 For this What's Neat this week, it's September. We're celebrating Jeff Meyer opening up with some UP aces, some beautiful atherin locomotives on a snow diorama. And then we've got Michael Buddy with some incredible 3D printed vehicles that he has perfected the customization of to make them look really good for auto rack loads. And then to finish this What's Neat this week video, I'm going to talk about layout construction and how important it is to design your layout modularly for the simplicity of working on your models at the workbench. And that's September's What's Neat this week. What you shooting Jeff? I was just playing around with snow dioramas and mountains. It's about the third time I've seen you out here with this snow scene now. The last nine months. How's the snow scene working out for you? It works out okay. Just like I said, not the greatest day to shoot nothing. Now this looks like it's just really what surfaces on this? What is this? Is this plaster? No, a little bit of plaster, but actually mostly baking soda. Is it glued down? Yeah, secured. So it's glued down baking soda, which creates your snow effect, which actually looks good from all sides. Also static grass. Nice effect. For this segment of What's Neat this week, I've got Michael Buddy who found some incredible vehicles printed in a 3D printer and are available from a manufacturer in Germany on the internet, where he is custom finished and made these vehicles look just as good as they can. So sit back and relax and let's check out some of Mike's great work. All right, these cars are printed on a 3D printer, which prints in layers. I don't know how many thousands of an inch thick, but it's minute layers just over and over again. And it's programmed in to come out as any prototype vehicle that you put in there, I guess. The layers are visible on this Pontiac too. The first thing I did was put a strip of styrene down the hood on the Pontiac before I started to do any body work. It almost looks like layers in a tree, Mike. Can you see the, you can almost count how many rings, how old this car is by the rings. Almost, I guess, if that made any sense. I think this is good. I mean, this is the most amazing thing that I can ever think of, that you can program vehicles into a computer and print them up. And I think he can do any car. Grille by headlight, by mirror, by tire. I mean, again, this is a flat printer that's thinking flat. It's pretty good. There are drawbacks. You can see the visible lines in the side and the wheels aren't very good. They vary from model to model. And the detail on the front and rear of some of the vehicles, especially from the 60s and 70s, they have more detailed front ends. That doesn't come out real well. But this is so great that we finally have stuff in the 70s that we can fill up our auto racks with. You can overcome all these difficulties depending on how much time you want to put into it. But like you said, finally we have a variety of vehicles. Now, how many cars have you got so far, Mike? I've got about 30 of them. 30 different body styles, is that what we're talking about here? Yeah. And you've done these cars that we've shown. Well, no, these are in various stages of completion. These are all pretty much the way they came out of the printer. Now, we're in the United States and you have to buy these from Germany. Is that correct? Right. All right. And is there a website or somewhere where us guys can go and actually if you wanted to buy them and buy them? J-A-H-N, john3d.de. And the guy's name is Jens John. I've talked to him and we'll repeat that at the end. Like I said, the ones that we're seeing now are pretty much straight out of the printer, but proportions on them are perfect. Are these hollow? Yes, they are. So these cars are not solid. I can see an air hole right there where it's hollow. If you wanted to, you could put headlights and tail lights in them. You could. That's a great thought ahead of time. The way I did it, I would cut the bottom out so that I could hollow this whole thing out and trim out the windows and stuff. Show me that car up close. Did you hollow that car out now completely? Show me that. Yes. Okay. I cut the bottom out with a Dremel tool and then it's not really that hard. The material is very easy to cut with a knife or file. First, I started with a drill, drilled some holes, and then I was able to file it out rough and then trim it with a knife. And then you've got these cars in order of the sequence of how you did them. Right. Now you've got body putty on the second vehicle to fill the gaps and holes. I learned the hard way that you need to do this before you cut the windows. Because the first car I did, I crushed when I was trying to work on the body. But yeah, you put a thin coat of body putty on there and sand it down. And like I said, on the Pontiac, I usually start if there's any kind of a peak or a crease on the hood. I'll put a thin piece of styrene there to give you something to work off. Then each one of these panels, I would tape off like on this station wagon here. Sand that. Now watch when I take this tape off. You've got a nice sharp clean line there. Now I'll do the same thing on the top of the fenders. And that way I'll have a pretty nice finish. Okay, then when you get to this point, you're just about ready to paint. I got the styrene I added to the hood and then a little bit on the roof there. And then a lot of body putty, a lot of sanding. I took the wheels off of this because I was going to put different wheels on it. As far as the way this can turn out, I've wanted this this truck ever since I was a kid, ever since they came out. So anyway, I got several of these. Here's the way the one with chrome front end would look. So this is a finished truck here, the red one? Right. All right. And then here's another one, a cheaper version with the white front end. And I did the windows with Scotch tape. Are these vehicles the same year, Mike? Yes. Yes, these are all, if it's the same year, aren't they? Yeah, so anyway, once you get it smooth. What year are these, Mike? 1966. 1966 pickup trucks. Printed out on a computer in Germany. You brought them back here to the U.S. and perfected them into these photo quality models that are ready to go. Yeah. Well, like I said, this is a model I've wanted ever since 1966, basically. They finally, somebody finally made it an HO scale. So that's what started me in on all these. But there's such a great variety of cars. Here's another one that's pretty well finished with the windows, bare metal foil. They're just everyday cars that you would see on the streets, which is what I like. They're not all Mustangs and Carvettes, although you can get that stuff. You can get all the way up to modern cars. The way the cars look right out of the box, they'd be great for a winter scene. If you would just put a little snow on top of it, they'd look perfect because they look like they're covered with ice. So your job is to, if you want to make a nice looking model out of it is to remove that icy look. How many body styles would you guess that you've got right now from this company in Germany? Probably. I got 30 different vehicles and they're all different except these trucks. I got multiple to this. So an HO scale, I'll put the website in the credits of this video. It sounds to me like we've got an incredibly cool company that's making products from the 70s and the 60s that we could ordinarily never have for our Auto Racks. This is pretty neat and they're printed, 3D dimensionally printed, which is just, I can't even fathom that, but it's a cool idea and it works. Again, it's johnjahn3d.de. Cool, man. Mike, thank you for sharing that with us and that's another cool thing on What's Neat This Week. All right. I want to talk about something about layout construction for this segment of What's Neat This Week and that is, I've got this one number 10 turnout that has caused me a lot of difficulty. I bent it, I ruined it and I already know that and then I installed it on my layout and ever since I've done that, I've had more shorts and more derailments coming into this curve than I can even count. But recently I picked up a new Shinohara turnout to simply replace the old one that I ruined. So figuring when I put in the a new one, everything's going to work out just great. But let's discuss something for a minute. Look at how far I've got a reach to work on this. And that's what I want to talk about with this section of layout design. I've designed this layout to be sectional. So therefore, let me show you something really cool so we can replace this turnout easily on the workbench. Okay, so what I'd say is the magic of the way I designed my home layout is I designed it modularly. I learned a lot of the modular concept from the Midwest Valley Modelers Railroad Club that I started back in 1989. We did like 35 different train shows with that layout and that taught me something. That taught me the way to build your home layout would be better off if you built it modularly. Simply in the fact that now I can simply take this turnout, rip out the old one right here at the workbench and easily get to any section of the layout that I need to because it is sectional. It can come out. And this is something that I discovered from the club layout. That is if you design your layout modularly, you can change the seasons, you can make this all wintertime, all deciduous, dead, dry, growth or spring or any season you want up to the gorgeous colors of fall. That's the magic of being able to design your layout, not the old fashioned way of one by fours and straight up one by fours and then lay roadbed on top of the wood but no, lay your track directly on top of the foam, design everything with sections of foam stacked up to the topography that you need and it works. Over time you're going to discover something called foam shrinkage. There's no doubt in my mind through my experience now the last 10 years with this layout that foam does in fact shrink. Because it's modular, I can simply shove the modules just a little closer to each other as time goes by. The rail joiners still match up and has not been a problem for me up to this point. So I suggest to you guys something to consider now when you build your layout. You've got the old fashioned one by four stick method of doing it or you can simply build table tops and drop your sectional layouts right on top of those table tops and watch your trains run. It works. I've done it for 10 years and I seriously suggest it to you guys folks. Just like that I've cut out the old switch. I put in a new turnout and I'm ready to put down just a little glue only in the area of the ballast. This sets up to be as good as new right on top of the foam. No problems with trains running. Didn't have to hang over the river or any part of the layout to install this. It's very easy done at the workbench standing up with a straight back. Now that's how I design my train layout. It makes sense. Modular so it comes apart to help facilitate working on different sections of the layout. I see a better way to do this.