 I've added some additional tracks to the area. So that means I've got to change my panel mounts so they match the track pattern that I've got and I can put in additional blocks. So what I'm done here is I've pulled off my fascia board, my quatering plier, I always wrap my dioramas in and I've pulled out the panel mount here and I've cut a new piece of plexiglass to replace this mount. And let me explain to you briefly how it is I make these panel mounts. What I do is I take a piece of plexiglass and I cut it out on the saw to this shape and the size of what I need and then I take and I apply tape on it, tape the way the track pattern is supposed to be and you've got to do it inverted you've got to do it backwards and then once the tape is on I paint them out black and then I pull the tape off and then I'll go ahead and paint the appropriate color for the panel in this case gold and then once once that gold paint is applied to the black it creates the track panel that we need with track arrangement which in this case is going to have a third line added to it and it's perfect for my block switches my rocker block switches and then I'll be able to put it right back into place. But something else I want to discuss on this diorama now this diorama used to be only about 36 inches high and 12 inches wide and over the years about 15 years ago I added about a foot to the outside edge and it made the layout raised up higher I raised it up the chest level and during that process of adding and converting this module it's old foam and new foam mixed together and if you look at the foam now it's starting to get soft you can press your finger into it and that's kind of the degradation of the foam or you know just foam shrinkage is another word that I like to use and so what I'm going to do is rather than apply the plywood fascia back up on the diorama I'm going to take my router and I've got a router preset up where I'm going to router out a groove about a little just just the right amount of depth so that I can install wood into the diorama into the routered out channel I'll glue the wood in using polyurethane glue that gorilla glue so the polyurethane foam glue will expand and cause these blocks of wood be permanently attached into the diorama and what that will allow me is to have a surface to then staple gun the front fascia onto the diorama so that I'm positive it won't come off in the future it's just something you've got to do when you're working with older foam this starts to deteriorate a little bit I don't trust glue on this foam at this point because the glue would simply pull off with foam so that's what I'm doing on this project I'm refreshing and making the module brand new adding some new electronics and it's going to come out I think pretty nice for this segment of what's neat I've got a kit that I just picked up and it's another kit a laser kit that I like to build this is BTS's Dotson's Farm Creamery and this is a pretty nice looking laser cut kit the parts all laid out here on the table surface you can see the windows the clapboard siding walls the roofing material it's also got stone work for the foundation and some castings some pretty nice detail casting parts that come with it so I've got the footprint laying on the layout now where I put some tracks around it and created what would look like some sort of a merchandise hardware building that that receives product from the rail so with that in mind I'm going to put this together and let's see what the finished product looks like and see how this kit turns out I test fit all the parts together dry fitting them on the Dotson's Farm Creamery and I really didn't at first glue these together I just wanted to do a good test fitting make sure everything fit together and it really did these parts were cut nice so then when I did start assembling it I used Elmer's wood glue to glue everything in the place until I knew about the full size of the structure would look I cut a piece of plexiglass because this is a long structure and I wanted to make sure that the whole thing had even support throughout so that I could actually build this as a one-piece building with this plexiglass base and all the docks will fit up to it right up to the track and as will the coal conveyor from bringing the coal down from under the tracks up into the boiler room so now as you can see I've got a complete unit when it all gets glued down it'll almost be like a diorama that can just get planted and laid right into the foam so this is the way I prefer to build this structure it'll add integrity and strength to it and it's going to help it look better I'm not going to model peeling paint on this building I'm just going to put a nice coat of this red primer on this building and paint white white windows and white trim I think that'll look appropriate as if this is a building that's taken care of this is a business that's succeeding it's not all peeling on this one I used a sharp hobby knife to cut all the trim parts from the laser cut stock everything was painted white before cutting pre-cutting all the parts really sped up the construction process I added the windows trim and corner trim to the entire structure gluing these parts with wood glue using the peel and stick window frames I stuck these to the clear acetate and cut them with a hobby knife creating a pile of finished windows ready to be installed into the building the laser cut windows fit perfectly into this building so I glued these in place using just a little wood glue very sparingly I used Walthers glue to attach the stone foundation to the bottom of the structure later I planned on going back and painting these random stones various colors this completed the core structure of the building where I could test fit the entire assembly on top of the plexiglass base so far it was very I was very pleased with progress and I felt a sense of accomplishment at this point watching this structure go together I chose to use master creations cedar shake shingles on the roof of the building using colored pencils and varying shades of brown I pre-colored the shingles the peel and stick sheets just to give a little bit of color and variation in the shingles as they are applied as you can see here simply peel off each row of shingles and apply them to the roof one row at a time keeping them straight and parallel I find it helpful to draw straight lines on the roof to aid in the placement of each row of shingles here you can see how the roof was shaping up the colored pencil effect really kind of gave the shingles an individual look turning my attention to the placement of the structure onto the layout I test fit the plexiglass base in place and I needed to cut the foam for this plexiglass to fit flush into the diorama so I had two choices on how to do this I could carve it with a hot wire foam cutting tool or I could use the router preset to the depth of the thickness of the plexiglass and cut this out I ended up using both tools to accomplish this process I use the router fit with a three-quarter inch bit to evenly cut out the foam to fit the plexiglass base into place onto the diorama this tool ensured that everything would be even the hot wire cutter was used to square out the corners so that the plexiglass would fit as I test fit the base into position everything had to be even and smooth I further even the base with a Stanley shore form planer just to make sure everything fit right I did this this is an important part to get right the base area was sealed with brown latex house paint to slow any foam shrinkage under the finished structure I used liquid nails adhesive to do to a glue down the two servicing tracks that would run along the building because the foam was already sealed with latex paint liquid nail does need into our base I painted the siding trackage with Rust-Oleum camouflage brown spray paint this covers the liquid nail glue and even tones the entire area weathering the rail and track I applied sifted backyard dirt to parts of the scene using a colander to evenly apply and spread the dirt as I sifted it out of the box this is an effective way to put down dirt I then spread on ballast and I used sifted Creek Rock for this ballast so carefully I spread and groomed the trackage with an artist paint brush alternating between a fan brush and a one-inch artist brush and sometimes I used my finger just to get the dirt from between the rails take your time doing this this is an important part for the performance of the locomotives and for the whole visual effect of the scene because once it's glued down whatever it is you've done on this part is permanent you'll notice that I'm only scenicking just the area around the structure as the rest of this diorama or module is really still in the planning stages I'm not sure what I'm going to do on the other areas so just finishing the area around this building I used a little woodland scenic scenic cement to glue all the dirt and ballast and ground foam everything into place and that pretty much finishes off the structure I've still got to add the chimney and just a few other ladders and details steps a few things like that but I'm really pleased with the way this came out we've now got another area to drop off and pick up free cars and have an interesting operating part of the layout so this BTS structure I'll tell you what it came out really nice I think we've got a winner for this segment of what's neat I want to discuss scales a little bit I've got a model here a precision scale k27 and it's built in one half inch scale by a brass manufacturer beautiful exquisite piece of work and when I was obtaining this piece and I was discussing this with a lot of my friends there was a lot of confusion as to what is one half inch scale and one half inch scale is a scale that museums like to use because it's a simple number you can just take a regular tape measure and the numbers are right there for you playing this day they like one half inch scale and one inch models and primarily that's how general model builders build when you're like us in your model railroaders you've got to contend with 120.3 scale you've got to contend with 129 scale 132nd scale all the various scales that went on g scale track and so I wanted to show just today the difference between the same k27 model in one half inch scale and 120.3 scale as you can see the Bachman locomotive is larger than a half inch scale but both models run on the same track so what the half inch manufacturer had to do was when they manufactured this model they built the wheels distance between for the rails at about three feet nine inches instead of what the model the real prototype is of three foot three foot narrow gauge so just something I wanted to kind of point out there's a lot of confusion and what better way to explain something than to visually see the difference between a half inch scale model and 120.3 for this what's neat tool tip of the month we're going to discuss sandblasters I've got an upcoming video on my website well we're going to go through the entire process of taking apart a brass locomotive and painting it but one of the important tools in the process of that is sandblasting the model getting the clear coat off I picked up a passenger car here on ebay a few months back and I need to paint this the correct color and so I want to strip this paint off and I don't want to use solvents or chemicals I want to use sandblasters because underneath this paint there's probably a clear coat and between the clear coat and the paint it actually builds up and you can see a difference in the detail on a brass model by sandblasting and cleaning it off you get a much better finish so I've got a north coast prototype sandblaster that I picked up probably 20 years ago you can go to harbour freight and get a sandblaster these days for under 200 bucks and it's a full-size metal cabinet which is really handy to have I took out the small sandblasting tool that actually came with this unit there was an eighth inch ceramic nozzle on the tip of the sandblaster and I took that out I put a full-blown sears craftsman handheld half inch nozzle into the unit I like to use 220 grit aluminum oxide in my unit because that doesn't pit the brass and it's really a fine medium also I've got a vacuum system connected to this unit and what that's really great for is keeping the dust out of your workspace because when you are sandblasting you create a lot of dust in the cabinet and a lot of guys like to hang a sock off the cabinet and just let air flow that way I prefer to have a vac system that essentially sucks the dust and the sand product that's in the air out and then contains it and keeps it so that I can reuse it this is simply a vac system designed for that purpose and it's got just a boatload of filters inside of it to keep everything clean there's hog hairs there's different layers of filtration as you go down into the unit so let me show you how this process works it's very easy you're gonna have a super difficult time actually seeing this inside the cabinet but let's just give it our best shot and this should only take about 30 seconds to a minute to complete this job okay here's our piece and now what I want to do is I want to take this piece I want to wash it in water so I'm going to rinse off the car and water to get the sand off and I can use a paint brush and actually brush the sand off the parts but there's one thing I really want to say and we've talked about this in our in one of our previous shows and that's the ultrasonic cleaner and that's where this tool really comes in handy because it doesn't matter how much you wash this and brush this you can get a toothbrush and get in there you still got sand particles in here and to illustrate that I'm going to drop this model into the bath of water turn on the sand blaster and watch the cloud that forms around it see all that dust it's coming out of the joints the solder areas the crevices all the areas that you think you've got clean this is the only tool that'll really get that off so I'm going to let this sit here you're actually not supposed to put your hands in there but I've never died from it I'm going to let this sit here for about 30 or 45 seconds all the sand is completely vibrated off of this now you saw the initial cloud and I'm going to rinse it off in water blow it off with an air gun and at that point this model would be ready to apply a good coat of scale coat paint to it and finish it so that's kind of what I want to talk about on this one's tool tips using the sand blaster to clean off the paint make the detail more evident and just make an overall better finished product the biggest locomotives they ever had made from a standard gauge locomotive put on narrow gauge trucks and wheels and this locomotive is trying to pull a set of four cars a sand wand train up a 4 grade and it's not able to handle it on level ground the locomotive has a pulling weight of 2.2 ounces but on the hill it's pulling weight is reduced down to just about an ounce and so what's happening is even though even though the cars are able to roll on level track because they only weigh 0.5 ounces when you pull them on level track on the hill the cars all of a sudden weigh 1.2 ounces to get them up the hill and with the locomotive only able to pull an ounce up the 4 grade we've got a problem usually the cause of this problem is the fact that a lot of the older brass models not only are they heavy but they come with sets of wheels that don't necessarily roll that great they've got a lot of friction the needle points aren't exactly perfect and so they don't roll really well for example here's an old brass brass tank car narrow gauge and it's on a four percent grade and in theory this thing should be roller coastering like a hot wheel and it's it's not going anywhere fast and again I think it's due to the wheel sets so what I'm going to do and my what I'm suggesting to do and what I'm going to try to do and we'll do it to this entire train here and see if it is able to pull is I'm going to replace the the trucks with aftermarket trucks and in this case I'm going to use some Blackstone passenger car coach trucks on all four of these cars and I've got some Blackstone freight truck cars that I'll put on this tank car and see if we can improve the performance of that now how does this relate to HO scale this is narrow gauge HON3 in HO scale I was able to take a 62 car reefer train that had the old factory trucks on it that came with it and this was a plastic model that I bought all about 10 years ago and I was able to take it it totally weighed it had a weight of 4.4 ounces of freight cars and that's pretty heavy one you're pulling a train that's actually a lot of weight for a train my heaviest train down here is my 1950s freight and it's it weighs in just about 5.5 ounces of pull now why is that important your average four truck atherin locomotive with sound in it has got a pulling power of about four ounces so to pull my old 50s train here I would require two to three locomotives minimum just to be able to pull it at three locomotives starting up they're spinning their wheels a Bachman northern for example has got pulling power of about five ounces and that that really spins its wheels when you're starting up the reefer train but what I did on the reefer train was I took Kato ASF American Steel and Foundry A3 trucks and I replaced those Kato wheels onto those reefers and I was able to reduce the reefer train down to a complete weight pull of drag of 2.2 ounces which was more than 50 percent reduction in weight for the 62 cars and at that point actually when you roll that train those wheels that have got such great bearings in them that they will continue to roll there they're very free rolling trucks on my more modern equipment I like to use these Kato S2 roller bearing trucks so that you can see the little bearing caps spin and they also reduce the weight of freight car you know drag after and make some really nice trucks too that have got some good rolling their bearing caps also are additions you pop on and they look really neat on the head on I think those are 100 ton trucks those are pretty nice but let's replace the trucks on this train and let's let's see if in fact we will be able to pull this train up a four percent grade and simply by taking off the old brass trucks off of these passenger cars and replacing them with the blackstone trucks I've reduced the effort that the locomotive needs to pull this train up the hill before going up the four percent grade these cars weighed in at 1.1 ounces going up the hill and now pulling this train and measuring how much these cars weigh on the four percent grade I've reduced the wheel drag to 0.7 of an ounce so the locomotive now at 1.2 ounces of pull power up the four percent grade has no problem at all pulling these cars with the upgraded wheel sets so I can in fact get the entire train now up the four percent grade to the upper level where there's a town let me discuss with you how it is I arrive and I'm able to quantify the weight of a train I picked up one of these small micro mark meters more or less like a fishing scale except for this one is very very sensitive to ounces and I put a katie coupler on the end where the fish hook would go for weighing your fish and I'm able to take this katie coupler and simply connect it to the front of the locomotives and then by doing so I'm able to quantify two ways the dead pull weight of how much the train would weigh and in this case I'm looking at right at 15 ounces so I'm looking at a pound of drag or the other thing is to actually run the locomotives forward as you are holding it steady and it will stop and give you a reading and and the nice thing about this tool actually is it's sensitive enough it's got a built-in there's computer inside this thing and it's able to sense when the load is at its equal point so that it'll actually stop and freeze and give you the numbers so that you can read it out later as you pick it up from the track and are able to view it so that's kind of a neat feature but that's the way I was able to quantify and understand how heavy trains were and the weight of the locomotives pulling and the freight car pulling and what what it was we were actually dealing with weight-wise one of the most interesting things was when I took a set of locomotives and I balanced them out where they were absolutely equal to the freight cars that were pulling them and I found out that even though my entire layout the standard gauge part of it is built on a level track I've actually got some grades in here that I didn't know we're actually in here and it was the differentiation of the equal point of that train pulling and listening to the wheels as you started to spin that allowed me to understand something that I otherwise didn't know but it's it's just a way to improve the quality and the rolling of your wheels your trains make everything work better on the layout is to check out the aftermarket wheel sets that'll improve the performance of your trains there's always an advantage to go into a hobby shop and that is whenever you need creek rock it's always there for you I come down to microengineering today to get some creek rock out of the creek and I don't think that's going to happen this afternoon looks like it's going to be a trip to the hobby shop today