 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. Additional support is provided by Walthers Trains. Everything you need to build a great model railroad. Check out their website at walthers.com. And by Bachman Trains. Now that's the way to run a railroad. Check out their website at bachmentrains.com. And thank you for helping us support the best hobby in the world. This is What's Neat for April 2022. I'm your host Ken Patterson and this month we do have a great show in that Jennifer Kirk shares with us how to use solder, how to solder wires, how to solder track, a great mystery to a lot of folks. Jennifer makes it simple and easy the way she explains it this month in a 10 minute segment for the video. Also this month, Mike Buddy stops by and he shares with us how to make windows for your vehicles and your buildings using simple scotch tape and packing tape. It's very effective and Mike gives us a very comprehensive how to this month on how to do just that. Also this month, our great editor, Joe Fugate from Model Road Hobbyist Magazine shares with us the new format of the magazine, how it's all laid out, much easy to navigate. A really good interview from Joe this month. Also Larry Harrington from Bachman Trains in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. He shares with us some of the new products that are just recently announced from Bachman. Really exciting this month. Thank you very much Larry for that. I'd also like to say that Walthers has introduced two new products this month. SD 50s, very beautiful detailed locomotives and also 60 foot automotive box cars, auto parts cars. This Mike Buddy's gonna love and this is exactly what you need when you make that automotive consist for your layout. I'd like to remind you to please watch the What Sneak This Week show that we shoot every Saturday night, sharing with you all the new products in the hobby, great interviews, great guests, walking you through the week to week new news that is in this, the best hobby in the world, the hobby of model railing. And so with that, let's continue on with the rest of this April 2022 What Sneak. Hi there to you, I'm Jennifer Kirk and today I want to talk to you a little bit about an easy way to tackle soldering. Soldering, of course, is the joining of two metal objects together, using a melted metal, the solder, as the glue. For a lot of modelers, talking about soldering might as well be talking about some kind of weird voodoo or witchcraft, but it doesn't have to be that way. And in this video, I'm gonna show you some of the common applications in modeling for soldering and the really easy way that you can tackle these and get the job done really, really well without breaking a sweat. In this demonstration, these are the products that you're going to need. And you'll find that soldering is so much easier using these than what you're probably used to. Most importantly is the solder. And I recommend the DCC Concepts S179 solder. This does not have any flux within it, so it gives you a good clean bond. Use it in conjunction with the DCC Concepts No Clean Flux. And this does exactly what it says on the bottle. It doesn't require any cleaning afterwards and is safe to use on any of the electronics. To apply this, you're gonna need something like a small paintbrush, just enough to be able to get the flux exactly where you need it. Also really useful is one of these wire strippers that makes stripping the wire ends so much easier. And when we join wire to wire, I recommend the use of these heat shrinks, again from the DCC Concepts range. These make for great protection for any exposed soldering where a wire is joined direct to another wire. And you'll see this later on in the video. Whether you model in DC or DCC, no matter how hard you try, you really can't avoid at some point to have to put droppers to your track just to make sure that you've got good electrical continuity. Now perceived wisdom might be that to avoid damaging the track and you don't want to melt the ties here, is to use a lower wattage soldering iron. This is actually the worst thing that you can do. Now the reason for this is if you use a low wattage iron, it's gonna take a lot longer to heat up the piece of metal that you want to solder to. And all that time, that heat, is just being sucked out along the rail and it means that you have to take longer and longer to apply that energy in. And all the while, these plastic ties are gonna start to melt and that causes a lot of damage. If you use a high power iron, something like a 60, 70 or even 80 watt iron, you can actually get the heat that you need into the piece that you're soldering to really, really quickly. You can get the soldering done and dusted before the plastic ties have had time to melt. So a higher powered iron is actually a really good way to make sure that you don't risk damaging your track. It's also quicker and easier, so you'll find it a much simpler process. I'm gonna show you now the wrong way to do this. And this is with this type of solder, really easy to get from your local store. It's got the flux already self-contained within it and I've got a pre-tinned dropper wire here. And I'm gonna try and solder this to this track. And what you're gonna see is that even with a reasonably high power iron, it's gonna be tricky to do. Now I've pre-tinned the dropper and I'm gonna try and tin the track. And as you can see, the solder is struggling to actually adhere to the rail. And I end up with a dirty blob that really doesn't look very neat at all. I can then solder to this. And quite frankly, what we're getting here is a complete mess. It's proving tricky to get the metal to join properly. And we end up with a great big, ugly blob. You can also see that those ties have started to melt. And that really doesn't look good at all. The bond too can be quite weak. And you can see there, that's just pulled straight off the rail. We haven't got a good clean bond and we've actually got a huge blob of solder. But there is a better way. I'm gonna be using this No Clean Flux from DCC Concepts. And with that, I'm gonna use the DCC Concepts S179 solder. And this doesn't have any flux in whatsoever. Normally, flux can be quite destructive. And you have to be quite careful not to make a mess. But this No Clean Flux is really good. It does exactly what it says on the bottle. It doesn't require any cleaning whatsoever. I've got a fresh dropper wire here. I'm gonna get a little brush and I'm gonna very carefully start work with the flux where I want to solder. Just dip it in. And in fact, you might find easiest. So just dip the wire into the flux. I've broken a little piece of the solder off just the ease of using in this video. We've already got the flux there on the wire. Then I'm gonna just melt a little bit of that onto the iron itself. When I tap that to the soldering iron, you can see it just wicks up that solder instantly. That wire is now tinned. We go back to the flux and where we want to solder, I'm gonna choose just there. I'm gonna run a little bit of flux onto the side of the rail. And now what I want to do is to just tin that side of the rail. Got another tiny amount of solder onto the iron and then very, very quickly. It's tinned. It's much neater. We're using a lot less solder and you can see there. It just instantly adhered to the rail. What we can do now is go back to our flux. I just want to put a little bit more onto where we're soldering. Gonna dip the tinned wire in here. You can use the brush if, for example, this is coming up through the baseboard. And then again, just tin soldering iron and then very, very quickly. That's the two together and solder. And what we can see there is we've got a much neater join. Moreover, that is very, very strong and you're much less likely to get dry solder joints or joints where the wire just works loose over time. So much better. The next situation that I want to talk to you about is maybe this where we've got some wires and for whatever reason, we removed the plug that was on the end where you could have wires that you've cut and then you need to solder them back together. In this instance, I'm looking to attach this stay alive to its companion decoder. Now normally, this would have a loom on the end that just plugs in. But what I want to do is to put that back to the decoder and this is really, really easy using this method of soldering. First up, what we need to do is just take a little bit of the plastic insulation back and just very carefully just take a tiny amount. You don't need a lot. We then need to go to the wires onto the decoder and do the same. We now need to tin again using the no clean flux and the S179 solder. And because this no clean flux is safe to use around electronics, you don't need to clean it afterwards. You don't need to worry if any of it gets onto the electronics or the circuit boards in the locomotive. It won't cause any damage whatsoever. And it's a really quick and easy process to be able to tin them, little bit of solder and it's literally as easy as just pressing the soldering iron up to the edge. And you can almost see the solder wick off the iron. It really is easy. Now that we've done that, a really good way of just protecting the join from any risk of shorting is to use these heat shrink tubes. Again, these are from DCC Concepts and each of these tubes is quite long. So what we can actually do is just using a pair of scissors, we can cut just enough to cover where the solder join is. And then we're gonna solder light colors to light colors. Again, a little more flux just to make sure all is well. And then this is the bit that's really easy to get wrong. Just need to thread these down. Otherwise, once you've finished, you won't be able to slide them on afterwards. Back in a little bit of solder on the iron and then light color to light color and you get a good, strong join. And there we've got three good, strong bonds. Heat shrink tubing just slide up over where the bond has been made and then using the soldering iron, you can just get this to shrink back down and it will grip the join, won't slide free. And that will just really reliably protect it from any risk of shorting and thus protecting your electronics. And there we have it, good, strong join and we can now really easily plug this in with the greatest of ease. The final situation where you'd need to solder that I want to talk to you about is here, where you need to solder a Steyer Live or a smart power pack directly to the decoder. What you can see here on the decoder is we've got these three tiny little solder tabs. You really don't want to be applying a lot of heat for a long length of time or you risk damaging the rest of the decoder. But that's where this flux method of soldering really does come into its own. Here we have the smart power pack and again, these wires come pre-tinned. What we do need to do, however, is to tin these tiny little solder pads. It's really important that you don't bridge these together. With the liquid flux method, this is really, really easy to get a small amount of solder just where you need it to be. Getting as much of the flux off the brush as we can then very, very carefully apply a tiny amount to these solder pads. And because this flux is absolutely safe to use on electronics and doesn't need clean up afterwards, it's perfectly safe to use in this situation. So we're gonna get a tiny amount of solder, add that to the iron and then very, very carefully tap, tap, and tap. And this is all that you need. We've tinned each of those tiny little tabs on the decoder and we haven't got any bridging in between. As you saw as well, we only applied the soldering iron for a fraction of a second so there's no risk of heat damage to the rest of the components. Next, it is simply a case of reapplying a little tiny amount of the no-clean flux. So in the right order, it's simply a case of this dab. And it's as simple as that. And you can see, we've got a good, strong bond with minimal bare wire showing beyond the edge of the decoder board. We can then repeat that after each dab with the solder, just check and make sure that we have no bridging between those tabs. And there we have it. A really good bond, no bridging between the terminals and it's as easy as that. This decoder is now ready to go in the locomotive and program with this smart power pack reliably attached. I hope you really found today's video informative and it just goes to show that soldering doesn't have to be mystical witchcraft. With the right products that we've outlined today, you too can get some great results. It's as simple as that. I'm Jenny Kerg, wishing you happy modeling. Until next time, bye for now. For this segment of What's Neat for April's What's Neat 2022, I've got Larry Harrington all the way from Philadelphia, Pennsylvania from Bachman Industries. Larry, welcome to the What's Neat show. Thanks Ken, glad to be here again. It's awesome to have you Larry. Now you've got some new exciting things that you want to inform the What's Neat viewers about which I'm really excited about and I look forward to hearing. Well, first of all, I want to remind everybody we just came out with our 2022 catalog. So we actually have hard copy prints available now. So there's several ways to get this. You can, your dealers may have them. We just started shipping them out a couple of weeks ago. So they may not have them yet but they'll be in their dealer's hands soon. If you can't wait, you can go right to our website and order a hard copy and also you can also digitally download a PDF or view it on the flip book online as well. That is very cool. And they can also pick those up at train shows, can't they? Correct, yeah. Any show that Bachman attends will have, we will have catalogs with us. A lot of the shows have been canceled still but we are attending large scale show in Annapolis at the end of this month. We'll have catalogs there. We'll also be at the Rocky Mountain show in Colorado. We'll have catalogs there as well. It's fantastic. So Larry, tell me, what's new and exciting out there in Philadelphia? Well, we just got recently had received two of our newest items that were announced in NMRA last year. Those are test shots for first of all, the 50 foot express reefer. Nice. So it's a very nice head end car for your passenger trains. So it's got very good detail all around. There's the top catwalk area. This is all new. That's pretty exciting. All new. This is completely new tooling except for the couplers. Everything else is new. So there's the under frame detail. Nice. And there's the other side that we didn't show yet. So this will be available in four road names. We have Canadian Pacific, New York Central, Pacific Fruit Express and Railway Express. It's in the catalog. You can see the images on our current catalog. So take a look at the actual paint schemes. There are illustrations at this point but we haven't received the painted samples yet but once soon as we get them we'll be sure to share them as well. So always check out our social medias, Instagram, Facebook. We do a really good job of getting the information out there. That's pretty amazing. On the table I've got a lot of your Thomas products because they're so colorful and people love them. Thomas is a great inroads to the hobby. I mean we see people that start out with Thomas and go on to scale modeling or some of them continue on Thomas forever. They make their own little island of Sodor and you can do it in three scales now with large scale, HO and end scale now. So that's a great way to get into the hobby and we have a lot of new exciting products and Thomas coming out but I'm sure that'll be another show. We can talk about this. Absolutely. I love the end scale one. We show that off all the time on the podcast. The second item I wanted to show you is this is really nice car. This is the 55 foot coil car. Very nice. Yeah, this has got a lot of detail to it, including the coils. So we've included all the six coils for the, we have the painted versions over here and the unpainted over here. They all come out so you can have a realistic unloading or loading scene, sequence at your steel mill. Very nice. Very nice detail all around. Take the coils off here and show you the bottle. Otherwise I'll have a big mess. There's a lot of planning that goes into designing a car like that. Yes, there is. We've been working on this for a few months before we even approved any of the drawings. So this comes in four road names. It'll be in BNSF, CSX, Union Pacific and Norfolk Southern and the retail on this is $69. No, that's retail price. That's our suggested retail. Just like any other, like when you go to the car dealer you get a suggested sticker price. Well, the street price usually comes out to be significantly less than our suggested retail. So that's the two new items I have to show you this week. I'm really excited about them. It's nice to expand our HO rolling stock line. Everybody a lot of times gets excited about locomotives but it's important to have something to pull behind those locomotives as well. You are so right. You are so right. I love all the various products. I went through that Bokman catalog. You guys sent me an advanced copy of it and it's absolutely beautiful. The cover came out nice and there's so many products inside in all different scanners. Yes, someone did a good job on the photographer. That's awesome. But we added the, I don't know if you noticed it's the Philadelphia skyline in the background. So it kind of gave us our local stamp on it. So it looks really nice. Also in this is our new concrete tie track. Yes. I talked about that on the previous show but it's something to note. We're starting to expand that significantly in our product line. So we have a couple of new announcements in the catalog for that as well. That's fantastic. That Bokman easy track line, it allows you to do anything you want all the different various turnouts and crossovers and straight tracks and various radiuses. It's quite a line. And when you go to the hobby shop, it takes up an entire wall at the hobby shop. It does, it does. Yes. And now it's going to take up two walls with the concrete track now. So are you guys planning on doing turnouts and things in that as well? We do have turnouts planned. We started considering the concrete ties as more of a scale model or track. We started by doing, we did the typical 18 inch curves but we also did wide radius right away. We did 22, we'll probably add to that as well. And the first turnout we did, instead of doing a left and right standard turnout, we did the number four because that's more common in model rail writing. So for the realistic layout. So number four will be added to the concrete tie and also the haze bumper as well. That's fantastic. Give us that website where people can visit and look at all of these wonderful products. It's www.BokmanTrains. It's B-A-C-H-M-A-N-N, trains.com. That's awesome Larry. So is that what we have to talk about for this month? That is. That's awesome. Thank you so much for informing the viewers about what's new. We always are excited about it. We look forward to seeing you at the next train shows. We'll be there. That's awesome. And that is this segment for What's Neat. For this segment of What's Neat, I've got Mike Buddy here today in the basement. Hi everybody. And Mike is gonna show us a very in-depth way to create windows for your vehicles. Now we've touched on this before in shows, but today we're really gonna get down to the nitty gritty. Right. I'm just gonna show you, you know, easy vehicle to start and they're progressively difficult, but the principle is the same for all of these cars. Something I started doing on my Matchbox cars when I was a kid back in the 60s because they didn't come with windows and it bothered me. So, and they lasted a long time. I still have one car at home. I should have brought it. And it's got the ribbon to the Scotch tape windshield in it. But anyway, if you wanna try this, it's also good for like structures and cabooses, some, you know, flat, plain square windows. It's not perfect because it's not three-dimensional, but what you're really trying to do is fool the eye. You know, if people will notice a lot more if there's nothing in the windshield, then they will, if there's a flawed windshield, you know. That is so true. That's exactly how we did the guest, or the fire department building when we had all the fire apparatus and vehicles running in previous What's Need video just a few months back. So Mike, we're gonna see what you're gonna do. All right. Well, like I said, you can start this with some simple square, flat windows just to try it. And I do get questions all the time about the, does dust stick to the back of whatever you're trying to do. If you put it on all sides, it's basically sealed. You know, dust rarely gets in from the bottom. So that's one way. But here's, these are some finished cars over on the left side here that I finished. This is a Chevy Step Fan from Greg Dixon with DeKal's from Stan, you know, Yedlovsky for a Snap-on Tools truck. And I did the windows on this with Scotch tape, like I'm gonna show you on this one. All right, I'll start right here with this red Step Fan. And what I'm gonna do is peel off a piece of clear tape about this big, big enough to cross over, but don't get your fingerprints on the part you're gonna try and use. So what I'm gonna do is line this up with the bottom of the windshield frame. Take a toothpick or, you know, paintbrush handle, pencil, I don't know, I just use a toothpick because they're handy and they're easy to find. Burnish around the top, and this has a center post. You can use that on the sides. Bottom part, I really don't usually mess with, the top and sides are good enough to hold it down. So take a sharp blade and trim as carefully as you can, leaving enough to hold the window in place. Cut my finger open or something. Okay, now I'm gonna trim across the top of the frame here. I don't know if you can see it. You know, you might be more comfortable with a knife. I just grew up using single edge razor blades, so I'm just more comfortable using those. Peel off the excess. Trim this left driver's side again here. I think I got that off. Now you wanna be careful not to stick the tape on too hard on the sides because many times I've lifted up the paint around the edge and you know, that's always frustrating. So I don't know if you can zoom in on that, but it's not perfect because it's not perfectly flat, but you know, at least there's reflections and that your eye just, you know, passes over that because it looks like it's supposed to look. So anyway, other vehicles with a little bit of a curve at the bottom, you would use the same technique but cut a curve at the bottom of the tape. Now this isn't really, I better get this off here. This isn't really that curved so I don't have to make that much of a curve but I'm just kind of winging it here. I'm just gonna pick up the body. Now I might have made this to curve too much. Yeah, you don't wanna pull the tape too tight because then you get a concave, your windshield's caved in, so you wanna kind of round it off like this one. Yeah, this bottom really isn't right, but I'll go ahead and trim the sides so you can see what it would look like. So you're burnishing it with the razor blade this time. Right, yeah, that's a habit I picked up but I figured I probably shouldn't show that. It doesn't look very safe. Yeah, now this bottom really should be trimmed but I'll go ahead and do the sides and the top so you can see how it looks. Feels like I'm cutting through the paint on this. I might lose the paint on this metal casting. Oh, that came out halfway decent. If you work with it a little bit, you can get it on there a little more smoothly. This is a little too long at the bottom so if I lined up the bottom, it would have come out a little bit better but just practice makes perfect with this technique and this car has pretty much of a curve in the bottom so I'll do that one. I'm gonna cut the tape in here because it's almost like having a third hand and having the tape pulled out like that. So I'm gonna cut a curve and not be enough but I'll go ahead and try it and I gotta pull this out so it doesn't get stuck. Okay, I don't know if you can see how that piece of tape has a tiny curve at the bottom, especially as my hand moving around so much. Okay, I'm gonna try and put this down on this gold car, match the curvature to the, I just broke one of the wheels off. I'm not making it look very easy, am I? It's perfect. Okay, I need to bring this edge up just a little. It'd be very difficult to make curved windows using styrene, wouldn't it? Yeah. Clear acetate. Yeah, because I really haven't found a glue that holds it well enough and it's not really as flexible as this tape is to match the exact curve that you need. Probably there are some situations where you can't use the tape like some older vehicles have an overhang or over the back window or the front window. You know, you really need to have it held down on three sides for it to look, you know, this good. Yeah, this one, now chances are I might pull a bunch of gold paint off of this. If I do, I'll make it into a beater. John Tyson told me about, I first told him about this technique a few years ago. Then he told me, he refined it in order to prevent the paint being lifted when you pull off the excess tape. What John does before he paints the vehicle is takes fine sandpaper and scuffs that area up all on the sides and the roof. Then same thing on the back, wherever you're gonna put the tape. And then with primer and paint over that, it held good enough so that it worked out. I've done about five cars using his technique of sanding before I painted and that really worked out well. So, now I was doing a whole bunch of these station wagons here because I had a bunch of bottle racks I wanted to fill and this was before the ather and rack came out and they ended up making a wall bash one similar to this but I resin cast all these cars. I made a master from the classic metal works, 78 Impala. I had a siren, I built a roof and everything and made a master so I could cast resin copies of it to fill my auto racks. So, this is what they turned out like and I needed a way to do the windows on them so. Show me that car again. There you go. Yes. Nice, Mike. Okay. So, I'm gonna try this the same way. I haven't had much luck doing it real well but this car turned out halfway decent. Okay, I'm going to do the curve again at the bottom of the windshield. This car is a little easier because it has concealed wipers. Sometimes the vehicle models that have windshield wipers at the bottom there, it causes a little bit of distortion when you try using this method. It's not perfect but to me it's better than having nothing in the windows. Takes a little bit of work in the tape around here. Pulling the tape off without losing any paint. Okay, now I need to pull it a little bit tighter. Anyway, I had to do, I don't know, I've probably done about six by levels full of these station wagons and I used the same technique for the sides and the back glass. And again, you know, it's not perfect because they're flush fitting which on these cars and windows we're sunken in a little bit and you'd be able to see the pillars but it's an illusion. Again, it's all an illusion that we're trying to create. As is anything we're doing with our model railroad, you know, we're trying to create our little section of reality and what it is that we like to do. So, I hope this helps you guys. I get questions a lot about this on the Scotch tape windows and it does take a little bit of practice but if you know you can practice and if you don't like it just tear it off and do it again. So it's cheap, it's easy and I think it's fun. So, you know, give it a try. Yeah, necessity is a mother of invention. That's why I decided to do these this way I didn't want to try and vacuum forming them. But anyway, I hope this works for you. If you guys try it and it works out I'd like to see some of your pictures. So, that's what it is for What's Neat This Week from Mike Buddy. Thanks for watching. For this segment of What's Neat, I've got the publisher, our favorite Joe Fugate all the way from Portland, Oregon. You'll know him as the editor and publisher of Model Railroad Hobbyist Magazine, a wonderful online magazine, otherwise known as an E-Zine Joe. Welcome to your own show that we do for you every month called What's Neat in Model Railroading. Well, thanks Ken. I'm thrilled to be here. We were looking back and it's probably been, what, over 18 months since I've been on here. So it's long overdue. It was a good day. A lot of things have happened in your life. You've had fires, you've had ice storms, and you have published a whole lot of great, great magazines every month. Well, thank you Ken. Yes, you know, you've been with us what? Was it 2012? It was. You started with us? I think my first article might have been in the spring of 12 or the fall of 11. And then that's when I approached you to do the monthly in the magazine still photograph and write about whatever photo project or project I had down here at any one given time just to create a monthly segment. Because as I recognize, I've been published in so many of the magazines with 450 plus articles, 175 plus covers in the Model Press, but I did see that it was going to the internet. And I thought that you might be the way to go. And sure enough, you and I struck it up and it worked out beautifully. What happened was, as you well know, I bought a video camera and I discovered that you could say so much more in four minutes of video than you could in an eight page article with 10 photographs, which turned out to be true. And it's amassed itself from three minute videos at the start to a 30 to sometimes an hour long video every month where we get our hands dirty, how-tos, special guests. And it's mostly the show where you build stuff. Right, yes. Yeah, when you discover digital video, things changed. And then to me, the other big milestone was when you started the weekly podcast, video podcast. And that has really changed things. I tell you, when I go to conventions, one of the things I like to do is I like to talk to people at the conventions and find out how they got in a hobby, how they found out about MRH, if they know about us and all of those things. And very often, when I ask them, how did you find out about model trains and or how did you find out about model or hobbyist? They'll tell me, Ken Patterson's what's neat. And that's no joke. So that, your video presence on YouTube is huge. So, thank you. At the RPM show that we did here in the basement where we had Chris Palomarys, George Bogatuck and Robert Steers and so many people in the room last July down here, I think Chris Palomarys summarized it very well when he said that we've given a platform for announcing new products in a timely manner, whereas the publications can't do that because they've got the printing deadlines and there's this delay in time. Whereas we can give a platform with the new products and new guests, the immediacy of the platform is, I think, really what helps make it work. Yes, yes, yes. Definitely true. So there may be some people who don't know a lot about model or hobbyist, don't know exactly who we are. So I'm gonna do a screen share and let's just talk a little bit about who we are. So let me get the fire up the screen share here. So start sharing. So at this point, you should see the model or hobbyist forum. We recently moved to new forum software that's very good on a smartphone or a tablet as well as on a PC. And so this is our forum page. Let me go back to our main homepage here. And so this is the model road hobbyist homepage and you can do mrhmag.com, mrhmag.com to go to this. And we publish a magazine, free magazine every month. We also publish a magazine called Running Extra. The idea there is ads only pay for so many pages in the free magazine, but we have other great articles that people are submitting. And so what do we do? And so what we decided to do was actually add another 100 pages to the magazine that's not free, it's $2.99 a month, which is a steal compared to what are you paying for a 80 page paper magazine these days? It's like seven, eight bucks maybe. So anyway, for three bucks, and if you subscribe, you can save up to 80%. And also just mentioned, when you subscribe, you also get as part of your subscription access to all the back issues as part of the subscription. So it's like $29.99, $30 bucks, and you get the next 12 issues, plus you get all the back issues, which is like approaching 40 magazines at this point. So huge, huge library of knowledge, both in the free magazine and the Running Extra. We've been doing Running Extra since 2018, and it's extremely popular. We also have our Train Masters TV. Let me visit that real quick. So this is our model railroading video site. I call it Netflix for Model Trains. And there's hundreds and hundreds of videos on here. You know, you can just, I'll just do like the layouts section down here. Let's find this, okay. So I do see all. This is layouts, okay? This is just the layouts category, okay? Video after video after video after video, and there's hundreds. See, I'm still going. There's hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of videos out here on all kinds of topics. That's amazing. Yes, and it's not free. It's like depending upon whether you buy an annual membership or if you pay monthly. Monthly is $4.99. By the way, I'll mention you can also get the Train Masters TV app for Roku, for Android devices, for Apple iPads and iPhone devices. So you can get the free app and then you can sign up for Train Masters TV and you can watch it through the app on your mobile device. You can watch it on your Roku big screen. And like I said, hundreds and hundreds of videos out here and we're adding new videos roughly every one to two weeks, we add a new video out here. That's a lot of editing and your production values are quite good. Yes, we try really hard to make it high quality because I figure if you're paying for content, it needs to look better than your typical YouTube fare. So we work hard to make sure that when we're working on small details, we try to get in really close so you can see what's going on. Good lighting, professional narration, high quality editing. So yeah, we try to try to make sure that you're getting your monies worth when you sign up for Train Masters TV. So just a quick talk about the forum. Pinned at the top, you can see we've got Model Railwood Hobbys January 2022 and you can go in and you can read it online. And so the- This guy's photography is amazing. That water shot that you were showing about five minutes ago was amazing. Yes, well, that's actually a, we did an article called The Perfect Storm. That's it. That is amazing. And so this is actually a stock photo. We cheated a little. This is a stock photo because it's about a layout. It's about this fellow who took his layout and basically tore it apart. And it was, he talks about the Perfect Storm that led, it's an end scale layout that he had. What led to tearing this, you know, a layout that was almost completely finished. And he decided to cut it all up, change a bunch of stuff around. And so what led to his dissatisfaction and then the need to completely just, you know, rip and replace a bunch of stuff. So it was the Perfect Storm. That's a very interesting subject matter too. That would be podcast material. Hey, Joshua, you got tired of your layout. What changed? What changed in your mind? Yes, we had some fun with this article because we put together this cover. That was fun. So, you know, this is a prototype railroad scene that's been enhanced with Photoshop to add the lightning and the dramatic lighting and everything. So yeah, I kept thinking, how can we make the cover really fun with this? And so I like his title of the Perfect Storm. So I thought, let's really have some fun with this. So yeah, so we've got, that's a MRH. So let's go back to, this is the form. So you can go to the form and every month that the top pin will be the latest issues. So this is the latest issue of running extra. Let me go to the top here. Okay. And you can purchase this, either single issues or $2.99, or you can get the subscription special. So the subscription special is $2,999, starts with the December, will change this to January, starts with the January 2022 issue. So that's 12 issues for $1,999, plus you get all the back issues for just another 10 bucks. That's amazing. So yeah, so I know when I go to the grocery store and buy three publications, I've already spent $25. Yes. So we also have the MRH Store. Let me take you there real quick. So it's store.mrhmag.com. The forum is forum.mrhmag.com. So this is the store and then we sell all kinds of downloadable videos, DVDs. We sell paperbacks. So go to the paperback section and so these are the paperbacks that we sell. You can also get eBooks. Also the store is where we sell all the running extra. We call it monthly eBooks because they're ad-free. And there's just a ton of these here as well. So yeah, lots and lots of stuff available from MRH. Fantastic, fantastic. Give me your picture back. Okay, just a minute before I leave, I need to give my wife credit. That's Patty because she's the office manager. She does all the pay stuff. And so if you like order a product from us and talk to us in the office, she'll be talking to her most likely. But she's also lives, like or not, she lives the hobby as well. So here she is weathering a structure over on the right. Bottom right, she's actually been an ops crew member on my Ciskey Line 1 ops sessions. Over on the far left, she's running trains at a convention. So yeah, she does a lot of stuff for us. That's amazing, Joe. You're a very lucky man that you are able to share your passion with your partner in your life. That's a very wonderful thing. Now that I've got you back on screen, I do want to ask you this question. And it's been in my mind. I don't know that I've ever asked you this before. I want to though. You started this magazine many, many years ago. And prior to that, you were in fact a model writer and you were well versed in technology. But what was it? What was your passion to move forward and create such an epic publication like you've done that has an online presence? Well, it actually started in 2004. I was fascinated with digital video. So I wanted to, and I love to teach. And so I thought, well, how about if we marry my interest in teaching with doing some digital video on the hobby? So I actually created my Ciskey Line video series. Talked about my layout. I did a series of five videos. It shows different aspects of the layout. The design, the construction, the DCC and wiring part, the operations, scenery. A couple of videos on scenery techniques. And that's been really popular. But then I got to thinking. I came up with the idea originally that I called model railroad or online, which is basically take the model railroad or magazine, put it online. So I talked to Combok and they said, you know, I said, you could make an online magazine and make it free and have it ad supported. And so they thought about it for a month or so. And then they came back to me and said, well, interesting idea. But we don't want to undercut our flagship product, which is the paper magazine. Understandable. And so they basically said no. Right. And so I went off and said, well, I'm going to do it myself then. And so in 2009, I launched model railroad obvious magazine free. It was like 150 pages with ads. And just gone from there. And as things went along and you got more into video, I started thinking, you know, we need some sort of video platform to do this as well. And could we make it free? No, because first of all, as you know, can model railroad or model railroad hobby vendors tend to be pretty old school. It was even difficult at first to try to convince them to advertise in a digital magazine. But they finally got it. And so then, you know, moving to video, could you convince hobby manufacturers to make video ads? First of all, they wouldn't know how to do it. And so then they would need someone to do it for them. And then for us to do it and make it cost effective, they'd have to pay a price they probably wouldn't be willing to pay. So bottom line, it just didn't seem like a free ad supported model train channel would work. So we went with the paid membership model and we launched Train Masters TV. Right, Barry Silverthorn used to do a great job on that. He's moved on and now you've got other great people working with you. You've also got Jeff Schultz. He edits my pieces every month. You've got James Regear, who is one of our podcast members down here on the show that now works with you. Name some of the other wonderful people that you work with to create this great magazine. Well, we have James Regear, which you mentioned. We also have Mike Dodd, who does a lot of the copy editing. I mentioned my wife already. We have several prototype modeling columnists. We have Nick Moff. We have Mike Rose, who has an audio podcast too. We love Mike. Yes. We have, I don't know, I'm going to blank out here. We have Yosemite Valley, Jack Burgess. And we have Tony Thompson, who does a lot of SP modeling. And we also have Marty McGurk, who used to work for Model Railroader. And he's modeling Northeastern New England railroading. So yeah, we have quite a collection of people. We also have Les Halmos, who does a lot of the ad work for us. And then his sidekick, JF. And they have traveled to conventions a lot, because it's at the conventions where we generally can talk to advertisers the easiest about being a part of MRH Media, which by the way, in 2016, we renamed the company. It was originally called Model Trains Video. And then we added the magazine. And as time went on, it just seemed like the Model Trains Video name was too limiting. So we incorporated in 2016. So we're now a corporation. And we're called MRH Media, what we named the corporation. Fantastic. Guys, if you want to see more of Jill Fugate, he will be on the What's Neat This Week podcast. You'll find him in the first week of February 2022, that issue, that episode that's coming out. And I really enjoy having a conversation with you and allowing you to tell the modelers and all the folks that view our show what it is that you actually go through. And I think you've done a good job of that, plus conveying all the various types of things that you do offer the modelers. Well, thanks, Ken. What I tell people is I'm just a model railroader just like you and love the hobby. And anything I can do to help my fellow modeler, that's what I'm here for. That's awesome, Joe. I really appreciate you being on the video with us today. And that is this segment of 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. Walthers Trains, supporting hobby retailers across the world since 1932. Check out their website and learn more at walthers.com. Bachman Trains, now that's the way to run a railroad. Check out their website at bachmentrains.com.