in perfectly level and the bubble centered. The bridge is shimmed out with a piece of steel and a piece of thin plywood, that I know creates the same exact dimensions for the bubble to be centered. So right now, I've also one more thing I want to explain is I've got a piece of microengineering railroad ties right here to help ensure the fact that when I lay the track, the track's bottom, the bottom of the rail will match with the top deck of the bridge. So everything will be flush and perfectly level as you look through the plane of the photograph when I shoot the model on this bridge. So with the level in place, I'm going to take a clamp and clamp the bridge so that it is attached to the bottom of the level. This will ensure our dimension across the top is perfect and level throughout. I can't explain, this is just very important. Now I've put some gorilla glue inside all of cavities where the bridge is sitting and all I've got to do is spray a little bit of water into the cavities to activate the glue. The glue will then expand and permanently mount our bridge in place. As the glue expands, I'm going to stay here and monitor it and just make sure that it doesn't creep up above the scenery line because if it does, I'm going to push it back down while it's wet before it cures while I can still handle that. That way I don't have to carve it down. So at this point, I spray the water into the cavity, which I'm going to do right now, and activate the glue. Everything's completely level, everything's clamped, both ends are secure, and we can finish the scenery and everything after this bridge is mounted. The only other dimension I haven't checked here, I want to check the sideways dimension too to make sure that's perfect. So I put this torpedo level on top here and just make sure that my bubble is perfectly level across the top laterally. Sideways here, which it is right, right now it is. So now I'm going to spray water into the cavity and activate the glue and our bridge will start to set up permanently in the base. Now we just wait. We just wait, let it sit, let it cure, and see if this doesn't mount absolutely perfect just the way we want it to. Because actually I've got a deadline on this where I've got to have this thing shut in less than 36 hours, so I really got to hustle on this and get this thing done. I stayed with it for about a half an hour, making sure the expanding foam would not creep up the trestle vents by using a dental pick to keep the earth's surface flat around the bridge's base. After the glue cured, I was able to free the bridge from its bondage of clamps, weights, levels, revealing the finished structure. I painted the area around the base of the bridge with a coat of camouflage paint and let this dry to a flat finish. I peeled the ties off of a piece of code 70 micro-engineering track, the length of the bridge. This rail will lay atop the bridge deck, giving a smooth transition from the land to the bridge. I glued the track to the scene with liquid nails adhesive. I then glued the rails to the deck using contact adhesive, keeping the rail to a correct gauge using an HO scale track gauge. These two are available for micro-engineering. I waited everything into place for about an hour as the two types of glues cured. I further secured the rail onto the bridge deck by spiking it with HO scale track spikes, pushing them into the wood deck with pliers. I cut 16 foot long 4 by 8 guard timbers with my Northwest short line chopper. These will be attached to the deck just outside the rail for the length of the entire bridge. I repainted the diorama with more of an earth tone latex paint. This will blend better with dirt, allowing the diorama to be used in additional photos with different scenery for future photo shoot assignments. I painted the trestle with a mist of black paint, giving it that creosote look. I covered the deck with a 2 by 2 to protect it as I started covering the whole diorama with sifted dirt through a screen. Working my way around the entire scene trying to keep all the dirt even. I added rip wrap around the end abutment, working it around the area with an artist brush. I ballasted the track with woodland scenic's gray fine ballast and worked this in between the ties with the same fan brush. I glued the dirt, ballast, and rip wrap into place with two 16 ounce bottles of woodland scenic scenic cement, soaking the scene thoroughly and letting this dry overnight. So the next day the dirt and ballast and everything's dried and I'm ready to shoot this diorama now. It's shoot day and I'm going to shoot this thing in three hours. So I've got the locomotive set up in a position here where it needs to be on the scene. I've got the camera so that now what I can do is fill out the photograph in the front area here, this area here and just a little here with trees. I needed to look wintery with trees. So I'm going to take the trees off of the Blackstone diorama that I built a year ago in 2015 for Christmas for Blackstone and I'm literally going to pull off the super trees, the wire trees, and probably a few of the pine trees and just work them into the scene, make it look balanced, and then I'm going to sprinkle snow on top of everything except for the locomotive. I'm going to have to clean the track. I need snow on the freight cars. There's all kinds of little variables to think about because when this goes outside I also have to connect DCC to it so I get good headlights, marker lights, number boards, all the things that are on the locomotive that light up. So just three more hours, a few more trees, and this thing's going to be ready to shoot. So let's see what happens next. I took my time planting trees and vegetation in the scene using wire trees and super trees. All of these were painted with camouflage brown paint before placing them into the scene. I looked through the camera each time I planted a tree making sure the composition looked prototypically accurate and balances well with the photograph and the locomotive on the bridge. Since the photo we are going to shoot will be a cold February snow scene, Chris Palomeras asked that I add icicles to the bottom of the bridge. I did this by dabbing silicone caulk in various areas under the structure. This effect will add just a little more magic to the final photograph, especially if the sun is out. So I need to set up and shoot this in the next hour and now we're going to make it snow. So I set up the high speed camera so you can watch how I do this. Okay I'm out here shooting the diorama now and I'm fighting another brisk wind to the point where I've literally had to paint brush off the locomotive in between every shot that I took because of blasters getting blown onto the side of the model and onto my lens. So I've been cleaning everything as I went along. I've got the DCC hooked up everything frames out real nice in this shot. So I'll process these photographs through a focus stacking program. I'll give them to Chris Palomeras and let him work his Photoshop magic whatever he'd like to do with this shot and then we'll be able to see what the finished shot looks like. But so far the diorama has went together really nice quick so far so good on this shoot. So let's uh let's see how the photo turns out next. So after spending 10 days building our diorama in between other projects it only took about 30 minutes to shoot it and then after the photo shoot I wanted to get the plaster off before I brought it back inside and the humidity caused it to set up on the scene. So what I did was I knocked off as much of the plasters I could outside into the grass and then I pulled out the garden hose and I hosed off the entire diorama cleaning the scene perfectly so that it'll be ready for another photo shoot somewhere down the road. But now I can show you the beautiful photograph that we've created from this project. It's just an absolutely magnificent shot. Chris Palomeras added his magic in Photoshop with a little bit of smoke and steam and I've got to tell you what this is another winner. This is just an absolutely dramatic photograph that I absolutely am positive is going to help sell models. So that's this photography segment for February's What's Neat pretty cool project this month. For this segment of What's Neat you're all familiar with the new Bachman 4 4 O's that have come out recently just some absolutely beautiful models with sound in them. But today George Bogatuck has come by with one of his 4 4 O's the same Bachman model where he's absolutely tricked it out with sound and everything. George tell us about this beautiful model that you've done. Hi Ken thanks basically what I did I've got a little soft spot for the old 4 4 O's the turn of the century type locomotives and so with the new Bachman release I was really excited because the motor was actually on the locomotive and not in the tender so I could do a little bit more with it. So what I did with this locomotive was the first thing to do was to detail the cab interior. So I've got the firebox opening I've got the throttle I've got gauges I've got engineers and seats and everything up inside the throttle up inside the cab. The other thing I did was because the wood load is a cast plastic it doesn't really give me that a feel that it's wood so I cut that out replaced the top of the tender deck and that also allowed me to put a larger speaker into the decoder than what was originally designed. So I actually put a 20 millimeter round speaker under that and to hide the holes for the speaker I piled real wood chips on top of it that I had cut to about scale size so that they could be easily thrown into the firebox. In the tender I was able to fit a TSU 1100 tsunami 2 and a current keeper and because space was at a premium already I had to remove the existing circuit board and I had to remove the weight that they had provided out of it. So I actually used multiple lead weight from a line products that you can get and filled the extra space that was not occupied by the decoder and the current keeper inside the tender so that the tender still had a good weight to it and with that I also then finished detailing the exterior by replacing the exhaust stack. I replaced the pilot on there with a better cowcatcher type so to speak. I've also got the lift and pin or the Lincoln pin arm that can be lifted up and out of the way put some flag posts put the water pumps on the sides of the crossheads next to where they would be running and replace the whistle and actually ran the whistle and bell cords up along the side of the model so it really gives that extra illusion. About the only thing left I want to do is some very very light weathering because at this era they typically took very good care of their models and kept them clean so I don't want to do too much to it and the other thing I want to do is replace the grab irons and so forth on the tender shell but in the essence of time I've got it running and it does have the tsunami 2 and I was intrigued by this project also because the tsunami 2 allows you to select the type of fuel load that the decoder is playing with your locomotive so in this case I have a wood pile so we have a wood burning locomotive and the associated sounds with it so. Man it's really super beautiful can we see this puppy run? Sure let's take it for a spin. Beautiful piece man thank you thank you so much for sharing that I know Craig Bishkeier and so many other people out there will be excited to see what we can do with these locomotives now that they're out. Thanks for sharing this one with us George. You're welcome. Thank you.