 I'm Russell, and I'm Carrie, and the March What's Neat starts right now. 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. This is What's Neat for March 2021. I'm your host Ken Patterson, and this month we do have a great show. First of all, our drone pilot Dan Scheidel in Modeling Ideas from Above shares with us how our HO scale and O scale and N scale layouts should look in the wintertime. And it doesn't look too indifferent from these simple painted pine trees with the beautiful scenery that he shares with us over the Cascades, BNSF, UP, just amazing footage this month for What's Neat. Our friend Mike Buddy stops by and he shares with us how to wreck your HO scale automobiles. Of course, this can be done in any scale using simple aluminum foil. Dan Michio stops by and installs sound, TCS sounds from train control systems in this old Broadway limited alligator that I've had for better than 18 years. He makes it look simple. He shows us how to put the decoder, the speaker, and all the wiring together in a very fast segment this month for What's Neat. Also, we stop by John Schindler's layout. We've shared John Schindler's layout in the January 2020 show, but since COVID is hit, he's added lighting and balances to his layout, which brings out all the color, which was something that was always missing on his amazing looking HO scale layout. And with that, I'd like to say thank you so much to all the folks that watch the What's Neat this week video podcast that we record every Saturday night to keep you updated on what's new in our hobby. The best hobby in the world, model rariting. Also, thank you so much to Lombard Hobbies just outside of Chicago in Lombard, Illinois for sponsoring the What's Neat show. I checked out their website the other day and it's really complete. It shows you inventory. It's got pictures. It's a great website to order all your models and modeling supplies on. So check it out at LombardHobbies.com. And with that, let's continue on with the rest of this March 2021 What's Neat. For this segment of What's Neat, I've got our favorite Mike Buddy down here and he's going to show us some really cool automotive magic. Hello, Mike. Hey, everybody. Yeah, I've showed this before, but this aluminum foil trick that I used to model damage on my train cars and automobiles. This box car is a perennial favorite. The end is as aluminum foil as is this whole side here. And the way I did it was just by taking aluminum foil and rubbing it down over parts of the box car or the automobile, whatever I wanted to damage. Now over here on these vans, those are vans that were on an auto rack to derail and they've got a little bit of damage on them. And so I'm doing that the same way as I'm going to show you how I do this truck here, particularly. So everybody's seen these lifelike trucks. I have quite a few of them. So the first step when you want to do this aluminum foil stuff is to cut away part of the model that you want to damage. So I did that there. Next, you take a little piece of foil here until it's cut out of any area for the windshield. Now what you want to do is make an impression of the model and do one panel on each side that you're going to keep. Like on this truck, I'm not damaging either of these doors. So this gives me something to glue this onto. Then take a Q-tip or a clean X-finger tip, whatever. And this is going to be hard to do when I'm doing it on camera here. But the idea is to make a real nice detailed impression. And if I was working in my own conditions, I'd be able to do this a lot better. But I'm really messing it up on the video here. But the idea is get a very detailed impression, smooth this all out, and cut it out, and then you end up. This is what you end up with. So, and again, this is something I did fast so there's no grill detail on this. If I was doing a real model, I would make a whole separate grill and bumper and everything, separate sheet metal parts. But anyway, put some glue on the part that overlaps the door on each side. And then shove it on there and let it dry. So then when it's dry, you paint it. And you probably use primer because you'll be able to see the difference between the foil and the plastic. Then after it's dry, it looks like this. And it's ready to crash. So I don't know, I guess I'll smash it into this other truck. A rear end collision. Looks okay. Now I would separate the, again, if I was making a real model, I would cut along the edges of the hood, probably make a separate hood. You know, because I model the damages realistically as I can. But for a junkyard or model yard, this is a good way to get up a bunch of wrecked cars. And this one here was done the same way. And it was made to look like this car came and hit it while this truck was going that way. That's why the damage is pushed over to the right on this truck. And then this Mustang just got like the side torn off. So I put a lot of thought into the damage too. It's just not like you just hit him with a hammer or anything. But they can look pretty good if you put a lot of work into the paint and the detail. And nothing looks like metal more than metal. People try and melt plastic to look like bent metal. And it just never looks right to me anyway. So one more tip that I use after I get something looking the way I do. I'll turn it over and I'll use Elmer's glue and I'll spray or not spray drip it all inside of there. Let it dry overnight or something so it gets hard inside of that aluminum foil. Then that protects it from people trying to poke it and everything which they do. So anyway, that's a quick little tip how to do aluminum foil modeling. I did the same thing with this box car, just reproduced the sides. This much is plastic up to here. And then the rest of this is foil with decals on it. And made smashed up pallets and banding wrap and stuff like that in there. And I modeled this off of a real train car that I saw burling to northern car in St. Louis. The side was folded in, the whole side was ripped out. I mean the end was folded in but it was just in a line of other cars, other train cars. Mike, that's absolutely amazing when you do that. Thank you so much for sharing this tip with the modelers of What's Neat. And that is this segment for What's Neat. For this segment of What's Neat, I'm standing with John Schindler. And you remember we've seen John Schindler's layout on the What's Neat show back in January 2020. And that was pre-COVID, wasn't it? Yes, it worked. And we had operating sessions down here and we showed a lot of your layout and how great it looked and I'm running some of those clips right now. But the one thing about your layout was it wasn't really bright. You couldn't see all the colors on it because you simply had these fluorescent lights running up the center of the room. And you've made some great improvements in the last 12 months. John, tell us what you've done. I've put up LED lighting on the grid ceiling and then put fascia to hide it. Remarkable difference. You can see the colors and everything and found a way to do it that's relatively cheap and fast. What kind of lights did you use to light this? There are some stuff called from Berea, bought them from Amazon. And you get six of these four-foot fixtures for $46. Because the reason I never did it in the past was because it was expensive. And that's where the lights are from and they get plugged into the outlets that were for the fluorescent lights so there wasn't any rewiring to be done. And then the lights are mounted on a 1x4. A lot of people use 2x2s I've seen around, but I want the light to get away from the fascia. So that's why I used a 1x4 and then put the light all the way to the pack of the 1x4 so it gives it better. But to mount the 1x4 to the grid are these things I buy from Menards. You get four of them for like five bucks. No, those are cool. Mounting clips. Yes. Now 15 months ago when we did see the slat, like I said, it was kind of dark. You always had operating sessions. One of the things that you put on it is, what kind of wood is that called? It's bassonite, quarter inch cardboard. And you painted it blue to match your backdrops, didn't you? That's right. And the other thing to look is that when I put them, when I started putting them up, I came down the steps and saw this ugly brown. So down they came and painted the back sides too. And it just made everything sort of disappear. It wasn't as noticeable. This is amazing. In another six or so months, when you start having operating sessions again, the guys are going to love all the colors. Yes. It really, it's brought up, you see stuff now you didn't see before, don't you? That's right. In this room, I started on the end where the camera is and I was working up and I turned around and looked away. Wow! What a difference. What a difference. What a difference I would have never thought. This is amazing, John. So for those folks out there that want to do lighting, check these LED lights out. These look like fluorescent tubes, but they're not. It's that new technology, LEDs, saves on electricity, adds great color to the layout. And as you can see from John's layout, what we've shown you here, it really works. Yes. So thank you, John, so much for sharing your valence and your newly lit layout with us. Glad you could come over and see it. Thanks, John. And that's this segment for What's Neat. For this segment of What's Neat, I've got Dan Michio in the studio today and we're going to take this wonderful alligator, otherwise known as an RSD-15 locomotive. And this is an old model I've had for about 15 years. Santa Fe came out with these around 1959, 1960, and these ran well into the 70s. And they're an absolutely unique looking locomotive. I love them. And Dan, I'm looking forward to knowing what you're going to do to this. We're going to put sound in this today. We're going to put a decoder in this and a speaker. Tell me what we're going to put into it. So we're putting three things into this model to replace the existing parts. We're starting off with an IBM V2 motherboard. And onto that, we'll be installing one of our Wild 121 diesel decoders. And in place of the original speaker, we're going to be using a high base 28 millimeter 4 watt speaker. Wow, this is really cool. You're going to add new life to this locomotive. So let's watch now as Dan does his magic and adds a whole new sound to this wonderful model that I've got. To start the process, Dan removed the shell from the locomotive. He then pulled all the plugs, the front truck plugs, the rear truck plugs, the motor plugs, and both LED plugs off of the original sound board. After the plugs were removed, Dan removed the four screws that held the original sound board to the top of the locomotive motor. The installation of the IBM V2 motherboard is very simple since the same four screws that were removed to take out the original decoder are used to mount the motherboard. We're going to be replacing the original speaker in this unit with the TCS 4 watt 4 ohm high base speaker, which conveniently fits into the A frame that's in this chassis. To remove this speaker housing from the model, we flip it over and you'll see two screws located right ahead of the rear truck. We'll take our screwdriver, remove the two screws, and then the speaker housing will come out. I removed the three screws holding the enclosure together, and now it simply lifts apart and I can remove the baffle and the original speaker, leaving us with an empty housing. Into this housing we're going to install the speaker. In order for the speaker to fit into the model properly, the outer ring of this gasket needs to be removed, so I'll start by pulling that apart now. To secure the speaker into the housing, I'm going to use this hot glue gun and run a bead around the perimeter of the speaker. Notice that I put the speaker in parallel to the body so that the speaker does not interfere with the drive shaft. So now that we've allowed the hot glue to set up, I'm going to use this two pin JST connector and solder the wires onto the speaker leads. This connector can plug into the board, making this a very easy plug and play installation. Your model may already have this same style of connector, and if it does, you can reuse it. In order to hook up the LEDs on this model, we have to replace the existing connectors on either end. TCS makes a specialty harness for the IBMB motherboards, which is a single inline 6, which plugs into this socket at the front of the board. This connector has wires for the forward and reverse headlights, a common 12 volt, and wires for functions 1, 2, and 3. We will only be using the white, yellow, and blue wires for the headlights in this installation. So I've gone ahead and run the wires to the LEDs in the front and the rear. Since the IBMB2 motherboard has onboard resistors, I don't need to add my own, which means I just needed to run the wires to both ends. The speaker housing has also been reinstalled using the two screws, and I'm going to now take all of these plugs and plug them back into the board. So we'll start here with the speaker, and that's going to go into this socket here for the speaker. This is the motor. We have the rear truck, which will go into the track power, and the front truck, which will go into the other track power. And then the final step in the process is to install the WoW 121 diesel decoder onto the motherboard. And with a click, it's done, and we can lace up the wires, pop the shell back on, and get on with programming. You know, Dan, you really made this look simple. I mean, we've only been working over here for just a few minutes, and this is going to be a short video I have a feeling. Now, according to the book I've got here, this says that the RSD-15 has got this 251 turbocharged engine in it. How do we arrive at that? So, Ken, since the WoW sound decoder has come loaded with all of our entire library on each one that we make, I didn't have to pick out a particular decoder. I could just use the standard WoW 121 diesel decoder. And I can use our AudioAssist program to change the prime overset along with a variety of other options to set this up to be more realistic. So, we started it up, we powered it up with the default sound set, and so I'm going to enter into AudioAssist by pushing button number eight on my controller. What is AudioAssist? What is AudioAssist? AudioAssist is TCS's exclusive auditory feedback programming tool. It's entirely integrated into the decoder and allows you to be able to do programming for things like sound, lights, and a handful of other things without having to touch CDs. So, you're going to make this look more of talk to us? That's right, yeah. It's kind of like a telephone answering service where all I have to do is just push the buttons on my handset, listen to what it has to say, and then make it do what I want it to do. Dan, you're in Missouri. It's a show me state. Show me. Alright, so the sound programming is exactly what we want, so I'm going to push button one. That is something we are going to do. This speaker does put out a lot of volume, and I'm going to bring down everything all at once just by using the master volume. That's what we're going to do. I'm going to push button one to decrease the volume. Every time that I push the button, it'll play a sample at the current volume, and each time that I push the button, it'll decrease or increase by 5%. So, I'm going to bring it down to a level that I think is pretty good. Wow, so you can just turn it up and down just like that. That's right. And I understand that's a ringtone you guys offer on cell phones too, isn't it? It is, yeah. How about that? Well, people know about that. And now that I've come to a volume that I'm comfortable with, I'm going to push button number eight to save the change. Saved. And now that's already taken place. So, the audio is what you want it to volume wise. Now, how do you get the locomotive motor, the sound that we want? So, I'm going to go back up a couple levels. Out of the volume settings, back up to the main sound programming menu using button nine. This is the main menu for sound programming, where I have options to change volumes. I can change button mappings, or I'm going to use button three to select a prime mover. Dude, this is amazing that it can talk to me like this. I don't have to memorize CVs. That's exactly right, I guess. The other option that we offer on all of Articode's prime mover options is the option to dual enable them. So, if for example, I want to have a conscious running and I have a sound decoder and a non-sound decoder, or if I have a new unit that has multiple engines in it, I can use any prime mover that I want, and I can dual enable it to have up to two at a time. But, this is only one, so I'm going to scroll through here until I hear... And all of these are built into the decoder. That's exactly right. And we're looking for the 251. Yeah. That's exactly what we want. So, now I'm going to save that change to eight, and now I can exit the program by using button zero. And there's an Alco 251. Yep. The next thing that we can change is the horns. Articode's, like I said, they do have all of the sounds loaded onto them from the factory, from us. And so, I can start off with the default horn by pressing two. And I can now change that horn now that I've played a horn sound by pushing button number nine in sound mode. The direction will change alphabetically as it rotates through based on the locomotive's direction. So, in forward, which is what it's currently set to, the horns will rotate in alphabetical order. If I were to change the direction, they would go backwards in reverse alphabetical order. So, let's say I come across something I like, but I keep going, but I want to go back to it. All I have to do is change the direction. I don't have to go around the horn a whole lot of time. So, this has got a three-chime horn on it. So, let's take a listen and see what sort of three-chime horns we can play. There's a couple that are available off in specific language. This one's pretty cool, right? This is a single-chime horn off of a V-O-1000 that we recorded. But let's keep going and find a three-chime. Who doesn't love a good kind of cock-air whistle? But that's not really prototypical of this engine, so let's keep going. What kind of a throttle are you using to program all of this? What are you using? This is amazing. Show this to the viewers. We're currently running on your Digitrax system, your DCS-100. And I'm hooked up over in LNWI using our universal Wi-Fi throttle, the UWT-100. This is your throttle can. And this is connected over Wi-Fi to your LNWI display to your system. And so I'm able to talk to your layout without having to worry about a wire or the wireless system that you have. You can use this throttle. Wow. So that's pretty much it. This project's almost done, isn't it? That's right. Yeah, there's plenty of other things that you could adjust should you feel so inclined. And it's very easy to do with audio assist. Like, say, for example, I want to change around some buttons or something like that. I can map any sound to any button. And, you know, do a couple other things as well, like I could change the way that the lights work, you know, things like that. If this engine had more lighting, it would have. This is amazing, dude. You've given new life to my locomotive. And in fact, you've done three of these. That's right. So let's do this. Before we close out this segment, and I look at you and say, that's this segment of What's Neat. I want to follow this up with a really cool run-by showing you these locomotives working in all their glory and their sound. Thanks, Dan. What a flatter that is. That's awesome. And that is this segment for What's Neat. All of the products seen on this episode of What's Neat are available from Lombard Hobbies in Lombard, Illinois. Or order online at LombardHobby.com.