 The What's Neat Show is sponsored by Lombard Hobbies, your value hobby shop for over 40 years of modelers helping modelers. Big inventory, value pricing, fast shipping and great service. And by Broadway Limited Imports, the cutting edge leader in model trains. Check out their website at Broadway-Limited.com. And by Bachman Trains, now that's the way to run a railroad. Check out their website at BachmanTrains.com. And thank you for helping us support the best hobby in the world. This is What's Neat for July 2023. I'm your host Ken Patterson. And this month we really do have a good show in that we do part two in that layout building series. I'm building that beautiful layout that would fit into any man cave. This is a great four part series that we're going to run through the year. Also this month we do something special. We install sound in this brand new SD40 from Broadway Limited. This is their stealth series of locomotives. And we put a tsunami economy decoder in it along with a Broadway Limited speaker. It's really neat how the project turned out. Also Tyler Haney from Bachman Industries in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania stops by and shares with us a lot of the new products that are just coming out from Bachman this month, which is really cool. And as you know, Lombard Hobbies help support this show. And they have sent me and announced some amazing containers. We've shown containers like this on the podcast once, but up next we have some of these. These are exclusive to Lombard Hobbies. They're made by Aurora Models. Specifically for our friends Andrew and Jeff at Lombard Hobbies. Aurora Miniatures of North America was founded in 2020. And in response to the rapidly growing monorail hobby market in Canada and the United States, Aurora is heading up, headed up by Ben Wang, an enthusiast, a hobbyist like us, just like you and me, that's committed to bringing you and I the most quality products, unparalleled accuracy, and exquisite details. I've seen their locomotives. Those are absolutely beautiful. Lombard Hobbies is the largest distributor in the retail marketplace of Aurora Models. As such worked, they have worked with them in producing these never before done, prototypical scheme of the One Ocean Network Express and their breast cancer support charity emblazoned with the pink ribbon as the slogan on the containers is as one, we can hope. These models are outstanding models of the prototype along with fine separately applied details including floors, interiors, and an industry first operating doors. The floors are purposely not glued in so the modeler can add details or loads if desired along with the operating doors which then can be used to create unique and specific scenes on your layout. Interesting only enough, despite these added features, these models are comparable in price with other manufacturers container models out there on the market. These exclusive sets are available in two different three packs with different numbers and each set with gray traditional color schemes of their 40 foot containers. In addition, there are 24 other schemes available in these 40 foot containers and still available at Lombard Hobbies. Still available from Lombard Hobbies also as Aurora's other releases, the Gunderson Greenbrier 6276 cubic foot 50 foot plate F boxcars, the TTX 2016 version, the FBOX series available in 18 different incredible details with incredible details again which makes this a must have for most modelers. We invite you to check out these and other models at Lombard Hobbies, you will find them with a huge selection and great pricing immediately available for purchase. Also be sure to check out the What's Neat this week video podcast that we shoot every Saturday night, keeping you updated on what's new in the hobby with special guests and a lot of exciting, you know, things to talk about every single week in this ever so fast growing hobby, the best hobby in the world, the hobby of model railing. And so with that, let's continue on with the rest of this July 2023 What's Neat. Now that's not a bad run by for a test for a first time, there's a lot of things wrong with it. The more I've watched it and studied this, I really don't like the way Mount Schneffel's looks over here. It's just a little bit too pointy, something about it, something just doesn't quite work with it. I don't like the large green areas of the hills here. I think we need more pine trees, more depth, more of a scene built for that in order to perfect the shot. And that's what this is about. So I think what we need to do is I think we need to take these mountains and actually project them with a digital projector onto foam and carve them out, trace them, actually reproduce the mountains as exact as we can doing it that way. Another thing this project has sort of taken on a life of its own because what's happening here is we've got the video, which we're trying to protect, perfect the mountains and perfect the scene, the RGS scene. But we've also got the layout now. We've got what amounts to a model train layout. And because of that, I think we should treat this with respect and wrap this in oak and finish this off as a real nice layout. And what we're going to do that is this. We're going to add another layer of foam to it and make the scene thicker. That will give us more depth so that at some point I can carve a trestle or do some nice bridge work and have topography to work with. I'm going to take this router bit after everything is glued and set up. I'm going to run this router bit all the way around the entire scene, all the way around. Then we'll have a groove that I'll be able to insert the wood, this one by four material, hammer it in, glue it in place and it'll create an inner wooden framework to attach the plywood, beautiful finish, oak sides to. That'll give this diorama a real nice finish so that you can set it up somewhere in a house or take it to a show and it's going to be a show piece. It'll look beautiful. Now the mountains. Mounts, knuffles over here doesn't look right. Mears looks pretty good. Hayden looks pretty good, but Hayden never really got into the picture. I'm not going to scrap these mountains because these mountains are going to be great background props for many, many photos down the road. But what we are going to do is redo these hills, get this right, do another test video and film this and see if we can't perfect this shot exactly. Okay, what we're going to do now is we're going to router out the edge of this diorama and this is where we hammer in the piece of wood. The most important thing is, well first of all this is a one by two, I run it, I split it through the band saw so it's a half of a one by two. And I've got it set to the same depth as a router bit. I've got my fence set so my blade is going to cut right at the foam line between about two sections of foam and that's where the wood is going to go. That'll hold on the outside plywood, okay? So what I'm going to do is I'm going to just essentially it's turned out to be sort of a layout. Why don't we finish this off and make it look really nice. My thought would be to simply wrap some oak plywood around the sides, maybe stain it black and give it a real dark rich finish. So let me show you how we're going to wet the wood and prepare it to wrap around this 24 inch radius piece of foam. If you're going, go. I've wet this wood with the garden hose for about 20 minutes now. The wood, the porous quarter inch oak plywood has really soaked in the water. So what we'll do is we'll take this inside and we'll wrap it around the diorama and throw a couple of weights in place and see if this won't dry and hold its nice curvature that we've got that right around there. Pull it in, no cracking sounds. Put some weights on it and spray water on it over a period of hours. And just let this set for a little while and then we'll let it dry. I took one by twos, I ran them through the bandsaw, fall them down to about an inch, about an inch thick. And these are going to be the boards that we're going to wrap around the inside of the screw on the foam that you saw me route her out. I took these boards for the curvatures and I cut them up into very small little blocks that the kids have already discovered. These blocks individually aren't that strong. But as a group, we'll be very strong. They'll fit flush, they're going to go all around that curve. I'll glue these in with the foam glue that we use. And then after those are all in there like that and they're all glued in tight, that'll give me a surface to either screw or more than likely staple and then cover up the staple holes with little wood putty. That'll give me a substantial holding power to hold this board. This board won't have any spring in it because I will wet it some more and get the curvature to bend more in it. It's been sitting for a week almost straightening out. Now the next thing I want to talk about is this layout. This was the run by layout is now turning into a operational diorama layout. I ran by Microengineering and picked up eight turnouts and eight more pieces of a track and what I've come up with here is I've got a passing siding or a trinket park. I've got a lead switch that'll come off. I run into a three track holding yard so that you could put a freight train and maybe a passenger train. And then another fourth track that will lead off into a small turntable, which will router out this ball and build a bridge and put a bridge in there. Just wide enough to hold the widest engine that we've got, which is right now a K27 with a plow in the front. We're not gonna get any longer than that if we do. I've got just a little allowance and then we've got enough to hold. If I take out this hill here, five locomotives. So it'll be operational, it'll be interesting because you've got a place to drop off a few cars down here, which would be an industry or some type of a make believe place to drop off cars with two tracks. It now has, if you wrote it down on paper, it has operational potential where you could draw up a skit where X amount of cars get dropped off here or there at certain times. And you just could actually be a person's layout in their home that would keep them quite occupied. So we've started out with a photo shoot diorama. It's progressed into a loop to get the run bys constantly. And now it's turning into what is going to be a finished layout. The last thing I thought about doing was putting a mountain over here with a tunnel just to add some interest. I know it's make believe we're getting a little fairy tale now. But rather than do the tunnel, why not group in a bunch of tall trees? Now all of a sudden, you've got a tunnel. You've got your tunnel of growth that you're driving underneath and through. And it still is the height of a plaster mountain or a foam mountain. But you still have a more realistic environment with the tall trees. So this is going to be my mountain. One other last thing is I've cut a groove in the right here so that when I lay my plywood in, I can pre-cut the topography in the wood and then go back, cut out this foam and drop in a nice wooden trestle. So I can build the wooden sides now, have everything be finished, and then go back and finish up the layout later. And the dictation of topography has already been pre-cut. I'm putting a siding in here. So I cut out this section of foam that was carved down at a steep angle. I replaced it, just simply cut it out and replaced it and fit another piece of foam right in its place so that I can lay the siding track here with no hill, with no problems, completely level. So if I wanted to, I could actually put a platform and a small train station or something right here on the siding. Basterdure train pulls into the siding, let's off the people. Something else I want to talk about, I'm using micro-engineering, as you know, this Code 55 rail for the layout. But I'm using the switches that are Code 70. So as you know, I've got a difference of 15,000s of an inch. And I don't want that, I don't want that here, that bump. I don't want that bump on the wheels. So what I've done is, I've taken rail jointers, atlas and scale rail jointers, and I notched them in the middle. So that I can pry apart the tops on one end. And what I'll do is, I'll solder underneath each rail, that's a Code 55 rail. I'll solder this brass stock, which is 16,000s of an inch. 1,000 is more than what I need, I can sandpaper that out. I'll put this, I'll solder it underneath each one of the tracks that will end up mating with one of these turnouts. So that will give me a smooth transition. I've already done it to this one, and she's smooth. There's no bump there. So that's what we want to do with those turnouts. We're testing the models to make sure the models run. I've laid the track, I've soldered the track. Everything is just sitting in place, not glued down. Making sure everything works, both trains are working. Everything is good so far. I'm working on the turntable area next. I want to put a turntable here, but we've got design so far, but hold about five tracks. I'm not satisfied with a couple of things. When I'm coming off the track, the approach track to the turntable, I'm coming down hill because this topography's already been carved out because this layout was not meant at original construction to do what we're doing with it now. So I'm going to pull out these sections, I've already cut them. I can pull out these sections, and I want to put in a level new piece of foam to which we can cut out our turntable. I've already got that cut to just drop it in place. Now instead of holding five locomotives, I can hold about nine or 10. Turntable's here, it's moved from down here up to here. I can have plenty of tracks around it all the way around, even include moving out this hill. So one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, 10 locomotives could be on display on a 65 foot turntable. Now we're going to use the router and router this out. I'll show you how we're going to do this very soon. Now we've got our industry over here. I've carved out an area of the layout where I could fit in the two tracks so that we've got an area to stage a few freight cars for some sort of an operating procedure on this layout. The trestle back here, I've carved out that area. It's just a matter of painting this now and sealing this. Radio shack rocker switches onto a piece of plastic glass and we'll carve this out and put a panel right there to do our block switches. One, two, three wires running underneath the foam to this panel, three blocks. I'll put the second panel in the middle right here with two wires and two switches and this will be the main line and the siding kiln switches. It'll be a panel here. The last panel, the last plastic glass panel will probably go in here somewhere. It'll be two switches as well. So we'll room it up for two of these switches and that'll power the dead, power up the tracks for the siding over here. So one, two, three, plastic glass mounts I've got to build right now. Now I'm gonna show you how we're gonna make these panels. I've already got some panels that are exactly the size that I need. It'll fit right into the position where I want them. I'm not gonna use these panels because they're old and scratched up. I've got a piece of plastic glass here. I'm simply gonna trace the size that I need and cut these out with saw. I'm gonna add a fourth switch to this. So I'm gonna make it just a little bit, a little bit bigger. I'm gonna drill holes first and then I'm gonna take a saw and cut out along the edge for the switch to fit into the plastic glass. Okay, I've got the holes in the panels cut out and the switches just drop right in. Now what I wanna do is I wanna paint this black. This is the back side. This will be the front side. The switch will go right in here on the front side. So I'm gonna paint this black so that when you turn it around, it'll be high gloss shiny from the backside of the plastic glass. Now that we've got our panel mounts made and we want to install them. So I've traced the black line around the edge. And what I wanna do is I wanna sink my hot foam cutter into the foam. And I wanna cut inside that square line that we drew. I want this puppy to cut out nice and smooth. So I'm using this hot foam cutter instead of using my saw. And as you can see, it works rather smooth and quick. I can't complain about that speed. I can saw it the same speed and by now my arms are starting to get tired. And then what I wanna do is I'm gonna draw a zigzag pattern so I can cut out the center. Now what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna take my saw and I'm gonna break out that zigzag that we've cut all those parts and just come right out now. Now I've still got that edge before we drew the line. That's where the actual plexiglass is gonna lie. But we're gonna indent that a little bit so the plexiglass will be flush with the foam. All right, now here's my panel that we're not using but I'm using this as an example. I need to cut this edge where the line is. The thickness of that plexiglass. So I can lay it right in there. I'm gonna cut right around that line. I'm gonna use the hot foam cutter again. Because I think this will be much cleaner than using a saw. I'm gonna get the actual panel here. Let's see how that fits. Just like that. Now I'm not gonna have the actual curve in here. I'm not gonna bend this and melt this plexiglass. I'm just gonna leave it kind of straight. The plywood will hold that in. That's how I want those to fit right in there. I'm gluing the track down with liquid nail. All the track down before we can proceed with the next step, which is to wire the blocks. So I'm gonna run along here and do all the track that we've laid. Make sure it's all glued down now in the next few minutes. Now that everything's glued down, I'm gonna put some weights on top of it just to keep it all tight to the liquid nails. I wanna seal the insides where the panels are gonna be and where the glue's gonna come in contact with the foam. Glue the panels in place. So I'm just gonna paint latex paint inside of this cavity and fill it up. The outside, I'm sorry, this rail is the rail that's gonna be blocked. This will be the one that's cut off. So I've run a pipe through, which I'll thread the wire through to get it into this set of switches. I need to do the same thing here. Spread the brass rod through in a straight direction and work its way through to aim for right there. So I'll be able to pull my wire through right here for the block in this rail. Got the wire stripped on this end. This is where we'll solder it to the rail. Now I'm threading the wires for the yard tracks, these three-yard holding storage tracks. I've got the copper tube shoved through the foam in a straight line. Both tubes are in a straight line to this hole right here. I've managed to nail it the first time. I just pull these two wires through and I've got the wires with two tracks here. I just need to do the last two tracks here. Okay, I've got the wire leads here in a position so that I'll understand exactly where to use the wire brush to clean the rail to attach and solder everything. I had to dig a channel along this furthest wire because I couldn't realistically, with a one-foot pipe, stick it through to my location where the box is. I could have done that had I made a longer pipe, I just haven't done that. What I did was took this punch and I literally punched the foam down just a little bit so that I could insert this wire into that groove into taking all the way down, buried cable right next to the main line, just like the prototype, and then I can cut it and solder it right here where I need to do that at. So I got one, two, three, four, and I'm ready to start using my wire brush to clean the areas where I'm gonna solder. I put a little rosin flux on each spot where the wire is gonna go. Okay, now I'm gonna solder each one of these real quick. Just touch the solder to it, make it hot. One, two, three. This wire is the one that will hook up the rest of these wires now. I will solder this thing, one, two, three, four. Number one will go right here and it will just work along each one of these wires. So here's number one, twist it up tight, and put it in a nice little hole here. So this is number one. I'm gonna connect all four of those. Okay, now I've got them all connected and I'm gonna solder them. Number one, number two, three, and number four. Something important I want to explain here. I need to get hot power. I need to get a wire that'll go to these switches and all the other switches. That one hot wire will be the wire that will supply power to all of the blocks. And I'm going to take power from this rail right here because this rail will always have power in it. It's connected to the switches. That way, by doing it this way, the whole layout will be clean. There'll be no wires hanging down and the wire is hanging out of the foam. Everything will be self-contained inside the unit just by pulling the hot wire off of here and then daisy chaining that hot wire along all the switches on all three panels. That will give me the power so that when I hit the switch, I'll have the power to go into the block and everything will work just fine. So in order to get this hot wire from this turnout into our hole, I'm going to shove this pipe through here real quick. There she comes right to the opening here. Run a wire into that, thread it right through. Now I'm going to cut this wire long enough so that it'll reach the other two panels, chain this along, and now I can pull this pipe out. And now our wire is threaded in. All ready to be stripped. Then I'll solder it. All right, where she belongs. Just like that. Okay, here's the hot wire we just pulled through. This will be the power wire. I'm connecting it. I am connecting it to this wire coming off of our daisy chain. So this panel now is now connected to power. After I tape this joint, I shove all these wires in here. Everything gets shoved in tight except the daisy chain wire that's going to hang out and go to the next panel. And the way I'm going to run that wire to the panels is in the channel that's going to hold the wood that'll hold on the side plywood. So this panel will get tucked right in here just like so. All the wires get shoved in there tight. This wire is going to come down, go through this channel, and I'll run it over to the next panel all to all three panels. I'm poking a hole with a punch. And I want to get these wires out of the way so you can see. This is the wire I'm daisy chaining over. This will be our power wire, feeding power to each one of the other panels. So by poking that hole in there, I'm going to show this wire right through that hole. I should come out that at the bottom. I'm not going to use a pipe this time. Maybe I might have to try this one more time. Try it through tight. And just feed this one right up to the other hole. I'll pull it right out. So now we've got hot wire for all three panels. Okay, here's the last two remaining blocks. I've got them wired up. Here's the hot wire. Same thing here. I've got the hot wire coming in, daisy chained through the foam. So both sets of switches have got power now. Switch one, line one and line two. Line one and line two are connected. First one, second one for the siding and the first and second for the industry over here. So everything's ready to go and be soldered. And that's one, two, three, four, five, and joint number six right here. Everything is soldered. I'll put some tape over this, over these open wires. Stuffed all the wire in and the panels are actually sticking in the foam quite well. It's sticking in place. Now I'll use some liquid nail and put it around the edges and glue these in place because you'll never have to get to these wires. Everything is permanent. There's only two wires dropping off the entire layout on the end of the layout for power. So everything is self-contained and powered now. The final thing to do is to cut the gaps to break the power. Rust-oleum camouflage. I like that color for weathering. I've got all the tracks cleaned off. I've tested all the switches and I've tested all of the breaks and the blocks in the track with a locomotive just to make sure everything's working perfect. So now what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna start to glue these in. I'm gonna use liquid nail here. Now I'm gonna put it around the area here, this edge of the panel and this will hold these in permanently. These electrical panels will never have to come out. They will never have to be serviced. So it'll be permanently embedded into the foam and then we'll have the plywood overlay a little bit over the top of the plastic edges so it'll all be framed out real nice. So all of this is just gonna glue this in tight. This will all just fit right in there, sweet. And I'm gonna use some pins to clamp it into place and hold it while it sets. Little push pins. The beauty of foam is the simplicity that it allows you to do all these different little tricks. So I'll go ahead and do the rest of these. They don't have to look pretty because the wood's gonna go right over the top of that. And now with the electrical panels put in, it's time to ballast the top of all this track and put dirt down and scenic this side of the layout. I'm gonna do everything but the turntable area. That's gonna be the very last thing to be done. And it's actually gonna be its own entity, its own individual lift out section so I can pre-wire it underneath before I install it. And that ends part two of this layout construction segment that we're going to be running through the months on our What's Need videos. So next let's go on with the next chapter of this show, the July 23, 2023 What's Need. For this segment of What's Need, I've got this beautiful Broadway limited locomotive. This is a new locomotive in their line of Stealth series locomotives. And this is an SD-40 in the beautiful blue and yellow Santa Fe paint scheme. And what we're gonna do on the show today is we're gonna take this wonderful locomotive, we're gonna pull it apart and we're gonna put sound in it. Because again, this is a Stealth series from Broadway limited whereas it doesn't come with sound. It's more or less a DCC ready locomotive. Now Broadway supplied me with an economy 21 pin decoder which is what goes into this unit. And also they supplied me with a small speaker which is simple plug and play with no soldering. So we're gonna take this to the workbench, we're gonna pull it apart, put in the sound and put it right back together again. I can tell you that the first step in the process is going to be to remove the couplers on each end of the locomotive before then we're gonna be able to take the shell off of the locomotive. So let's sit back and watch this and see how this project turns out. So as you look at the locomotive right underneath the trucks, under the frame of the locomotive are plastic tabs and you pry those forward with a screwdriver. And as you work it, you can then lift off the shell which exposes all of the electronics of the model right here in front of us. So I'm gonna pull this out of the cradle now and set it down on the table and we'll explore further the installation first of the speaker in this unit. As you look at the model, we're at the end where the decoder's right here on top. I found a nice little space right inside here where the speaker will fit snugly into that space. And a way to get to that is to pull out screws on each side. I'm gonna take this one out for you while the camera's running. And then we can just lift this up and have some space to work with to install that speaker into that nice spot that looks like it's just made to put the speaker in place. So watch now as I lift this up a little bit, slide the speaker into position. And I notice there's some tabs in the metal frame of the locomotive and under the speaker where it'll sit just like that and snap into place. And then we've got our wires right here which we will plug into our sound decoder. So what I'm gonna do now is I'm gonna take these screws and I'm gonna simply put them right back in the locomotive through the plastic frame into the metal frame just like this. And once I put in both screws on both sides, that is our speaker right here firmly mounted right above the drive shaft of the locomotive. I'm removing the tape that's holding all the wires in place. Then I can move all the wires away from the dummy plug. I'll take this screwdriver and I'll just lift up the dummy plug gently pulling it off of the motherboard just like this. Very simple, be careful with the pins. You don't wanna mess up any of the pins or bend them. And then what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna take the sound tracks, sound decoder that we've got this economic sound decoder and I'm simply gonna press it into place. Move this wire out of the way a little bit here. In fact, to gain access to that spot, I'm actually gonna pull this plug right here out. Very gently, that black wire is kind of in my way. See that? Now you can see our pins are fully exposed. There's always the corner pin where there's no pin and that's how you know how to line up the decoder in the locomotive because if you look at the decoder, there's a spot right here where there's no pin. So all we're gonna simply do now is spread the wires out of the way and push our board right down into place here. It's quite simple. I just wanna make sure I fit it in underneath these wires right here and then we push it into place just like that. And that installs the sound decoder into the motherboard just like that. So I'm gonna put the tape back into place, covering the wires. And I also put this plug here back in that we did, that we pulled out. And now here's the plug for the speaker, which I'm simply gonna plug into this little jack right here. Okay, that's relatively straightforward in that this locomotive now has sound in it. So now I'm gonna pick up the locomotive and simply put it on the tracks before I reassemble the shell and put the couplers back on. And let's just make sure that everything we did works perfectly on the layout. So with the shell laying right next to the locomotive, I put it on the track right here. You immediately see the blue light on the tsunami decoder turn on. And then if I'm gonna hit F8 on the throttle, look at that, just like that. We've installed that decoder. So the next step is we're gonna go back to the workbench and we're gonna simply put the shell right back in place and snap it onto the little pins here, the little snaps on each side of the frame, just to make sure as we do this that we don't have any wires pinching in the shell anywhere around here. So I'm gonna be very, very careful and as I use a screwdriver to ensure the fact that all the wires are snug and not being pinched. And as you can see here, as I move this camera for you, there are just a few wires here that need to be pushed up into the shell. And I'm gonna gently use a pair of tweezers to do just that so that we, again, we don't have any issues with the wires. And then what I'll do is I'll rest the locomotive on the table surface and I'll simply push it right down, just like this. Gently snap the rear and then, also very carefully, the front of the locomotive in place, just like that. Everything perfect so far. Now what we have to do is we have to put our Katie couplers back on or the couplers that come with the locomotive and the coupler boxes right here. I always like to use a locomotive cradle to hold the models upside down. That's nothing new in our industry. This one's made out of simple pieces of wood. I think it's a one by three and a couple strips of one by two lumber with some rubber matting glued on the inside. Makes for a very soft surface when you're working on your locomotives like this. And all I'm gonna do now is I'm gonna install our couplers front and back. Just as we all know how to do. Another helpful tool I'd like to point out is, and I don't know what this is called, this is a great tool in the event that you're not using a magnetic screwdriver. It's got little bitty claws that come out and actually hold the screw right here. See that? And then you simply put the screw into the hole and put it into place onto the locomotive. Just like this. Same on the other side. One thing I do really like to use are, in fact, screwdrivers that are magnetic. You can get a simple magnetizing tool at the hardware store. You just run the screwdriver through the hole of the tool and it becomes magnified. So that it can hold the screw as you then put it into the locomotive. Just like this. So with that, this project is done. We've put sound in this engine in just a few minutes. Notice I left the foam inserts so that I wouldn't damage the handrail by crushing them in any way. I thought that was kind of a neat idea. So let's put it on the layout now and let's watch it run. Hit F8 and now the locomotive's got sound. You can pull this out. We can make it run. Now you can go through the decoder and set up the settings, momentum, all the things that make the engine run just the way you like it to run. Now Broadway Limited stealth series locomotives for future runs are gonna be coming out with the speakers already installed into the units, which will be a benefit to us and that we won't have to install the speakers into them. But this model, the SD40, as we know now, in this run doesn't come with a speaker, which is really easy to install as I've just shown you. Quite simple. Any of us can do it. And that is a segment for What's Neat. For this special segment of What's Neat, I've got Tyler Haney from Bachman Industries in beautiful Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Hey Tyler, welcome to the What's Neat show and tell us what exciting stuff you've got to talk about this month. Hey Ken, glad to be back on the show. Got some fun stuff to show off. It's the H.O. Scale Extravaganza and more specifically an H.O. Diesel Extravaganza. We've got an all new model, some new paint schemes. We've got a little bit bonus as well afterwards. So here's our big star of today's show. We've been doing it on our social media channels a couple of weeks ago and here it is making It's What's Neat debut. It's Bachman's all new EMD BL2. Some people love them, some people hate them, but we wanted to do something a little bit unconventional that has a special place, an important place in locomotive history. So EMD, this came out in the late 1940s and EMD had already had their E units, their F units, the cab units as they were called. And those were pretty popular for passenger trains and railroads like having them out on the road pulling trains, but the downfall, the downside of them was that they were not very practical for switching in a yard. You still had to use a switcher locomotive because the cab units didn't have great visibility and they didn't have good places for break men and switch men to stand. So EMD came out with the BL2 as their first attempt as a road switcher locomotive. It's based in part on the F unit. It's got some design changes, the obvious ones being the front and rear platforms. And then you also have this unique little swoop where they took the body work and cut away at it so that you have better rear visibility from the cab window looking to the back of the locomotive. So the BL2 stands for branch line and EMD's idea was that this locomotive could be used on branch lines and smaller railroads to do both the switching and hauling short trains along the branch lines. Unfortunately for EMD, they were not very popular. Whether it was the looks or whether they just weren't quite as useful to the railroads as they would have hoped. Only 59 were built in total, but surprisingly, a lot of them survived today. There's, I believe, seven left and a handful of them are still operating on tourist railroads and in museums. That's cool. And the failure of the BL2 ended up leading to EMD's big success. They redesigned it as the GP7, which was a very popular road switcher. So the BL2 fills in an important place in EMD's history. So we wanted to kind of, it was first offered in the HO scale many years ago as one of the first privilege 2000 models. This is an all new model to Bachman. We designed it from the ground up except for the trucks, the trucks were existing. As DCC on board, it will not come equipped with sound at first, but it does have a speaker installed. So you can install whatever sound decoder you like in it. I just want to bring this up a little bit closer now and give you a better look at some of these details. We'll have optional parts. You see here, we have the vent for the steam generator. Some BL2s were equipped with a steam generator in the front hood for passenger train service. So that will be an optional part, depending on whether the railroad was equipped with that feature or not. And I think it's just a beautiful model overall. Well, not everyone considers the BL2 beautiful, but in terms of how it came out as a model with these separately applied hand rails, these railings, all of these parts, both add on and just as part of the body shell, we're really proud of how this turned out. Yes. So this is our first test shot. It's almost in the Missouri Pacific blue. It is. The Missouri Pacific did have BL2s. We won't be offering them in this initial run, but we'll have four road names, Chesapeake in Ohio, the Monon, the Brock Island, and the Western Maryland. So a pretty good representation there. You can see the 2D artwork for those paint schemes in our catalog on our website, baklintrains.com, and hopefully we'll have decorated samples showing off those road names in the near future. But BL2 should be arriving early next year and we're really excited for it. That's cool. That's gonna be one of the most beautiful representations of that model so far to take. Yes, it is absolutely. So moving on, like I said, we've got some new paint schemes as well in addition to that new model. And this is an existing model in the Bakman line, but it also has some special new features to it, which I'm gonna show off. So this is our GP38-2. This is DCC ready. And here it is. We were just talking about the Missouri Pacific and here's our Missouri Pacific GP38-2. Nice. So the two new features to this model, to this GP38-2, all the ones that Bakman had made before were equipped with the dynamic brakes up here on the hood. And this is the first time we've offered a non-dynamic brake version. Missouri Pacific being a more flat railroad in the Midwest without a lot of grades. It didn't need that extra braking power. So their GP38s were not equipped with it. So we've got an all new part here to represent that. And that'll give us some more flexibility to offer other road names that did not have dynamic brakes on these units. And actually, if I pop this part off here real quick, this is the other new feature. Like I said, this is a DCC ready model. So it's got a plug to equip the decoder of your choice. And in the past, we used eight pin plugs, which is kind of the old DCC standard, but a lot of the decoder manufacturers are going to a 21 pin configuration. So this has now has a 21 pin plug and going forward all new Bakman DCC ready models will have 21 pin plugs. So we're trying to stay ahead of the curve or with the curve with the development of DCC and technology in our models. Very good. That's awesome, Tyler. Yeah. So look forward to that, most likely by the end of the year. And I got two more diesel locomotives to show up. Oh, I almost forgot. Last time I was on the show, I showed off our new transfer caboose, which was based on the Missouri Pacific short bay window caboose. So matching pair ready to go later this year. There's your switching consist right there. Yeah, that's right. So here's our other two diesel locomotives. SD40-2, we've had them in our line for a while. This is the sound value version and we've got two new road names to show up. We've got Conrail quality. We know there's a lot of Conrail fans out there. This is the second time we've offered a Conrail SD40-2 first time for the Conrail quality, which I always thought was a really cool slogan with the big Q on the side. So a nice little variation for the Conrail fans out there. And then going from the east coast to the west coast, we have Santa Fe Coda Chrome. Look at that. Yes, it's a beautiful looking paint scheme, you know, which has, most real fans know, it's has got a funny story behind it. Those who don't know back in the 1980s, the Santa Fe and the Southern Pacific were planning to merge into one railroad, the SPSF. And they were so confident about the merger happening, they started repainting paint locomotives in this new red and yellow paint scheme. So new paint scheme, but with just SP. And when the merger was completed, it would become SPSF. But they had a little problem. The Interstate Commerce Commission rejected the merger. It never happened. So you had these locomotives running around that were painted for a rarer that never existed. But it was always a very popular variation with the rail fans. And we're, as far as I know, this is the first time we've offered a Santa Fe SPSF paint scheme. Nick named the Coda Chrome because it looked like an old box of Kodak Coda Chrome film. That is true. Yeah, so it's a beautiful paint scheme that we're excited to add to the line. And we think the Santa Fe fans will enjoy that a lot when it comes out next year. That's awesome, Tyler. That's absolutely awesome. So is that all we've got for this month of July? We've got one more little surprise here. A surprise. Surprise, not so much in that these were announced back when our 2023 catalog came out. Surprising that they're not a diesel locomotive, like what I've been showing. So a couple of years back, we redesigned our PCC street car to have DCC sound on board. That's true. We did some modifications to that. We lowered the chassis, redesigned the trucks to give it a more realistic appearance if you're familiar with how that model looks back in the day when it was first introduced. It was a nice little upgrade we had and now we're offering these as a DCC ready version. We realize not everybody wants to have DCC and sound in their trolley. They kind of just want a simple version that they can run however they want. So this is for the non-DCC trolley fans out there. So we have four paint schemes for these. We have the classic Philadelphia transportation company. Some of these are actually still or will still be in service into the 2020s. SEPTA is refurbishing them right now and they'll be back in service within a couple months. Very cool. That another SEPTA paint scheme, a Philadelphia paint scheme, these Chollies were acquired from Kansas City by Philadelphia and coming up to the Bicentennial in 1976, they were repainted and given this unique paint scheme. I believe there were about 20 or 30 of these and each of them had the name of one of the 13 colonies on it. This one was Pennsylvania. It's got the patriotic red, red and blue stars. You can't go wrong with that. No, it's beautiful. Yeah, absolutely. It's got great colors. For those of you who aren't from Philadelphia or aren't modeling that area, it's obviously very personal for us but we didn't leave you out either. We've got two painted and lettered options as well so you can put whatever real or fictional city you want on these PCC cars. We've got a nice green and cream one inspired by San Francisco's PCC cars. Okay. And we have a red and cream one as well inspired by Dallas. So those should be available by the end of the year. That's absolutely awesome. Yeah, so there's always something fun happening at Bachman, always some new samples and new products are coming in. It's just as fun for us to receive them as it is for us for you to see them on the webcast and everyone watching at home. So Ken, thank you very much for having us on the show and letting Bachman do these every month. That's absolutely awesome, Tyler. Thank you very much for doing a fantastic job. Every time you're on, you do a great job. I really appreciate it. And folks, that is this wonderful segment with Bachman Industries for What's Neat. All of the products seen on this episode of What's Neat are available from Lombard Hobbies in Lombard, Illinois or order online at LombardHobbies.com. And buy Broadway Limited Imports, the cutting edge leader in model trains. Check out their website at Broadway-limited.com. Bachman Trains, now that's the way to run a railroad. Check out their website at BachmanTrains.com.