 I'm happy to say that spring has finally come. The last time I said that I had no idea the type of winter that we were about to have, that minus nine stuff was simply for the birds. But today's a good day. Today it's all Canada today. I've got some beautiful atherin models, fresh, fresh off the press. Just some beautiful models getting shot this afternoon. Nice day to shoot too. This is a great day. First warm day that we've really had in three months. The way I package up these models, it was a gentleman out of California, a classy case company, and these are just magnificent. If you guys get involved in train clubs and have to transport model, there's nothing better than these wooden cases for holding and carrying models. They're very sturdy, very strong and very protective. You can get them up to three or four feet long. At the time when I was purchasing them, the longest ones were like three or $400. They were very, very expensive, but at the same time you had to figure that if you're going to a train show with an Amtrak passenger train, you've probably got almost $3,000 in the train. So to put 300 bucks in a case, it's gonna protect it. It's really a good investment. During my real estate days, I used to be on a street a lot. So I'd run into situations where I'd submit freelance photos to our St. Louis Post Dispatch newspaper. One time, one of the old gentlemen at the paper told me, your photos are dead because they don't have people in them. And what he explained to me was the most important thing you can do for a photograph is simply add the human element to it. It brings the photo alive. A photo with just an individual or just a congregation of people makes it more interesting than when you absolutely have no people at all. I'll never forget what actually spawned the conversation. I was taking a picture of a pickup truck that had flipped over on one of our local roads here in town, and it was a dead picture of just a truck flipped over on the road. But what made the photograph was when the man reached into his truck, pulled out his mounted cell phone out the sideways door and started talking to call authorities to let them know that he had had an accident. That was the winning picture. Again, just simply put a few modeled characters in your shots when you're doing your photographs and it'll enhance your pictures and make them more rich. Pushing four o'clock, still enjoying this very, actually the very first shoot day of 2014 where the weather's been good enough to come out and do a photo shoot. Wrapping up these beautiful athern locomotives, all this Canadian stuff. I pulled out Kim's Wickel a few minutes ago. These are passenger engines. These things are just tricked out with detail. They are really, really pushing it with regards to the detail department. It's almost like, remember when Overland models had such beautifully detailed brass locomotives in all different variations? That seems to be just exactly what athern and horizon are doing right now. These models are exquisite. So what an awesome day it's been. This has been a very good shoot day. First day of really 2014 where it's been nice enough to come out and actually do something. For the next part of this tape, I'm gonna show you a bridge that Dirk Reynolds has built. It's at mile post 17.4 over on the Chester sub, which is straight across Illinois, right straight that way, about 11 miles as the bird flies. And it's just an incredible bridge made up of three or four different types of construction. It's concrete pier, it's trestle, it's girder, it's the best of everything all in one structure. So I'll play that next. For this What's Neat this week, you've always seen Dirk Reynolds usually behind the camera, helping me do a lot of these featured shows every month. But this month, I wanted to take a little extra time because Dirk spent an awful lot of time building a bridge along the main line of the Chester sub. We're standing at mile post 17.59 of the Union Pacific main line, just south of Dupo out of South St. Louis. And what Dirk has done is he's absolutely captured the prototype reality of this one bridge. We're standing right now, presently next to the prototype bridge. And we've set up the model of his bridge next to the prototype, so that you can see the comparisons in the reality of this diorama. This is a two and a half years of effort on his part. He didn't use pencils for the piers. He actually got the eight sided sides correct on these piers. You can see from the prototype footage that Dirk pretty much nailed this bridge. And that's the fun of prototype rarity. When you can sit home in the environment of your own home and recreate the realities of the main line, that's when you crack a grin and that's when you win. What you doing, Dirk? Oh, I'm showing you the working gates once I get them wired up. So you've put Tomar, our slow motion gate controls onto your gates? Yes, and I've got tortoise switches inside. Okay, tell us about your bridge, Dirk, before we have this train come by and block out our sound. I want to always build something prototypical, so I have always come down to this bridge. Of course, now it's been changed, but this is what it looked like before. There were four different types of bridges here. How long have you been coming down to this bridge? Years, like high school. Okay, so this is your place that you've always wanted to model your whole life? That is correct. So this prototype bridge is one of those prototype models that you've aspired to model and you finally did. And we're standing presently right next to the prototype, so we can actually compare the two together. What have you done to build this, Dirk? How complicated of a project was this? Well, I didn't think it was gonna be that complicated until I got into this wood section right here. I have the prototype template that we'll show later on, but underneath here, those aren't spears that'll go through here. They actually built each section at a time. And so this was the hardest part to build. Brought into the Central Valley, Central Valley Bridge that I actually cut down. And then the pears, these are actual pears that I bought. And they are eight-sided octagons. Does somebody manufacture those pears commercially so that we could all buy them? Yes. And I actually, he donated this part, these parts here, these are segmented bridges. You can't remember offhand maybe who made them? Not offhand. I'll drop in a clip as soon as we figure that out. We'll figure that one out and I'll put it in there. He was a great help giving me all these. He gave me these. Now, these are not pencils. These are actually eight-sided, which follows the prototype, as you can see in this next clip. Yes. Okay. Um, when they built it, this wood part was down here also. It started here and it went all the way back. The ground was out to about right here. When they came down and redid it, they came up with a problem. They ranked, they put in their segments, one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, and came up about that much short. And they didn't know what to do. Well, a guy was sitting there and he says, okay, bring me some steel pears. He says, bring me some steel pears and this is what he came up with. This bridged the gap between your segment and the next section. So this is why I wanted to build the bridge because it's got four different types of bridges in it. That's incredible. And that's the kind of models that we all aspire to build because they're so interesting. You can't really make this up on your own. The only way to make it up is to follow prototype. This is water at about halfway high. It has been known to get about two feet across. And as you can see, I even put in the old bridge piers that used to be here. There's a wooden bridge that was here. Still looking for pictures for that. Dirk, I think it's a beautiful model and I really appreciate you sharing this with all of us. I appreciate you coming. Let me show it to them. Now that was some really great bridge work on Dirk's part. To end this what's neat this week for May, I wanna discuss electricity with you. Now generally on my layout, I've got 2,600 watts, about 25 in fact, 100 watts of lights burning at any one given time on my layout. I generally use these 50 watt, high intensity halogen light bulbs. They get to about 350 degrees and they generally actually in fact, heat my basement in the winter time. But recently I've switched over to LEDs. So I've gone from 2,600 watts down to about 3 watts per bulb which is under 200 watts of electricity that I burn 10 hours a day lighting my layout while I work in my studio. In fact, I've been able to quantify on my electric bill for the last three months an $82 a month savings by switching from halogen bulbs to LED bulbs. So for your layout I seriously would suggest that you guys consider this switch over. It costs about $400 to make the change which you can recoup very easily within four months. It's just the perfect thing to do, help you save electricity and do a good thing for the environment all at the same time. So that ends this what's neat this week for May. Thank you very much for watching.