 Oh, hi, I'm John Abadicola from TSG Multimedia and the November What's Neat starts right now. The What's Neat show is sponsored by Caboose, sharing our passion for trains since 1938. This is What's Neat for November 2018. I'm your host Ken Patterson and this month we've got a really good show. First of all, Matt Herman from ESU Loak Sound stops by and shares with us this wonderful DCC system, throttle system and a whole complete package for running trains on your layout. We also look at Kutsu, that's right. Campbell Rice stops by and shares with us one of his scenery techniques. He doesn't pull a tree out of a hat this time, but he does show us a really cool way to model this vine that grows all over the south. And in fact, it grows in my backyard too. The last thing that we've got on the show is we've got two great Lego layouts. These are wonderful layouts that I saw in Kansas City. We had one last month in October but there was two more great layouts there that I really thought deserve coverage on the show. Also, I want to tell you that Jeff Parker stopped by and he spent three days with me here in the studio building this beautiful 200-foot long Central Valley bridge in HO scale. It's a real treat to watch his methodical construction techniques and a lot of tricks that he shows us along the way. Now be sure that if you stop by in Colorado at Caboose in Lakewood, Colorado, my favorite train store out there, tell them you've seen them on the What's Neat show and thank them very much for sponsoring our show where we get our hands dirty and learn all the model railroad techniques. And of course, all the products that you do see on this show are available online at mycaboose.com. Now, one more thing I want to talk about is the What's Neat this week podcast. This thing's gotten legs. We've been producing it now for more than a year. We've got a lot of great guests on the show. Every week we cover what's going on around here, various jobs, various new products that I see. Plus we've also got a lot of really neat interviews with great industry leaders in our hobby. So be sure to check out the What's Neat this week podcast. It's on Ken Patterson's YouTube channel or you can just simply find it by searching What's Neat this week on YouTube. So with that, let's continue on with the rest of this month's November 2018 What's Neat. On this week's What's Neat, we're going to talk about a weed that grows in the south and it's the legal kind. It is Kudzu. For those of you that do not know what Kudzu is, I have a few pictures here. These are some shots that I made in Pelham, Alabama, but it is a very aggressive weed and vine that grows and covers everything. In fact, I have actually seen it cover houses before if you let it go. And I can tell you from a firefighter standpoint, if it ever catches on fire it's very difficult to put out, but it is not really modeled that often. And I kind of figured out a way to model it that looks fairly realistic. So what I do is on my scenery, this is a little diorama I set up. This is the part where I have the Kudzu and then I was going to kind of do a little demonstration of how it's made here. But you want it to look clumpy and uneven because that is how it grows. If you ever notice what happens is when it covers everything it actually washes the soil out from beneath and causes an erosion problem. So what I do is I take the poly fiber and this happens to be some I got from Woodland Scenic. It has a good color, but there's a lot of people that a lot of companies out there that make it. So what I'm going to do is I'm going to kind of pull it out fairly thin like in this fashion here. And then basically I'm going to apply it over the top of my scenery here. And my scenery here that I currently use is quilt batting that is latex painted. And it kind of gives it a rough look. And I took this from the Colorado Joint Line. Kevin does several YouTube videos there. So I have to give him credit on that. That's not my coming up with there. But you pull it out just like this. And this has actually been some recycled. And you just kind of place it on there and make sure you get it. You know it doesn't have to be perfect. It can be however you want it. And just kind of thin it out across here. And we'll do one more for time's sake here. We just kind of lay it out here. This right here. And if you want you can take some of these little woodland scenics or whatever shrubs and put in it just like that. All right. So that's kind of what we come up with. You can do it from trees. If you want to make it hanging like off of a bridge or a pole, you can actually get the poly fibers and pull it thin like this. And spray it with some spray glue. And then we'll sprinkle the leaves over it. And then you can actually hang it. So what I like to use is a couple different products. I use the knock. I use a small leaf. And once I get that down, I'll give it a little squirt with some of the woodland scenics spray. And kind of get it good and wet. And I'll come back with the smaller and just kind of cover the area real good with that. And this, this smaller kind of gives it a, you know, dimensional look. It's all over real good. And then I'll come back with some more knock leaves. These are bigger. And I'll sprinkle it, sprinkle them right over the top of it. So you have the look of the kudzu leaf. So that's, that's kind of what we end up with. And that concludes this session of Westy. So now Legos seem to be a very, very big business in the train business. And I'm not really realizing it until this year. And I want to expose what I've seen. There are two more layouts at this show brought on by two other groups of folks that just blow me away. So guys, I want to thank you very much, Richard, for the ride back to my hotel yesterday. No problem. I met Richard yesterday, but Richard's part of this Lego layout and it's clubs called the what? Where our club, Arkansas Lego users group. Okay, now you've got a layout that's down low so the kids can see it. Absolutely. But absolutely tricked out with buildings and lights. Absolutely. Tell me about some of the stuff. Tell me about your passion for this layout. So we enjoy, definitely enjoy building out of Lego. We, we look at it the same way that the traditional model railroaders do, except we use a different medium. We don't use plastic and wood. We use plastic bricks, not sheet styrene. Right. How long have you been doing this? I've been building Lego since about 2012. After I came out of what we as Lego fans called the Dark Ages. Oh boy, I bet that's a whole nother show. Yes. Yes, it is. Now we're also standing behind me. There's another layout that's got taller buildings on it. And that's these guys over here. Tell me guys. Your names are? I'm Sean Lazarus. Sean Lazarus. Yes. And I'm Sean Kelly. Sean Kelly. So we've got Sean and Sean with this beautiful city layout that's a little bit higher. It's not so much for the kids with the guardrails and everything. Tell me about this gorgeous piece. So this is really our club's kundigraw. Like it's our big biggest layout we have ever done. And just like Richard said, we are going for that scale model type layout but with Lego rather than traditional building materials. So that is our artistic medium as it were. Right. And we just want to make cool things that everyone enjoys. Kids, adults, we want to wow the audience. Now while it's a kid's hobby, you guys are adults. And this comes with an adult price. Like I always heard the buildings and average tall buildings about $6, $7, $500 in parts. And you guys don't glue them together because you want to be able to take them apart when you're bored with them and build something else. Correct. So with that price comes the opportunity to do that exactly as if you have a building and you don't like it the way it is, reconfigure it, rebuild it, put it in extra levels. You can't really do that with a lot of scale model kits. You can kit bash all you want but you can't saw and cut and glue to make. Now I want to go to Sean on the left and Sean you said you pretty much orchestrated making sure this thing got running for the show and setting it up. Tell me what that entailed. Well I had to contact a lot of the different leaders from the groups and see if they were interested to travel out. I contacted a lot more groups. So it was a lot of emailing, a lot of getting phone numbers, communicating, see if they'd be willing to come out. As you know Pennsylvania came out, Texas came out, Northern Illinois came out, Arkansas, Oklahoma. We had somebody from Iowa down here, Michigan's down here, somebody flew in from California. So it was really a lot. So to bring into these different groups and have them do a collaborative build is something a first time for some of them. So getting to learn different styles of building because as you know from talking from different people there are many different styles within it. So there's basic systems like we have some different techniques, different within the scale of the tracks. So there's electric, there's battery powered. So you have that too and you definitely see that in the different layouts, the different styles of building. Now let me ask you one more question. I look at all these beautiful trees in a scene where you've got, is it against the rules to use sagebrush and ground foam trees on a layout like this? I wouldn't, it's really up to the builder. I've seen mixed media stuff where people do do things like that. But I think for the most part Lego builders try to stick within the medium as much as possible. That's awesome. This has got to be as big as n scale. This has got to be as big as HL because it's the toy business. I'm amazed at this. You've opened our eyes to something new on What's Neat that I didn't know was out there. Thank you guys so much all of you for sharing this gorgeous work on What's Neat. For this segment of What's Neat I've got Matt Herman, our favorite. We've had him on the show before. Matt from ESULoak Sound and today you've got something really cool. It looks like a DCC cab control system and I've seen a neat throttle down here too, Matt. There is. Welcome to What's Neat and tell me about this really cool thing that we got. This is our new cab control ESU DCC system as you mentioned. This system itself is basically the equivalent of the other DCC systems that are on the market, but it's about 15 years ahead of them. So this is a Wi-Fi system. You can have the ability to run 16,000 locomotives with this system. You can put a picture on the throttle so you know what it is you're running. It comes with stuff like Railcom, which all ESU decoders have had since about, oh I don't know, 2010. Railcom and Railcom Plus. So one of the cool things about Railcom is I can put an engine on the track, not put anything else into the throttle and Railcom will actually display right on the throttle. It'll pull all of the information from that engine into the system, including all of the icons for the function buttons. So when you come down and you grab an engine off your shelf with all those hundreds of engines over there. Number three. Yeah and you want to know what function button is the coupler clank on number three. You can put it on there and it'll actually show you an icon right on the screen. And every single function button is momentary or not, which is really cool because now rather than only having the horn on F2, you can put it anywhere you want and maybe it's not comfortable for you on F2. Say you have a really cool feature on function 27. Well, how do you get to function 27 on digital tracks? Oh, don't make me do that. I know how to do it but I want to do it. And as I'm not picking on digital tracks, it's the analog type throttles where you don't have that many function buttons. And this is like the throttle. So this is the mobile control to throttle. Yep. So and because it is like a cell phone, if you want to get to higher function buttons, all you got to do is scroll. Does this look different? Yeah, I've got things turned off a little bit sound wise, but it is motion. So you've got it. And this will work with digital tracks and both NCE. Well, you know, and there's different ways to work with that. You're getting a little bit ahead. Okay, let's back up a second. Okay, this is our own system. So this you don't need anything else. Right. So this is my DCC system right here. Yep. And that's a seven amp power supply. We've got that comes with the mobile control to and of course, like I said, it can do all the things that we've discussed already. And it's a Wi-Fi system. So now if you grab a phone, you can connect directly to it. You don't need anything else in between. So if you want to add another throttle, everybody carries throttles with them. It's usually in their pocket and they make calls with it. So you can connect directly to there. Now connections here. USB, phone connections, LAN connections, I see them all right there. Well, the nice thing about the USB and all of that is that this is also fully updateable. As we come out with new features like firmware updates, or we added programming on the main not too long ago, it was something that didn't come with the system at first, but we knew that it was needed. So we did a firmware update. You simply plug this into your computer and for free, now you've got those features. So that's the DCC system. Again, that comes with the big power supply, the computer that runs it, which we call the integrated control unit. I call it the ICU. And then it comes with a mobile control to throttle. And how many of these, how many of those can I run on this? We've not hit the limit yet. We've tested it with 32 and run five or three easily. After 32, we didn't want to get any more out of the box. All right. Price point. 499 list. And then how much is the throttle if I want five? The throttle is just under 300 a piece. And it's pretty simple. You're saying simple, simple. Yes, that's the idea. I mean, you're already using Android or iPhones. This is an Android device. So it's the same principle as what you're using now. So then this, the mobile control through, is available separately. Or say you've bought this at home and you want to go to the club that's running Digitracks. Or you want to go to the club that's running NCE or any other system. This throttle now, being that it is Android, all you have to do is download engine driver app or another train control app that you can run things with on your cell phone. And essentially, if you can use your cell phone now to run trains, all you got to do is it's the same principle and you download it and run with this. Except now you've got a throttle knob and you've got side buttons that are programmable so that you can actually have a tactile feel. And instead of constantly be looking at your phone to figure out how to run your train, you can actually look at the train and enjoy running it and seeing it go through the scenery and switch cars and do everything you want with your hand behind your back. You don't have to see. So what we have here today is engine driver downloaded onto the system. And we've got Ken's Digitrack system hooked back and revived. It is. And he's got a LNAT adapter or a, I'm sorry, LNY adapter. Daniel's not here to help us with that. That's right. So and it would work with anything. So if you've got NCE and you're using your phone now to run NCE through Jamerai, you could use the same thing. So you just need a Wi-Fi signal out there that this can talk to. We download engine driver and it's on the app right now. We've worked closely with engine driver to update their software or they've worked, you know, they've worked with us. It's been mutual. And they have adapted it so that the throttle knob and the side buttons are all built into engine driver now and controlled by it. So, you know, now that that's all done, simply find what signal your Wi-Fi system is putting out through, again, Digitrack, NCE, whatever. And it will almost automatically connect. You now just choose the engine number, which we already have in there, 1325. And I've programmed some of these side buttons through engine driver. So the top left button is now the bell. And we're getting a little bit of bell. I was going to say, man, I'm from Missouri, show me. F2 is your horn. I programmed that to this button right here, the bottom right button. And we've got drive hold, which is one of our full throttle features. We've got that programmed to the top button up here. So once I turn the prime over on, we'll run this off the screen. How about that? Make or go, baby. Look at that. Just like that. I hit my drive hold button and now I'm locking the motor. Make the horn go. What button do you hit for the horn? Oh, it's on the side. Oh, you've got some buttons assigned. You have four buttons that you can assign. Correct. Okay. Very nice. Now, if we want to hook this up to Digitrax, we run it through the LNY system, like we described. If we want to hook it up to the NCE system I've got down here, we run it through the laptop through Decoder Pro, and we're using the Wi-Fi. Is it the Wi-Fi that we're using? Yes. Your laptop then is putting out Wi-Fi and you're just connecting to that. So that way, anything that, again, if you can use your cell phone now, so if you've got the devices to be able to use your cell phone, you use those same devices with this system. Oh, it sure looks cool, Matt. I really appreciate, I guess, the fact that you're sharing this with us. I just appreciate being here, Ken. We're here at the St. Louis RPM Meet this weekend, which has been just an awesome show so far. Yes. Tons of people. If you have not come out to the show, you need to come to the show. They've come from Australia, New Zealand, amazing, and they heard about it on what's neat. I've got to test them out. Yes, I heard it. Are we done? Do you want to close this out or do you want to go? What else have we not discussed on this system? Because so far it looks interesting, but I'm going to have to watch this video over again to understand what you're saying. That's right. Well, and not only did we have your great videos that are out there, realizing that this is kind of some new technology and that, we've also done some ESU videos that are available on our website. Okay. So, not only, you know, we're men. We don't always just read and look at pictures in the manual. We're sometimes having a video to kind of follow along. We can learn from that. Sure. What website do we go for? This is www.loksound.com. Right at the top of the page, there's a little icon called videos. Okay. Just go there and look under cab control and mobile control too. I can't wait to mess with this tonight and see what it feels like for a few minutes. It will have a lot of fun with I guarantee it. Matt, thank you for sharing this with us on What Sneak. Thank you. For this segment of What Sneak, I'm with Jeff Parker from Central Valley and today we're going to build a beautiful bridge. This is a Pony Parker Trust Bridge. What do you call this, Jeff? Well, no, this is a three trust bridge. A pony trust has sides and the train is above it. We're going to do this 200 foot Parker Trust. It's got a classic arch on the top and it's going to be constructed as bought out of the package. So great. So we're going to cover some mostly tips on how to build this. I'm going to do a quick run through on tips and tricks in this video and we're going to try to rough this thing out. Great. So let's see what happens next on this bridge building segment for What Sneak. Okay. Here, Ken has provided me with a really nice workspace to work on a couple of bridges or even you could work on three bridges here, I would think. And we're going to go through. We have the parts kind of started and process. I've been clipping parts and putting the parts on the bends as I clipped them off. And then we're going to rock and roll here. The workspace is such a nice big workspace that we're able to have room on both sides of the table and do work. Some of the longest tasks and the most tedious efforts start here with the ties. I got my ties all broken out of the sprues and I've cut the deck section apart. We're going to be following the direction book fairly accurately here. We're going to go step by step through the instruction book. The instruction book first pages have a diagrams of each part that comes in the kit. Each one's numbered and outlined in numbers during the instructions as well. So we're going to follow that even though we won't open this book very often, we're going to follow what it says. But one of the first things we do is we make sure and we inspect that we have the correct parts, the correct number of parts, how many needed. There's a lot of spare gussets. You have enough gussets to do more than needed. So we're ready to go. Okay, right now I'm removing the very remains of the gates on the parts here. I go through all of the sets, scratching them on the sandpaper and stacking them in a box. Here we are. We're wire brushing off the remains of the debris left that we had from sanding the ends of these ties. And then are you going to paint these with? Then I have camouflage brown that I believe it's a Restolium. I believe actually I normally use a Krylon brand, but Restolium Krylon it doesn't matter. One of the first tricks to building this bridge is to take a number 16, I should say one-sixteenth of an inch, a one-sixteenth of an inch drill in your pin vice. Get all those opened up really easy. Make sure there's no flash in the holes. You can see that I hope. So now we're going to put together the pre-assemblies for the crossbears and splice plates. They have a splice strap that I call on the instructions, a strap that goes on the bottom. And we want to be careful that these members, the splice joiners, these splice joiners right here, we want to make sure that these are loose. We don't want glue to trap these because during the squaring of the deck assembly, we want to make sure these are free to move. And then when it's all assembled, we glue everything. Okay here we are assembling the crossbears to the stringers. And we have the shims in place, we have weights in place, and we're using the diagram with the straightedge aligned to a straight line on the diagram. Nothing is secure, nothing is clamped down, it's all free-floating right now. And so as I build this structure, I want to these vertical lines to be used as a square so I can just eyeball it like I'm shooting pool and make sure everything stays square as you do one section at a time with the weight. If you don't put a weight on, your structure is going to have a wall. I'm going to glue that together, let it set up for a few seconds, put some weight on my hand here. I'm going to go over to the other side which falls together in this case. The main reason it falls together, if you remember, is because I went ahead and drilled this. Okay here we are, the deck is all glued together. We have lined it up to the diagram. You're paying attention when you put the bridge together using these diagram, these vertical CC parts of the diagram. You can line everything up without even really needing a square, you just need to have two straight edges. Single track 200 foot parker deck. We're going to put some weights on it and let it rest for a while while we started applying rail to the ties. So I'm applying some paint here for contrast, a little bit of rust. No, it goes a long way. What are you painting? I'm doing the type plates for the bridge kit. I have a deburred these steel straps and I'm going to, this is going to be the spine of our bridge. It goes through the deck assembly and we thread it through kind of like needle and thread and I put two through at once and we have these little intermediate braces that are thin on the top and thick on the bottom so you put them on with the thin side up. I've got a couple of them in place here. I'm going to go ahead and start engaging the steel strap to the bridge. We'll have to slide it down. I do not glue these in because they move freer and allow it faster to put the steel straps through. Now we're starting on lacing that goes on the bottom of the bridge. It's outlined on page seven of the deck assembly and we're going to do this just as it's outlined in the instructions. We're going to put all these on as a W shape and then methodically glue these on. I'm going to put a spot of glue under it. Try not to mess it up. The most important thing is to eyeball everything here to line up to a center line of the parts. So I hand mixed flat brown testers paint with flat yellow testers paint about 85 percent brown to 15 percent yellow and you sprayed what the guard rails and the main rails and that's code 70 and code 83 code 70 micro engineering and code 83 micro engineering. You're taking a lot of time to just make your rail a model. Well yes that's important to me. It's all about the track. The rail looks great. All your deck that you painted last night is dry and it's got beautiful color and I love your rail color. Did you say you mixed your paint for that? Yes I did. Just kind of a couple of browns. You just is this just something you do by eyesight? Yes I do. Yeah it's all artistic. It's 100 artistic. Well you're good at your trade. I can't wait to see how this bridge comes out. Let's keep going. All right the deep one goes on top here and it just self locates it and then you just dab it with some glue. I have trimmed the rail off here so that it's about three and a half inches off the end of the ties. Now with these ties I have with these bridges there's a little trick to making the spacing making the spacing work out really well and that's to put these shim pieces once we're done building the deck we don't need them as much anymore so we can cut them down into smaller pieces and I'll put them in between the timbers and then I'll push these together wear them out making sure they both stay in place there. And those dividers go between the plastic bridge sections and what are those doing? Well they're just spacing it out so when you glue it to the deck it's all centered up and it's even like consistently even it takes out the accumulative error and dimensioning. That's a good idea. 1902 ties they're all good they all have a spacing that's been made up for because hindsight's always 2020 right? So I'm just going to start spiking basically in the middle of the bridge I have a 130 second diameter nail set and it's going to be the best one to use on this and many of our other tie products that will be coming out and we just kind of roll them and smear them into place now that I have a couple started I'll take this block slip it in here and this really saves on the fingers just having a block here you can use this block instead of your fingers and roll these spikes over and have them seed in really nice pressing on the block and then rolling this bike in. So all those little spikes you're going to roll around the top of the rail just like the prototype and it's going to hold it in place is it? Correct exactly. Ken we're going to cut these girders out we're going to start making box girders I also want to review the fact that we've now set up the superstructure diagram down here on our work table and we have a straight edge we have shims under our straight edge to catch the lip of the girders as we're lining them up and getting them prepped for assembly so you want to make sure you scrape off the flash from the edges of these girders we're going to put together a pair of bb girders these are the ones with the laces and blow everything out of the way we place this guy up here place this guy right up against it and then I take a straight edge or a ruler and in this case I have Ken Sandy track gauge I'll just align the Vs make all that makes all the Xs line up then once all that's aligned we get our glue going and I just put three spots of glue across the girder let that dry for a second then I just put it aside and then come back to it and finish tacking them up later I do those as a production line we get them all down there's 16 of each and uh there's 16 out around the top so you're going to be gluing together 32 girders remember do your solid girders first because then when you run out of those you just start making the ones that you can see through and then you haven't messed anything up we need to go over a quick reference on how these parts go if you're really critical about how the bridge looks underneath you can line the Xs of your girder up to these and cut them so that they're coincidental with the center lines of the bridge so if I take this guy and line it up like this this is why these diagrams have markers on them you can cut this piece off the bottom of the diagram and we can set that in there and line it up with the Xs so if I line it up with the Xs you see here where I can go with it I can cut that off and so we end up with a piece that looks like this piece right here and it's already been lined up and cut off the top has been filed away to fit the gusset that you see right here this gusset right here so we're going to start lining these guys up in order with the gapped areas in line with the vertical girders and start putting gussets on the side to represent something that looks a lot like this piece right here and it has been cleared out for the verticals cleared out for the diagonals cleared out for diagonals cleared out for diagonals so we're just going to build something that looks just like that after a full day yesterday of cutting and cutting and making things fit we've been working on these cut pieces around the top with the ab girders the a side facing out we've matched all our cuts on all of our parts we've made everything fit we've made clearances for assembly everything fits everything's aligned we need to pick which side we want to have on the outside on these and among all of the work we're doing we're trying to rush and get this thing done because today's the last day we're gluing these diagonal braces together to prepare them for painting I've already painted the deck of the bridge this morning while Ken was sleeping so the deck is all painted ready to have the ties mounted on it and hopefully before long today we'll be assembling these into the last segment of the bridge so watching and joy as we get this thing thrown together as fast as possible okay so I'm jumping in here because I see you've got all your little parts laid out on your diagram again these paper diagrams are really important to use aren't they yes they are we want to make everything match to the diagram it's really that easy yesterday I spent a few hours on the band saw cutting girders and then I was fine finishing them and making all these ab girders the cc girders that go vertically on the bridge making them all fit some of them I had to taper and good for me a lot of them I didn't have to okay so now that's one side of the bridge and earlier while you said as I was snapping you built the other side you've got it laid here on the table kind of just laid out a little bit with the uprights right it's all finished the back built the bottom trust everything just all the girders are kind of lined up and glued together right and that draws me back to another point as well and that that point is the fact that I'm using two straight edges here I make sure that's visible here too we have I have two straight edges set up to keep everything square to keep everything square so that I can fill these bridges identical to each other you've actually taped those straight edges down yeah this straight edge is taped down these are clamped down here I'm rigid now that's a good workspace yeah it's a very important space so before I start gluing I'm going to move all my small parts out of the way and sweep all the debris out of the way I've been cutting and trimming which brings me to something else it's right underneath Ken's left Ken's right elbow it's the top of that truss and if you'd like you were just talking about this that you said you had painted this morning when I was sleeping uh yes so this is the what you this is what we built yesterday yeah actually starting almost a day and a half ago started that actually we finished and then this is your top deck that we painted yesterday you painted the rails independently you painted everything yeah we finished this on sunday I'm very surprised that I could pick this large piece up and it's not bending it's very strong material the way you've got it glued together I've also noticed that about these braces because you've actually shipped some braces that way right actually that's not even glued together that's all spiked that's all the bend over spikes they hold very well you don't have to work so this is bent over spikes holding the rail on the deck you just don't want to drop it or bang it on the on the rails even if you didn't build this bridge just the way you're building I could think of so many kit bash potentials with just your parts that you guys make all these different you know what I mean you've got something else started here another bridge not the same one we're building but look how well the parts hold together yeah and that's been all over the place that's been around my shop since january I can't wait to see what comes next I'm going to stay on it with you and it looks like just glue glue glue right now so what are you doing now Jeff I'm getting rid of all the shiny glue spots so when we paint this guy in a few minutes it'll be all nice and smooth it looks like you've got your other one here roughed out on top of your I'm waiting for glue to dry and it'll be as soon as the glue is dry I'm going to be wire brushing that one too as you can see we're moving right along here starting to look like a bridge all of a sudden so the next task on this entire project is to start getting these all these upright parts prepared for assembly and we have these small little gussets here we're going to glue these guys on but first we need to remove all the rivets and we're going to remove them now before we install these beautiful parts which I'm going to display here on the bridge so I'm going to get all the rivets scraped away and we're going to prepare for for putting all these parts in place okay so now we're going to glue these sway braces in place and I'm going to start in the center with this guy excuse my reach I'm going to get a lot of glue on my brush a healthy helping of glue and I'm going to pull this up to the top with my thumb make sure it's topped out hold it up at the top now you don't want to squeeze these together real hard it'll break that in two looks like you got those cross braces in in the past half an hour and now what are you doing on the very top ridge of the bridge so now I'm putting the cover the cover gussets that to cover up any misalignments in your saw cuts and these also hold your cross braces on the top and I place them in like that the cool thing about these other than earlier bridges was uh these have little ribs on them to help locate them now we're starting on these top pieces kin we're getting down to the final finishing touches for the whole bridge and we have these these ones with the windows in them and I like to place them all with a w type of format which is prototypically correct so that the load is equally distributed through all the weak spots of this design of the original prototype so this one is longest this one is about an eighth inch shorter and then these here to get these into center sections the two center sections on these I just made it simple for myself I just said well the easiest way to make it so that everybody can do it and you don't have to be a genius is that you just cut these off flush with the end of the detail part of it just cut the entire tongue off like so and then that will fit right inside there okay I'm putting in the very last upper lace piece and they're kind of tricky to do and you would be amazed when you see how much you have to bend these guys so straighten her out here bend it into place so as soon as you're done gluing that into place you're going to show us how we do the sides next right we put the diagonal braces in there so we're going to go ahead and install this guy kind of flex them in there he's kind of floppy so what I want to do is grab this gusset plate again in a hand file slot that I did by hand as I drop now I have glue on my brush I'm going to dob my brush so I don't over flood the area I'm going to scoot this guy up here with my knife relieve any stress on anything here as long as hold it in place put some glue in there hopefully hasn't evaporated so you put on the cross braces and then we do the deck and would you say we're it we're almost finished I mean you can paint this any color you want and we'll show various colors here that we've got on hand right and we have double tracks yeah you see there's one right there next to you double track there that we used earlier so cool man we'll get the rest of those side braces on there the diagonals and then we'll come back for the uh what is it the uh track work jeff you and I are talking and one thing we should talk about before we do the road bit on the bottom is talk about the fact that the center span of the bridge has got two of those braces and they go in an x pattern you want to show us how you thread it through that yes I just slide one through the other and I like to find make sure that the gates were facing down so that where it was cut from the sprues so it all looks really ugly down here right now and then we have these cover plates as we're demonstrating before that we kind of prop it up on covers up the cuts right so you cover it up so jeff you've been working on this project on and off here solid for three days and it looks like you're coming to the end of this bridge and are about to put the road bed on and am I am I guessing this right yes that is correct so we're going to take this off for the very first time after being constructed so that top comes right off the bottom there we go and I for the first time ever I glued this diagonals on so they don't fall out what do you know that's pretty strong that little piece we'll set him down over here boy the mess the messes we make in our lives there's a couple bridges getting built at the same time here major play zone going on here in my opinion this looks like fun so set this kind of secure place so it doesn't get damaged hopefully we have this track section that might look a little orange to me you could darken the rest up with some brown or black like a wash so you center your ties up there's these little nibs on here like we mentioned earlier hold it in the center I'm going to slide it off the end of the table over here put this on here and why are you putting a piece of wood on top of that bridge well I'm going to clamp this together oh this is going to wait it down evenly yeah and the point of doing this is for what is to hold it all together so you can glue we're going to I'm going to rearrange these clamps and we're going to be able to glue this thing together so when it's all clamped in place you're just going to touch it with glue and let the capillary action of the glue weld it together correct okay I'm with you now so we fumbled around with this thing these clamps were so heavy they were twisting the deck is rather scary I advise using some lighter clamps some smaller clamps but we were successful not to break everything and we were going to just glue it with using our liquid glue and the capillary action just going to start spreading it in on the ties I'm going to go section by section between where I can reach and the claps are holding everything in place for the glue to secure and let it sit so Jeff it looks like you've got this thing built you've got the base you've got the superstructure you're going to put this together for us I guess I'll put this together these are a little more tricky than the double tracks but let me just pull that guy around and it just snaps into place it's almost like you just absolutely designed it to do that so now you've you've built this bridge I want to say in a working man's time you spent about I want to say you've been here for three days when did you get here yeah three days okay took us all in three days and there was there's a lot of work you except for you did it really really clean I mean you didn't make any sloppy mask everything's cut precise you even took wire brush and took the glue off of the off of the plastic now this bridge isn't painted you've got some examples of painted bridges here and what is this we got one in silver right here yes this is uh one Tim Tim runnels built this bridge and then the next one next to it is the same thing but weathered right yeah well it's actually a different mix of colors I always mix my own I was trying to come up with a unique color for photographing it so I came up with this silver mix now next to it it looks like you've got a double track bridge and this is the same type of bridge yeah this is the I would say the grandfather of this one so okay and then the last two bridges are what you just built for us in the last couple of days in painted black I think one of them you've got three rail track on yeah that narrow gauge do gauge okay and you don't have the cross braces in this bridge it looks different that way but it looks good well well they were taken out because of the shipping problems we have one here that's glued in so then you've got another one here now I also see one more thing before we go as I see some end scale bridges sitting up here same type or what is this bridge here that looks different yes it's a crap bridge it's a crap crap and I actually have an HO scale double track crap here is that the bridge that I had on my layout at one time that 150 foot bridge right there except for this is an end scale of course correct so this is the one that I put in the cover of model railroad craftsman in a snow shot one time is that right right okay well look at that poop on the screen and you get to see it and then what have we got here is this an end scale variation of what you just built for us an HO this is a kit batch one done by a gentleman by the name of Dave align this is kit bashed right he took three of these and built this one that's really just three to make one there's inspiration for the end scale guys that want to take and just build something well jeff parker you've built a beautiful bridge for us on this segment of what's neat and you've shown us a whole array of different color tones that you can put on the structure I really appreciate you doing this is there anything else you want to add on this segment of what's neat yeah it was a lot of work and I had a lot of fun doing it and so that's what's neat this week everybody jeff parker thank you very much all of the model railroad products seen in this episode of what's neat are available through caboose in lakewood colorado or order online at my caboose.com