 My name's Cooper, and I'm Daniel Coombs, and February's 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 February 2020. I'm your host Ken Patterson, and this month we do have a great show lined up for you with five segments, starting with a great layout tour that we go to in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. The North American Prototype Modelers Club. What a magnificent, very large layout this is. We've got a great interview with a lot of footage to show you the beautiful layout. Also, we've got some great drone footage. We haven't had that in a long time from Stephen M. Conroy. He shares with us a few beautiful clips that he shot. The one on the bridge is absolutely magnificent this month on What's Neat. Campbell Rice, he shares with us a different technique for taking ground up leaves and adding to our scenery underneath the trees. He didn't do it like I did it many years back. He actually used a small blender that did not require water. So it's a pretty good trick that he teaches us on this month's show. The last thing we do is we take a look at Chris and Don McRennels' beautiful Santa Fe layout here in St. Louis. This will be on tour in July at the NMRA 2020 show in St. Louis when that happens. And it's an absolutely great way to end the video. Now, to start out this month's video, I want to talk about this moon that's over my shoulder. On past videos, you've seen James Ruggier and myself do photograph shoots outdoors using the real moon. And it's always moving and we're always chasing it. But this time we wanted to do a winter scape shot for athern trains, featuring one of their brand new cabooses that they're coming out with. And I use this moon that I painted many years ago for the shot. And it came out really good in that it just sits on the wall and the moon doesn't move. But the fact was the subject of the photo was this gorgeous caboose that athern is coming out with, which would be tricked out with lights and all sorts of sound effects in this model. I also have a Santa Fe SD45-2 in the background with its lights lit and the beacons lit. We also have this beautiful station that James Ruggier had built. This is a Hutchinson Kansas station. I believe this is a Walthers kit. But James had put many LEDs into the kit. And the important factor on this shot was to get all the lights on all the models to come out. As you see the moon, I've got a lamp on the floor, a simple house lamp with an old light bulb in it. And that's simply lit up the moon in the background for the shot for about 30 seconds. We also lit the lights on the locomotive for about the same amount of time, about 30 seconds on that. And then we also then lit up all the LED lights in the train station for another 30 seconds. So that's three different exposures at 30 seconds apiece to bring through the lights. I then took a flashlight and I waved the flashlight in front of the models in order to light up the outside of the caboose. And the last thing that we did was we then lit all the lights on the caboose, the rear light, mainly, and left that shutter exposure open for about 20 minutes. 20 minutes was the right correct amount of time in order to pull off a good even exposure where everything was lit just right. Now the shutter on the camera was set for an aperture of 22. That's the smallest aperture that I could make on my Nikon D2X that I've been using for years. And the ASA was set for 100 so that there's no grain in the shot. It's a completely crystal clear shot. And now I can show you, this is how the final photograph did come out. It was a very well lit shot, individual lighting on all the pieces, as I've explained. It's fun to experiment with shots like this, especially when you're doing them inside and it's not cold outside as it is currently. You don't have to chase the moon. The moon stays right where I want it to all the time. And then after Chris Palomera's at Athern Train's got ahold of the picture, he added a little bit of fog and really juiced up the picture with just a little touch of Photoshop just to give it an accentuated what you see here. So it's really fun to experiment with different types of photography using our models. Just nighttime, daytime. There's no such a thing as a wrong time. Just experiment with timing and different exposures. So with that, let's continue on with the rest of this month, February 2020, What's Neat? For this segment of What's Neat, I'm with Alhautz and I'm standing in this most magnificent layout that I have ever seen. And I've been here eight years ago shooting high-aid tape, but tonight we've got a full open house going on in beautiful Milwaukee. Al, tell me about this layout. What is the name of this club? This is the North American Prototype Modelers Club, or NAPM for short. Just our initials in APM. It started in the late 70s when a group of about 10 to 15 local guys said, hey, let's make the best model railroad club in Milwaukee. Well, I think they overshot a little because I think they've got probably the best club in the United States. It's certainly the biggest and the most beautiful. Yeah. How many years did it take you guys to build this? Well, we're in our 41st or 2nd right now. I was president here for 11 years and board of directors for longer than that. And I kind of stepped down, you know, new blood into management is always a good thing. But when I moved here in 2001, I knew people at Walters and, you know, I had belonged to a club in Birmingham, Alabama. And I said, where should I join? And they said, oh, there's only one place. You know, go to see the folks of North America. So I came down here and I got the same tour that you're going to get or have had. And I looked at this and said, well, this is it. And I told my wife, you can have the basement back, sweetheart, because why? You know, there's no point in building a layout at home when I've got all this to play with. So, you know, that is so true. And the one thing you did say was it's a business. You guys actually have your own location for 40 years. That's called security. You don't put this much effort into a layout unless you know you've got a substantial base, which you do have. Tell us about the organization. Well, OK, we're a 501C3, so you can donate here. And it's actually tax free. We're very well funded. The dues are $30 a month for a standard membership. And we drop that down 25% once you get over 65. So we're very well funded. Usually club organizations, they run into trouble because of money. OK, and it was very decided very early on, this is going to be their number one rule. If you want to play, you've got to pay. So you guys own your own location? Well, we don't own here. We pay rent here every month. And we're underneath what's left of Southgate Shopping Center in Milwaukee, which was the first big shopping center in this area. And it's kind of funny because what's here is just a small percentage of the original complex. And we were offered space at the other end. And we had a choice between two places to look at. Had we picked the other one, none of this would exist, because it's all gone. It's a Walmart now. Wow. So it was a flip of the coin. Anybody tells you flip on the coin, that's important. Now, this is so amazing. How would you describe the part of the country that you model on this layout? Well, the object was to make any modeler that wanted to come here comfortable. OK, so we call it generic Midwest. It's got a little bit of other things thrown into it. You'll notice this is Southern California or mid-level California with the dry grass. And we've got the mountains up here and the snowshed and so forth. But the vast bulk of it is generic Midwest. Anybody can run anything here. We have an era that runs from shortly after the end of World War II up until about 1980s. So if you want equipment that fits in that timeframe, you can leave it on the layout. If you have other stuff, you're still more than welcome to run, but we expect you to take it off and put it away when you're done, so that we have some continuity in the appearance. You guys like the long run trains, long trains, don't you? Yeah. If I ever moved out of here, I'd probably have to sell three quarters of what I own, because it's all prototype Consys passenger trains and prototype Consys passenger train. Even an HO scale can be 18, 19 feet long. That's awesome. If you walk and see the backside of the layout, I see a long river and a lot of bridges. So you guys like expansive scenery? Yeah, that's important. There's always a problem with modelers. A lot of modelers have is, I've got space here, so I've got to put something in it. No, you don't. You need open spaces and some expanses between the clusters of activity, because it gives the illusion of distance. Right. And as I walk up these other aisles, I see train sheds and mountains. Yeah. This was about a 12-person project that ran for almost a year. Timberline scenery, I think that guy retired off of our tree purchases, because he's not in business anymore. But we, yeah, we're very focused. We run everything here by committee. A scenery committee chair, we have a track committee chair, so projects don't get done willy-nilly. You go to the chairman and say, I have an idea. I'd like to do this. And he might say, it's a great idea. Let's do that. Or he may say, no, I don't like that idea. But I need people over here doing this. So we have a president, we have the board of directors, and we have the committee chairs that direct the activity in the club. Now Al, tell me about this amazing train station and train shed. It is just beautiful. It is, isn't it? The train station itself is made out of Lego blocks. And it's kind of a funny story, because there's a lot of white ones in there, but there's also a lot of other color. When we went to the Lego people and wanted to buy white ones, they wouldn't sell us white ones. They wouldn't break up the sets. So we painted a lot of blue ones and red ones and yellow ones to get it white. The windows are, that's architectural soap and chart tape, very old techniques, but it still holds together. And the train shed itself is entirely scratch built. All of those trusses over there, those individual truss panels, it's all wood. And we had a couple of guys taking home materials and coming back with a box of trusses. Right. And, you know, putting them in several years to do that. That was before my time. And it was mostly done when I joined, which was in 2001. So the vast, the vast majority of that was finished. There's been a lot of debates of do we cover it? And it always comes up, no, because then you can't see any of the trains, but you also can't see all of that lovely work. That's awesome. And it's lit as well. Now, as I look up the sides of the layout, I see a lot of buildings and a lot of switch yards and a lot of switchings and your signals work. Yes. I'm probably going to have to get an electronics guy for you, but that's all, that's all tied in to the DCC system. Okay. We have sensors for that. NCE. NCE. When they do something new, they come see us because this is, we're actually past the number of command stations or booster stations and whatnot. We have a few special things we do here to accommodate the size of the system necessary to run everything. And all of the tracks are broken up and isolated into three-foot sections. So if we get an issue, we can go around and pull jumpers until we find the problem. Right. We're paced or doing anything else. It's all very easily trouble shot. And I, if we, well, I can show you some little things that we can take hot shots of the control panels and how we do that, because we've got some guys who work in the aircraft industry that wired up our switching panels. Right. And they're a sight to behold. So give me an idea. What are the dimensions of this layout? It's roughly 4,000 square feet and about 27, 28 scale miles of mainline run when you do an operating session. Because we come in. I mean, you see two staging yards against these walls. So you start from either east or west from the staging yard, come onto the layout, run around the double track main, run around the single track and then off. Right. Okay. That's your 28 scale miles of run. Right. Tonight it's in display mode and the mainline and the branch line are separated because you'll notice you have freight trains on one and passenger trains on the other so that we can give a lot for the fans to see. Normally in ops mode, we run off the staging yard around the layout twice and then off the other side east to west. Wow. I see long sweeping curves and it looks like you're about 51 inches off the floor. About that, yeah. And the minimum radius here is 48 inches so there's no restrictions on any kind of equipment. I can run my 1941 daylight with the full width diaphragms touching, which is really nice for the appearance of the trains. Right. You use an NCE and a lot of throttles. Tell me about how many cabs can run this layout. There are about 20 right now and we have a few channels reserved for club use that we're not using. I think 10 of them. But we have about 20 active cabs and that's for the radio and then every so many feet you'll see the plug ins here just in case the radio should ever take a vacation or whatever radios do. These are never perfect 100% of the time. So you can plug in and follow your train and then we put the radio in later. So you can probably have 12 to 15 trains on this layout at the same time. The guys have to be cognizant of what's going on, they've got to watch the signals, they've got to be aware of the traffic, but there's room to run a lot of stuff here. Another thing I've noticed is you paid very close attention on how to light all the scenery on this layout. All of these lights here are 5,000 Kelvin lamps so they're color corrected so when you take pictures here you won't get that greenish tinge that you get from standard fluorescent lightings and we also have some incandescent that are strategically placed on scenes we want to highlight. This is the most amazing layout I've ever seen and I've seen it about eight years ago and I'm still absolutely overwhelmed every time I come here. I want to thank you so much for sharing this layout with the viewers of what's neat. Anything else you want to add? Just come see us next year. So you guys are open and people can join your group? Yeah, we're open and we function based on attraction rather than recruitment. You have to come see us and ask and it makes it better fit all the way around. That way we tend to keep the members we get and it's like trying to hire a good handyman. They don't need to advertise, they've got all the work they can do and we're kind of the same way with members. Tell me this is the best hobby in the world out. No it is. I wouldn't have it any other way. That's awesome. And with that guys, that's this segment for what's neat in model railroading this week. Rock and roll. Thank you Al. Hello, this is Michael Gross and you're watching What's Neat with Ken Patterson. Everything's fair. This is my model railroad. Let me show you what I'm talking about. So here's a bag of leaves here that I've collected. I've pulled out a couple different ones. When I'm looking to collect leaves, I don't typically want to do this type of leaf which is a gussin oak. The main thing is because they have the stem and this doesn't blend very well so you can use these for logs or whatever. So if I do collect one of these I'll usually just break it off and discard it so that basically I don't have the leaf. But what I'm trying to look for is basically just leaves like this. Something that doesn't have too long of a stem on it and kind of collect those and make sure they're good and dry, they're not wet. So then what I do is I have my magic bullet here and so I'll take my unit of heart and what I'll do is I'll take these leaves and I'll just shove them down in here, pack it full. In any blender work I just happen to have a magic bullet and guys, I'll give you a heads up. Don't take the one out of your wife's kitchen because it will stain it. And I do this for dirt too when I want to add some dirt to the layout. So basically that's what I got. Just very simple. Just packed in there and then just to put it on right, put that back on and then simply I'm going to drop it in and run it for a little while, get the uncut particles to the bottom. By the sound of it when it gets, when they get pretty much ready, it's pretty close. We'll just screw it up with that. So then I'll take a strainer, basically I'm going to dump these out. The fine stuff will go through, stuff will stay up top. This two or three times until it gets good and processed. So this is what I end up with. It's a very fine, leafy material and pretty much it's ready to go on the layout. Now what I'll do is I'll have this finer, this rougher stuff here. Sometimes you can use it for heavy briary type patches but typically what I'll do is I'll just run it back through the blender with some other and chop it up a little bit finer. So that's pretty much what you end up with is this right here. Now here I'm on the layout. You can see where I have placed the tree and basically grass doesn't grow under trees very well. So I don't put the grass around there, I take the leaves and just kind of basically take them and just kind of sprinkle them around everywhere. That kind of gives a little bit more realistic look of where dead leaves had fallen off and kind of adds to the scenery. Another tree that I have done that to right through there. So get out there now and collect you some leaves. Even if you don't grind them up at the moment, stick them under the layout, stick them in a closet somewhere that you can use them in the future because this is a good cheap freeway to add a lot of realism to your layout. And that's What's Neat. For this segment of What's Neat, I'm with Chris and Don McRenals over here in this beautiful Santa Fe circuit 1970 to 1972 layout. And I've got to tell you what, this is exactly what we all expect when you bring up the word passion for trains. So tell me about this fantastic layout that you have built with your son. Well, this one is actually the second one we built. We moved and we started probably about 10 years ago and wanted a double track mainline. And so that's what we got and got a lot of Santa Fe equipment. You love the cigar paint schemes. I can tell that. But you also have a passion for the industry, which is really represented on your layout because you've got years of experience over here on the east side of St. Louis in a certain industry. Tell us about that. Well, Chris and I both work at the refinery. I started out with Shell for 20 years and retired from Phillips 66, which it is now. And he's a crane operator at the refinery. My mother also worked there for 44 years. I had 37, so. That's awesome. And Chris, your mother has a passion for puzzles because I've noticed all the art down here in this layout room that decorates this layout is all a lot of Santa Fe puzzles. Tell me about that. Well, ever since, as long as I can remember, she's put puzzles together. So I guess we was able to find that Santa Fe had several puzzles to offer. So it's good that she could put them together and glue them together and we could hang them on the walls down here. It's great art. The one thing that's great about this hobby is when you have a father-son relationship where they're both working on the models together. And Chris, I understand you really like scenery. Tell us about that. I do. I like seeing the kind of how it all comes together from the grass to the trees and kind of you envision something in your head of how it's going to look when it's done and it's neat to kind of see it all come to life. Do you have a favorite part of this layout? I definitely have to say in the city, seeing that all come together with the people and the rivers, the bridges that cross the river is definitely so neat stuff. One thing I've noticed on this layout is you've used a lot of Walters structures and kits including bridges. Most all the kits are probably Walters kits. I like bridges as you can tell. The double track here with the swing bridge reminds me of the one that used to be in Alton that the Burlington run across. So yeah and then the trestle over there was Illinois Terminal run across the trestle like that up north of Staunton, Illinois. That's awesome and I see a lot of your friends in the background that love to run the layout with us. Is that pretty much? Yeah. I've got to have a special thanks. The guy holding the camera here is Sonny Sellers. He helps me all the time. In fact, we spent nights down here until two or three o'clock in the morning and Ken Crosswitch down here that owns K-10 model trains helped me tremendously and of course all my other friends back there. That's the one beautiful thing about the hobby is the magnitude of individuals that you meet, the personalities and the people that complement your passion. Yeah, that's right. I mean it makes it a lot more fun. I can't say I really enjoy coming down here too much by myself so the more people the better. That's awesome. What else would you like to add to this, Chris? Just kind of like he said, it's fun to be nice to rather than just him and I, it's nice when we get a crowd down here and get multiple trains running and maybe get to the point where we can start actually do some operating sessions. Ooh, paperwork. Yeah, we're leaving, up and off cars, picking up cars so it'd be nice to see that all come together in the future. Now if you all out there would like to see this beautiful layout, it will be on tour for the St. Louis 2020 NMRA show coming up this July and you're going to have probably a bunch of bus loads of people come and enjoy this work of art. Well, I hope we do. My last layout was on the NMRA tour and we really enjoyed it. In fact, Chuck Kitchcock and several of them came to see it and of course their Santa Fe fans too and so that was great. The bench work height is just right. Your minimum radius, you've got some wide radiuses on this, a lot of double track and single track main line, which will be great for the operating. Tell me how high is about the layout? I think it's about 54 inches. I tried to stay with a minimum radius of about 30. So that way I can run almost everything, the passenger trains and the longer cars. Something else I've noticed that you really enjoyed now is signaling. You guys are getting into the lighting effects of signaling? Well, the signals are there and they're lit. They don't actually work, but they do add a lot to the layout and then someday they may work prototypically, I hope. Guys, gentlemen, this is the best hobby in the world and it's because of relationships father and son just like this that make it magic. So thank you very much. That's this segment for What's Neat. Be sure to check out this layout if you're coming to St. Louis for the 2020 NMRA show. And guys, let's give a round of applause for Don and Chris, right? 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 MyCaboose.com.