 On the February 2024, What's Neat? We look at the Prairie Scale Model Railroader's 8,000 square foot layout in HO Scale. What a magnificent, incredibly large layout this is. But 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. And by Broadway Limited Imports. The cutting edge leader in model trains. Check out their website at Broadway-limited.com. And by Bachman Trains. Now that's the way to run a railroad. Check out their website at BachmanTrains.com. And thank you for helping us support the best hobby in the world. This is What's Neat for February 2024. I'm your host Ken Patterson, and this month we do have a fantastic show in that we have Jennifer Kirk, who shares with us the Trigo Mills Model Railway Club in the UK. An absolutely beautiful layout, just fantastic eye candy for us this month. Also this month, we look at the Prairie Scale Model Railroader's 8,000 square foot layout in HO Scale. What a magnificent, incredibly large layout this is. And did I mention it's double deck? So check that out in this What's Neat video. It is absolutely fantastic to witness this layout. Also we've got Matt Stern from Bachman Industries. It stops by and shares with us a lot of the new Amtrak products that they have coming out in the month of February. It's absolutely amazing. And I'm adding things to my list because again, it's really great to see the models that Bachman is currently producing. Also this month, Broadway Limited wanted to share with us. They're HO Scale GP 30 locomotives with Paragon 4 sound. I've got two of them on the table that I had the opportunity to share, shoot outside in a wonderful daylight photo shoot. I've got Locomotive number Union Pacific 847. I shot it from the side and on top. I also have Southern 2585. This is a High Hood GP 30. I again shot this one in outdoor sunlight and it looks absolutely amazing. Check out Broadway Limited's website to see the multiple paint schemes that are available in this HO Scale locomotive. And did I mention that the lighting effects on the UP Beacon, all the lighting effects are fantastic. I was very impressed as I have run them down here on my home layout. So with that, I want to say be sure to check out the What's Neat this week video podcast that we shoot down here every Saturday night, keeping you updated on what's new in the hobby with special guests, new products and the regular podcast crew. And with that, let's continue on with the rest of this February 2024 What's Neat. For this segment of What's Neat, I'm standing with Randy Kobiella of the Prairie Scale Model Railroad Club here in Lombard, Illinois. And we are looking at a 7,000 square foot layout. This is amazing, Randy. How do you start talking about this beautiful layout? That's a good question. There's nowhere to really start. It's a big project that's been going on since 2001. And we're getting really close to finally completing the track on the lower level, which will give us all our main lines and give us close to a well over a quarter mile of main line track. An actual quarter mile. An actual quarter mile because I'm looking at a double deck layout with multiple peninsulas. What area of the country would you say that you guys are representing on this? We modeled the Midwest, the Helix area is the hub of the layout from there. The upper level goes north into Wisconsin. The other side goes west to roughly the Mississippi River. The lower level goes, one side goes east and one side goes south. So from that area we're branching out. The club room across the hall, that is connected and that is the city of Chicago basically, the hub of the suburban line which runs along the outside of the wall, which we'll see. That's amazing. And how many years did you say this club's been in existence? Since 2001. That's a lot of work in 22 years. It's absolutely amazing. So tell us about the design, what type of track do you use, what code rail? All the main line is Pico, pretty much all Pico turnouts, a few custom turnouts. Code 83 rail, our command system is all NCE. Nice. We do run JMRI for interface with NCE and that is for running off phones and other devices. Now is this an operational layout where you guys can operate on it? Yes. You will see some car card pockets on the upper level. The lower level, last time we really operated it's been a little while now, the lower level is not very functional at that point, so it's still not quite connected. We have a few more feet of track to go and we'll have it done. How long would you say your typical operating segment goes and how many members do you have? In the past we would get roughly 20, 25 members to run an operating session and it lasts about three hours. The club itself, we hit 80 members now so we are growing quickly. The hobby seems to be taking off nicely, which is great. Are there favorite parts of your layout, of this layout that you like? I have a few favorite aisles, it's kind of segments here and there and everybody has their own, what they like to do. There's some really good switching areas and it's a fun layout for just running. The upper level is a lot of single track with passing sightings so it's fun to run. You really have to watch what you're doing, running a train. The lower level is going to be almost all double main so it will be a little bit more express. Now this layout looks like it's relatively complete. Would you give a percentage on completeness? Probably about 60, 70% somewhere in there. We've got a ways to go yet, we're still in the building phase but it's getting close. I assume you guys also meet probably once a week here with the members? Friday nights are running night, it's just members show up, Saturday is a group that runs. Our members get keys so we're open 24-7 basically to the members and there's people down here pretty much all days, times, you name it, depends on their work schedule and what not. But yeah, we get a lot of running of trains down. It's really fantastic, everybody in the club gets keys, it's almost like this is their own home layout, would you say? Yes, that's what makes it very attractive to a lot of people, especially if they have a hard work schedule so it can't make it on certain nights because it works. So they can come down three in the morning if they want to, turn the lights on and run trains. How about that? Okay, so I think you said it took 25 people to operate this layout? We're actually talking now to really opera when the lower level is fully operational with what's going to be going in on the lower level, it would probably take almost 50 people around the layout. And you've got that many members too? We do, getting everybody here once that might be a challenge but we also have guests, we have a lot of guests that come down on a good basis. So would you guess you've got about 100 members in this club? With associates, we've got close to it, 80 regular members and I'm not sure the account of associates, but yes. Has this layout been written up in the model press? No, it has not. Oh my gosh, this is one of the best kept secrets in Lombard, would you say? Yes. This is amazing, this is amazing. All the guys, all of our buddies came with us today and they're walking around checking it all out. I gotta tell you what, the valences are amazing and it seems like you've studied the lighting on how you light this layout. Yes, actually we're actually going to be revamping a little bit of the upper level. The technology has changed with the LEDs a little bit. We're running all 12 volt LEDs for layout lighting and it's very efficient, nice to run but now that the brighter LEDs are out, we're switching some of the upper areas to the little bit brighter, just getting started on that but yeah, when the lights are out, this layout looks gorgeous with the balances and whatnot. Nicely designed by one of our members. Let me ask you this question, is there a favorite aspect of this layout that you like? Is it buildings? Is it laying track? Is it doing roads? Is it electronics? What are some of the things you love to do? I'm more of the carpenter. I do a lot of the woodworking but I've done scenery, I have my sections. Everybody can sign up for sections if they want and do scenery. So I do some scenery, woodworking. I've laid track, I've done some wiring but my thing seems to be more of the woodworking. This is absolutely amazing. We're going to shoot some video that they're going to watch as they hear you talk about this beautiful empire that you all have built. It's quite an accomplishment, I must tell you. Thank you very much. We're proud of it, we put a lot into it and the one thing we really pride ourselves on, it runs really, really well. There's no fun to run trains if they don't run well. You got that right. Randy, thank you so much for sharing this amazing layout with us. Thank you for that. With the viewers of What's Neat. Okay. Let's... The OO Gauge Trago Mills model railway was completed in 1989 after approximately one year of construction. It was built by a team of 18 people and measures 88 by 14 feet and at the time of its completion was the largest model railway in the entirety of the United Kingdom. Here in the UK, we traditionally have quite small houses compared to those that a lot of people enjoy in the US. That means that it's rare for a home modeler to have a layout of the kind of size that we see here at Trago Mills and that's why these are such popular venues to go and visit. Entering through the door, you're first greeted with a site of Trago Mills Central Station and this is one of four principal stations that can be seen around the layout. It really is quite impressive featuring Goods Yards and also a further avoiding line on a viaduct behind. There is a tremendous depth of detail to this layout and it's quite clear that it's been built by a very passionate group of people. It rewards careful scrutiny and the closer you look the more details you can find which include these little cameos which often allude to references to popular culture or little jokes. Here on the screen you can see the Beatles crossing their very own Abbey Road crossing. The locations featured on the layout often allude to real geographical places around the United Kingdom. Some of them are more subtle than others but particular favourites of mine include the Liverpool Albert Docks, Stonehenge, the iconic South Coast Rail route that follows the Dawlish Seawall, a funicular railway and Canterbury Cathedral. The model also showcases the differences between the dramatic rolling countryside of parts of the UK, stately homes, the built up towns and villages and also some of the more industrial areas such as the ports, the railway shunting yards and other areas. And what model inspired by parts of the UK would be complete without its very own London Underground station. This layout also features a large motive power depot where locomotives can be seen ready and awaiting their next turn of duty. On the perimeter of the layout there are a number of different push buttons and these allow visitors to be able to activate a number of different animated sound or light features. These include things as varied as Morris Dancers dancing in the car park of the public house. There's also a flyover of the Red Arrows RAF aeronautical display team. You can even hear the sound of the bells of Canterbury Cathedral and a number of others too and these add another dimension to the enjoyment of this huge layout. When we visited the layout there were a number of different trains running at that time. Some of these were on a circuit of the full layout. This worked on a shuttling system out and back at different points of the layout and it meant that you could always see trains moving and sometimes it was hard to predict just where they were going to go and which stations they were going to stop at. And that's something that would keep children entertained for hours. When you consider that this model layout was built originally in 1989 when a lot of the modern scenery products that we take for granted today were just not available it really is an astounding feat of modelling. It stood the test of time well and certainly there are extra detail items that are clearly being added all the time so it's never exactly the same twice between two visits. Newton Abbot is in the south west of the United Kingdom. In the area are a number of preserved rail lines and these provide a great mix of attractions for those interested in combining railfanning with a tour of some of the most scenic areas of Britain's countryside. The Trago Mills model railway is just one of the attractions that is well worth taking in if you're ever in this area. For this segment of What's Neat I've got Matt Stern the marketing manager of Bachmann Industry in beautiful Philadelphia Pennsylvania with some really exciting new products for this February's What's Neat video. Hey Matt how are you today? I'm doing great Ken how are you? I'm doing fantastic I know you've got some really exciting stuff to talk about and it's stuff that I love. So go ahead and shoot. All right well so we'll start off with some stuff that I think we may have shown on social media before but these are our first full complete samples of these. First off here this is our Amtrak GP38-2 and HO scale. This is going to be joining our GP38 line which is their coming DCC ready and it's a really cool scheme it's what you see on the maintenance of way trains typically on the Northeast corridor or the Michigan corridor. I think they have some of Southern California as well and yeah it'll go great with you know as you and everybody know we've had a lot of great Amtrak stuff coming out recently and this is a kind of an essential addition to the line if you're going to be running an Amtrak line that you know where they maintain their own track. You're absolutely correct and I've been going through the books looking at various types of switchers that you know I could either decal or make but it sounds like you've just filled that void for us. That's what we're trying to do. So moving to end scale so Larry last time I believe went over the new SD40-2s that we have coming out these are totally newly tooled models and he had all but one of the road names available to show you so the one that he didn't have was the Santa Fe. This has now come in so this is the Santa Fe version here. Wow how about that? Very cool. Like you mentioned last time this is this is going to be a DCC sound comes with a soundtracks economy board on board so it's going to have the you know the it's got the full full sound package with it. Beautiful model. The end scalers are going to love it. Absolutely can never have too many SD40s so obviously I'm sure people have noticed in the background there's something here that we haven't really shown before and I know Ken you're you're excited about this for a good reason. I see him in St. Louis I picked up Scotty Hicks two weeks ago that was on the show and sure enough he wrote on one of these cars you're about the show. Yeah yeah so I actually have one out of the box here this is our HO scale Siemens Venture Car in the Amtrak Midwest scheme. Beautiful. Wow full interior look at that. Yep so these are full interiors they are I believe they are specific to the car type so the interior on this will be different to the interiors on the the VIA rail ones which are actually out and shipping now. Yes they come with sound oh not sound sorry not much sound in a passenger car they come with lighting interior lighting as you can see here you've got really really nice flush windows on it if you go to the end of the car here this is also something that's different to the the VIA rail version they actually have marker lights so this is true to the prototype the Amtrak ones have marker lights whereas the VIA rail ones don't okay and what you can do is on the top of the car here we're just going to remove this little thing here it's a little panel up here which is a which is a prototypical detail on the roof but underneath that what we have is got a couple of switches here and what they'll do is when you're on the layout you can control the marker lights individually you can decide which ones you want on which ones you want off so you can run it prototypically with just the ones at the end of the train lighted at the end. Wow that's cool wow so it's a very cool car right now we have four road numbers for the coached version and you know as we were saying and as you were saying there's you know there's more versions you know on the real on the real train when we were tooling these up these are the only ones that were actually out on the roads so these are what we have right now couldn't possibly speak to what we might have in the future right right we have just look at the prototype and that's what they're coming out with this is fantastic it's awesome that you guys have got that relationship to come out with models that quickly if you look back into the early 80s when the SD 40 dash twos came out the manufacturers were about nine years behind on coming out with the models and here we are today 2024 and you guys are coming out with this stuff literally a year to six months after the prototypes are on the rails. Yeah and a lot of that is thanks to the involvement of Siemens in the production of these models you know they've been a tremendous help you know they provided us with all the prototype information and we print everything we needed to really replicate them as realistically as we could. Beautiful great work Bogman great work Matt Stern what else you got to share today. So staying on the theme of Amtrak and staying on the theme of things that are just about as new as you can get. Drum roll please. Yeah the first painted samples in a cello too. Look at that streamlined locomotive. This is probably in my opinion one of the coolest looking trains on the rails in America right now and we're really excited to be able to bring an HSO version of this to the market. Fantastic. So this is the this is the power car there's two of these one of them will be powered with the actual motor for the model one of them will be unpowered but we'll still be have functional lighting on it. Okay they both have handagraphs that can raise and lower and on the powered one I'm not going to open it because you need a screwdriver to get to it but under this panel down here you can open this panel up and you can switch the selector switch and change it to pantograph operation if you want to run prototypically with actual live cabinery. Fantastic. So yeah like I said this is the one of the two cab car or power cars. We have the train set version set up here so what the way it's going to be configured is we're going to have a train set with three cars from the prototype will consist and then six additional cars and you'll be able to buy separately to make the full nine car consists of the real train runs with. Yes. And the reason for doing this is you know we could offer a nine car train altogether but you know one that would be a you know a fairly pricey train to sell as one piece and two a lot of people probably don't have space in their layouts for a nine car passenger train plus two power cars right. You know that's totally fine I know I don't have space for that on my layout but for those who do we will have the entire set available as separate sale cars. So we've got the end car here. Oh nice. There's one of these at each end of the train this is the first class car which is denoted by the red door here. This one links up to the power car on this end which is why it has a full set of trucks here and then if you see here this is something again we don't see much in US railroading. It's got a shared truck that links on to the next car. Okay. Every single car in the train until you get to the other end where it ends like this has this shared truck system. Okay. So it's a fully articulated train set and I'll show you how it works here a little bit. Okay. I'm not gonna really be able to connect them because I'm holding them in midair here but just for demonstration purposes this is the cafe car which looks a little odd because there's no trucks on this one. Right. It's the middle car of the train set version which will also be the middle car on the full consist. It doesn't come with any trucks because it's where the two halves of the train meet so it has one set of shared trucks from the other from the next car on one end and then one facing the other way locking in on the other end. Wow. The engineering that must have went into that. Yeah. No it's a it's a very cool system and we've tested this extensively on gradients. We just took it to a layout which I'll actually be giving you some video to put into this. Okay. You'll see it's this is a guy called Andy Rubo really really talented northeast carter modeler. He actually built all of his own catenary. We might have tested it on his layout. It ran perfectly. He has a he has a pretty pretty steep gradient where you have one line that comes off and does a kind of a fly under the main line ran over that beautifully and the whole set just ran exactly as it was supposed to which is which is great because it's it's certainly you know not your standard coupling system. Fantastic. So I'll just do a little demonstration here of how it works. So you've got these prongs here. They have to fit into the socket which you might not be able to see all too all too well but all you have to do is you get these hooks here. You lock them into the into the tracks underneath here slide it in and it connects and like I said we're holding it in there so it's not really going to connect but sweet. That's that's essentially how the system works. Oh my gosh. Oh my gosh. The list of Bachman stuff I want this year. I mean I mean I'm a you know I like to just run trains. I'm not into operation. I just love watching trains go around the basement while I'm working on projects. And to me I wouldn't do the catenary but it would be just beautiful to see that streamlined a cell of running around the layout. It brings me pleasure and that's what model railing is all about. Absolutely. Yeah. No it's a fantastic train to run. And you know what you said is it is a perfect example of why we think this will be a great seller not just in the Northeast but around the country because it's just such a cool different looking train. I think people are going to just want it for their layout. Right. That's awesome. So you create stuff and create that once. I love it. Absolutely. So this is the other end of the train for the train set version here. OK. This is one of the standard business class cars. This is actually the quiet car. It's got a little separate notation under there. OK. This is the this little butt up against the other the other power car there and on this end it will connect to the rest of the consist. You'll see we have even though you don't see the separate reality when we went to great lengths to work with Amtrak and make sure that we could get all the details as close to the prototype as possible. So you've got the details in here like the they're actually kind of European style buffers. They are all existing on the prototype. You'll never actually see them the way they're coupled in reality. But they're here on the model. And then if you look here through this end you've got the you've got the passenger doors the gangway doors going between the cars. That is very cool. I would love to get to the East Coast and actually see one of those run in person. I'm sure it would knock my socks off. Absolutely. Yeah. Yeah. I've seen them in testing a couple of times and they are very cool. Matt that's amazing. Wow. The eye candy today is awesome. Yeah. Yeah. We're pretty excited with what we have coming. And I think that's really about it. We we're getting a lot of samples in for stuff that I can't talk about right now because it'll be announced at the Amherst show which is going to be next week from recording. Right. And so next month I believe you'll be on with Tyler and he'll have a ton of stuff to tell you about that. Absolutely fantastic. I love you guys at Bachman for keeping us updated on some of the most amazing projects that we are interested in seeing. That's good. Absolutely. We aim to please. All right Matt Stern. Thank you so much for being on the show and sharing with what's neat viewers all of the new products for this month. And with that that is this segment for what's neat. All the products seen on this episode of what's neat are available from Lombard Hobbies in Lombard Illinois or order online at LombardHobby.com and by Broadway Limited Imports the cutting edge leader in model trains. Check out their website at Broadway dash limited dot com. Bachman trains. Now that's the way to run a railroad. Check out their website at Bachman trains dot com.