 I'm Michelle. And I'm Ashley. And the April What's Neat starts right now. 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. This is What's Neat in moderating for April 2021. I'm your host, Ken Patterson. And this month we do have a good show in that we're at 102 What's Neat shows as of this episode. That's how many we've done so far since 2012 of November. I'd like to first start out by saying that this show is great in that. Dan Michio all the way from TCS out in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania comes by and he shares with us in throttle consisting the way to consist your UWT 100 throttle in that the consists goes with you with the throttle because this throttle works just like those of a cell phone. So as long as you're working on any layout that's got a Wi-Fi system, you can run your trains with your UWT 100 throttles and as you put the consist in the handheld remote, it goes with you and Dan explains to us this month exactly how that process works. Also for this What's Neat, Campbell Rice shares with us scenery from start to finish from the foam to the final product in about 25 minutes, all the techniques and steps to doing the scenery, laying your track, your ballast and everything else that comes with building a small module. Campbell does a great job this month on the show. I'd like to thank Lombard Hobbies in Lombard, Illinois for sponsoring the What's Neat show. Check out their website at LombardHobby.com to make all of your motor railroad purchases. Also, thank you very much to the folks that watched the What's Neat this week video podcast that we record every week, three to four weeks per month, every Saturday night to keep you updated on what's new in the hobby, the latest products, very interesting guests, plus the regular crew that we've got that we all love to watch on the show. And with that, let's continue on with the rest of this month's April 2021 What's Neat. For this segment of What's Neat, I've got Dan Michiel from TCS train control systems in the studio and last month on the show, you saw him install the wonderful TCS decoders in these alligators, these RSD-15 locomotives, and that was quite an interesting segment. Well, now today, he's going to talk to us about some really cool feature of the UWT-100 throttle called... In-throttle Consisting. And in-throttle consisting is something very interesting. You know on a lot of the DCC systems when you make up a consist, it stays registered in your main system actually in the box. But with this UWT-100 throttle, the Consists are actually memorized in the throttle, which means you can take your locomotives from one layout to another layout and the throttle still remembers the Consist. And one of the features of the throttle working on Wi-Fi is that you can use the throttle at various people's layouts just like you would use a cell phone using the Wi-Fi system of your friend's layout. So Dan, explain to us how you use this system with these locomotives right here. So Consisting is often very challenging for many people to understand. It's very complicated. It has a lot of different configurations that you can make and stuff that you have to do to set up a Consist. And the disadvantage, the major disadvantage to setting up a Consist in the actual command station is that it takes up space in the command station's memory of which some systems have a definite number which you have available. So taking up any additional slots could cause a problem in some systems. And in addition, you have to set that up in that system and sometimes when you do so, there are certain things that the command station itself manages. And so if you take your locomotives off, if you take them somewhere else, your locomotives, your decoders, they have no memory of ever being in the Consist and it doesn't come with you. It's not portable. And so you take your locomotives over to a friend's layout and you say, or you take it over to your club. You have to set up the Consist again. And that's inconvenient. You don't want to have to do that. So the UWT-100 and the system in which we are, the system that we invented, the Infra-on Consisting System, aims to try and tackle some of the challenges that you have with Consisting engines, namely sending only specific functions to a particular unit, your unit, while disallowing those same functions on other units, setting them up in such a way that they are directionally correct and making it portable. Those are our three main goals when we talk about what the advantages of Infra-on Consisting are. So how do we do that? Right now I have three engines here. I have engine 804, 9847, and 9810. All of these locomotives have been programmed to their proper road numbers at this point. And so all I need to do is create a Consist. You can see on my throttle here, I already have selected 804. Which is the lead unit here. And that's the one I'm going to start with. And if I blow my horn here, you can see I have definite control of that. So let's start setting up our Consist. To do that, I'm going to go down here to the menu button and press that in. And from the main menu, you'll see here that option number three is Consisting. I can either scroll to it and press the enter button, or I can push button number three, select that. And now we're in the Consisting menu. From here, I can add a locomotive to the Consist. If I had a current Consist, I could view it. Or if I had a Consist currently, I could clear it, delete it, get it out of the system temporarily. So since we're setting it up, I'm going to add a locomotive to a Consist. The next unit that I'm going to add to my Consist is 9847. And I want to set it to the forward direction. You can see here there's an arrow at the top, which indicates the direction in which the locomotive will be added. So I'm going to punch in 9847. And then I'm going to push the Enter key to add it to the Consist. Now it displays my current members as 804 and 9847, both of which are in the forward direction. You can also see this small asterisk, which indicates which locomotive is my current lead. But we're not done yet. We want to add the third unit to the Consist. So I'm going to push the Add button. And in this case, the locomotives address is 9810. So I'll punch that in. And this locomotive is going to be operating in reverse. So I'll push the Direction key and switch the direction to reverse. Now that I've done that, I'll push my Enter button. And now I can see all three of my members as well as what directions they will operate in. Now that I'm finished setting up my Consist, I can escape and come back to the Drive window. You can see that all three Consist members are displayed, with my lead unit being in a larger fund, in this case, 804. Now I have not programmed any CVs into these decoders. If I were to operate these normally, you would expect that each one of these units would operate in forward, meaning that the unit here in the rear would start driving in the reverse direction if I select it forward on my throttle. However, that's not the case. And in addition to that, only my lead unit will receive certain functions. For example, if we come over here, I'll turn on the headlight and can, if you can get a look at all these engines here. If I push function number zero, you'll see that only the lead unit has its headlight turned off. Also, the Bell function with function one will only come from the lead unit and so will the horn. I can change that by selecting a different lead unit. Let's say, for example, I want to go back to the rear unit and operate in a reverse direction. To do that, we can turn on the cab control function, which is done by pressing the Enter key. And doing so, while how consistent is selected, will display all of the active members. I can highlight the member that I want to use, which is 9810, select it, and now my lead unit is all the way over there. So if you take a look at the locomotives again, Ken, I'll turn on the headlight. And now you'll see that the lead unit's light is on. And my Bell function and my horn function are also going to that unit. I can also change directions. And the perspective of the direction, as controlled by the throttle, will be dependent upon which address or which locomotive I have selected for cab control. So you can see here that I have selected forward. When we set up the consist originally, it was based on the perspective of the lead unit 804. But now I've changed my lead unit to 9810, meaning that my engineer has physically walked out of this engine and walked into this one. So now my perspective has changed. And what is now forward is based on 9810. So if I increase the throttle, you will see that all of the locomotives now go this direction. Now, by comparison, if I switch back to 804, I still stayed in forward. I haven't changed my direction. So by increasing the throttle, all the locomotives now go this direction. And the great thing about it is that I haven't lost control of other functions. For example, my brakes. If these unit had dynamics or other things like that. For example, all three of these units will mute simultaneously if I push the mute button. And now I can hear myself think, how great is that? And just like that, I can go ahead and unmute them. And everything's just all cogent, right? Everything's coming up roses. And so that is our brief summary of the TCS UWT-100 and UWT-50's informal consistent system. That's absolutely amazing. Now, we've talked about that on the What's Neat This Week podcast in the past. And Dan, I know James Regere has instructed us a lot about this. And in fact, we've made a couple feature videos that you've got on Facebook and on your website that you've run that we've made about this. It's absolutely amazing. And that's in the UWT-100 and the UWT-50 throttle. Is that correct? That's exactly right. That's awesome. Well, thank you so much for coming by and sharing with us. Something that otherwise seems very complicated, but you always make it sound so easy. So thank you very much, Dan Michio. And that is this segment for What's Neat. My name is Campbell Rice. And in this video, I basically wanted to show you how I do my railroad, model railroad from the base up. Not everybody comes here is a professional modeler. And a lot of them are beginners. And they're here to learn the basics as well as the more advanced things. So what I wanted to do is start here with the basics of my subbed and go all the way up. Now, what I like to use on mine is I do a plywood structure frame underneath. And then I use a 2-inch styrofoam. And most of my layout is doubled. So I actually have 4 inches of styrofoam. And what that allows me to do is it allows me to cut down and make areas that kind of give the ground a contour so it's not such a flat cornfield. And then on top of that, I'll use some half-inch styrofoam. I start by removing the plastic sheeting off of my half-inch styrofoam. I lay it out on my base where I would want my track to go. Here I'm using a template kit from Bear Creek Model Railroad. I'll determine my radius curve. And then I will place it on top and trace it out. And this will give me a guide of where I want my track. I take a knife and I'll cut about an inch away from the lines. Once this is sanded down, it'll give me my slopes for my side of my right-of-way. You simply score it. Then you should be able to flip it over and it should pop right loose. I repeat this process on the second side. Now, this will be my sub-roadbed. I place it how I want it, make sure it fits properly. Here I use Gorilla Glue to secure it down. If you apply water, it will help the Gorilla Glue set up faster. But in this case, I wasn't really in any hurry. So I just applied it directly to the foam and then placed it on my module where I wanted my track to be. Press it firmly in place. As you know, Gorilla Glue will expand. So after you place it in place, you want to be sure to take you some weights and set down to ensure that it does not rise or bubble, as this will give you an uneven track. Now, once your glue has dried, I check it, make sure it's sealed. And now I'm going to take this planer that I purchased from a hardware store and I'm simply going to plane the sides of it. This will contour the edges of the trackway. This is a very handy tool to have and you can pick them up at most hardware stores and they're fairly cheap. I always keep two or three on hand. It can tend to get dull. It does make quite a mess, as you can see. And it sticks to everything, including yourself. So be sure you have a shop-back handy to kind of clean up your mess as you go along. I also cut a little bit of the base out, so it kind of gives it a little ditch area along the side of the track as well. Or you can see how it has formed up the sides really well. And you can see the indention that I made at the bottom of the foam there. So it kind of gives it a little ditch-like area alongside the track. That helps with the realism and to help prove drainage on the railroad's. Now I'll begin the other side. And I try to make it match the opposite side as much as possible, but nothing real critical here. You can see I usually shave it back to right where the lines are that I traced out my form where I wanted my curves. Next, I have this sponge sander that I use and I'll run it down beside it and this will actually really smooth out the area. These can also be purchased at your local hardware store. And it'll just gives it a nice smooth texture on both sides. You can see how it has rounded out the roadbed area there. Next, it comes time to apply the cork roadbed. I apply cork roadbed to all my mainline areas. My branches and my sightings, I usually just typically lay it right down on the foam. So here I apply wood glue to the back of the cork roadbed and I use pins to kind of set it and hold it in place. Once one side is down, I will just simply repeat the process and do the other half of the roadbed. Wood glue works good for this because it does not expand and it does dry quickly and it sticks to the cork roadbed very well as well as a styrofoam. I get it as tight as I can and typically I'll let this dry overnight. That way it will surely ensure that it's good and dry and held firmly in place. So it's the next day and I've let my module dry overnight. So our next step is going to be to lay the track down on the cork roadbed. So let's move on to the next step here. As you can see, it's all dry and I'll remove the pins. One step I did not show in this video is after I remove the pins, I will take that sanding sponge and just kind of go over the cork roadbed just to ensure that it's good and level and there's no sharp corners or angles. Now, if you wanted to elevate your track into the curve, the time to do that would have been before you laid your cork roadbed. You could have sanded the sub roadbed out a little more and that would have given you an incline on your track or your track. Now I use code 83 Atlas track and I use some Pico. For this, I'm gonna use code 83 Atlas. I'll need two sections here to fit on this module. You'll notice that there are pre-drilled holes in it. All you have to do is flip over the bottom and drill the holes out all the way so that you can place your nails or track nails down through your ties to hold your track in place. You can see there's several all the way. Now the outs, if you'll notice flex track, one side actually slips and one side is fixed. I like to place my sliding rail on the outside. That's just my personal preference. So let's fasten some track down here and I just use regular small little brads and actually once the roadbed is down and glued down, I'll actually remove these so you won't be able to see them once completed. They push in fairly easily being that we're just going through cork roadbed in the styrofoam. Now we have an angle here and so that we don't join up track and have a sharp double rail angle like so. What I'll end up doing is I will actually take that, this inside rail and I will slide it back so that my joints are gonna be offset. Such as that, that gives me plenty of offset. I'll take my rail nippers and I'm just gonna nip out about two or three little points here that hold the rail in and I'll take a rail joiner and I'll slide up and connect it into that rail. With those cut out, rail joints cut out, it allows you to set the rail joiner in there properly. I'll slide the other rail on the other second piece of track out and I'll fish it down through the joiners and eventually it will slide right up into the rail joiner that's on the other rail and then simply connect the rail joiner on your inside rail. Now we're ready to anchor the second piece down. You may have to work it a little bit as you pull the rail around it may want to back out a little bit but it's not hard to feed the rail on up. So placing the nails. Now I'll take my track nippers and I'm gonna cut the rail evenly at the end of the module. Always use the flat side against your good part of your rail is because this will create a nice flat even cut, okay? Now you can see I do have a gap here so what I will do is I will take some used ties here and I will cut, slide off and I'm gonna cut the little holders off of this as you want it to be smooth because you're not able to feed those up through the rail but that's okay. We'll put some nails through it here in a minute. All right, so that's pretty smooth. You may need to sand it down if it's not but usually I can get it cut with my rail nippers. So I'm gonna put a couple of holes in here just like this. Now I can actually slide this underneath the rails in place, space it out evenly and you can't even tell that there's a joint there. Now I'll take a couple nails and secure this little piece down so it's not moving. Make sure it's lined up properly and spaced evenly and there we go. Now you can't even see it. I'll take a test car here, put on the track, running around, it does perfect. So there's no sharp angle there. Next I wanna paint the rails and I've used all kinds of different paint. This happens to be a matte coffee bean from Krylon. I've used camouflage paint. I've used some brown primer and other things. I like this matte coffee bean so we'll start by spraying this all the way down both sides of the rail. Now I wanna flip it around here and get the other side as well. It may not be necessary if your other side is up against a wall, okay? Now I'm gonna take an old piece of cork road bed while it's still wet and I'm gonna run it down the rails and flip it over and I'm gonna run it back. This will remove 90% of the paint that happens to be on your rails. Next I use a Sahara Desert Sand color. Pick this up at Home Depot. And this will give me a good earth tone color for my base. I wanna spread this on real good and cover up any of the styrofoam. So I'm just gonna pour it on here. You can see it looks like a muddy goo. Makes a real nice earth color. And you don't have to get good paint here. This is just the cheapest brand I could get, cheapest quality. You don't need a really good quality here. And I always get a flat. Be sure not to get a gloss. So I'm just gonna spread it out. Real thick coat on the other side. So I can use some of it on the second side here. But don't be afraid. It won't hurt if it's on there thick. Okay, so it's been another day of giving time for my ground cover color to dry. So everything's ready to move on to the next step, which is applying the ballast. And I always apply ballast before I do scenery in my grass because I use static grass. And if I found out that if I do the static grass before I do my ballast, the ballast gets in the grass. And okay, for my ballast, I always use the Arizona rock and mineral basically because this is real rock, what they use and not imitation. And I just like the way that it goes down. The way it up looks after once it's down. And it seems to be to me much more to scale. And since I modeled Union Pacific, I'm using the Union Pacific gray blend. And that's number 1352. And I ordered it direct from Arizona Rock and Mineral. And just they just ship it in to me. So all right, so let's get busy. We'll get down here and apply some ballast. Okay, when I apply my ballast, I do it the simple way, put it in a little paint cup. I know they make things out there that you can spread it up and down the track a lot easier, but I guess I'm just old fashioned. So I take my ballast and I'm just gonna kind of sprinkle it in the center here. Now I'll just take my finger and just kind of smooth it out. And the main thing is you just wanna make sure you get an even layer. You can see here, there's a little bit of area that's not quite covered. So I'm gonna try to make sure it's covered good. I wanna do the sides as well, just like I did the center. Just kind of go along. Once I have my ballast in place, I'll take this paintbrush handle and I'll just simply tap on the track. And this pretty much just tamps the rock down and causes it to settle in place and we'll get most of it off of your, actually off of your cross ties, you can see there. And then I'll kind of touch up along the sides of the rail just to make sure there's nothing built up along the rail side. All right, then I'm spraying along the outside rail here. Nothing real fancy or technical about it. Tap it down, it'll do the same thing. Here I continue to do it and tap it down. It's amazing to watch this in real life, how well it actually settles down. And you can use your brush to kind of smooth it out. It helps to get back and look at it from a distance because if there's a spot that's missing, you can tell. Now I'm gonna move on to ballasting the sides of the subroad bed here. And it helps if you spray it with water first, that will kind of help it stick a little bit. I always use a little alcohol and one or two drops of like done dishwashing detergent in all my sprays when I'm rather than pure water. You just see how I just sprinkled it on, okay? And the water just kind of helps it from the ballast from rolling down the sides and form it collecting at the bottom. Now I'll come back with my spray. I can go over the whole thing. As you can see, it turns quite darker. And this is because it's real rock. If you wet real rock, it does turn darker, but it will lighten up. In most cases, I have seen it will turn back to the way it originally was. It also helps you locate spots that you need to apply more ballast. So I'm hitting a couple of these spots that I missed. Wet down the whole thing, looks good. Looks like there's not any spots. So now I'm ready to start here on the other side. I'll begin wet this area down here and then spread the ballast on the inside. I know ballasting may not be the most exciting part, but I do enjoy it. It is somewhat relaxing sometimes. Now I'll spray it once again, see if I've missed any areas. Yeah, it looks pretty good. Now I'll have a mixture of Mod Podge. I put one part Mod Podge with four parts of water, three parts of water, and one drop of Dawn Dishwashing Detergent and a little bit of alcohol. And I'm simply gonna spray this over the top. And then I'll come back in with a more thicker solution and just squeeze it on. That way it helps your ballast stick. You wanna go inside the rails, down beside the rails. On both sides. And you can see with that alcohol detergent how it simply sinks into the ballast form there rather than bubbling up or washing the ballast away. That's the trick of detergent. See how it just soaks in? Now I'm gonna coat the sides of it real good. It may take a couple of days for this to dry. Thing is not to get in too big of a hurry and don't be afraid to put a lot of glue on it. It just helps it hold it in place. Okay, now that we've done our ballast and we've got it glued down, I'll typically wait till overnight and then I'm gonna come back and move on to the next step. So we're gonna let this dry and we'll pick up with our scenery after that. Okay, so I'm back. I've given my ballast plenty of time to dry. And one thing I'll do is after the ballast dries, I'll kinda go along the inner rail with a small screwdriver or something just to make sure that there's not any ballast stuck to the rails or anything and nothing that would cause your flanges to hit into rail. So I've kinda done that. So my next step is I'm ready to apply my ground base or I always use static grass and I use several mixtures of that. One I like real well is this bulk bag that I get from Scenic Express. It's just a great color and it's kind of a mix and this is six millimeter. So it's a rather tall grass. And then I'll also use an assortment of grasses from Woodland Scenics. I use a blended turf and I'll use a earth blend which is kind of a brownish color and I'll usually apply that right after I apply the static grass and it kinda gives a variance of earth-looking colors. And then lastly I'll use a light green coarse turf and this is being coarse was what happens is that it will actually sit on top of the static grass so it'll actually look like flowering weeds or whatever. So all right, so I've got my static grass applicator here. Oh, I do mix. I do like to mix in some of this tan color that I get or dead color that you can get from Woodland Scenics or anybody else in that fact. And this is also six millimeter and I just mix it in my hopper and I use the Woodland Scenics static grass applicator and I use the plug and plug it into the wall rather than batteries. That way I know I've always got the strongest so I don't have to worry about the batteries getting weak and it's not doing as well as it should be. So my first step here is going to be I'm gonna apply a Mod Podge and this is straight Mod Podge, the mat and I'm gonna get a brush and I'm gonna apply it on the area where I want the grass to grow. So, but my first step actually I'm gonna wet it and then I'll apply the Mod Podge. Okay, so I take my bottle here and just kind of wet it down a little bit. I'm gonna take my Mod Podge and I'm just gonna pour a little bit out here where I want my static grass to go and take a small brush and I'll just kind of work it around and everywhere you have glue, your static grass will stick. So I want static grass over this whole area because I want it to look like a field. So you can see here, I've got it smeared around good. Now I'll take my static grass applicator, I'll turn it on and basically I'm just gonna shake it, hold it as close as you can to the layout. I usually try to hold it about an inch away and I'll just shake it around here and it'll apply the static grass. Now the more you keep applying the thicker coat it'll get. I've mixed some of the six millimeter green and then a little bit of that dead looking six millimeter grass in this as well. So I'll shake it up here real good. I really like the Woodland Scenic's static grass applicator. It does do a very good job. Okay, you can see here I've got areas where it's thicker and some areas where it's thinner. I'm a little more out here. Okay, here's a little trick. I'll take a shot back and I'll go about an inch above the static grass and what this does is it pulls the fibers straight up. So it looks a little more realistic. It'll also pick up any fibers that are not fastened as well. Just be sure not to actually touch the static grass. All right, now I'm gonna have this dark brown blend and I'm just gonna sprinkle it around. You wanna kind of wanna go up high because you don't wanna see a pattern and this kind of gives it a little bit more of an earthy brown color in the background underneath the grass and a little bit of dead grass look. And this is my blend and I'm gonna do the same thing with it. I'm gonna come in high and just kind of shake it around here. Try not to give it too much of a pattern and if you hold it up high enough, it shouldn't. Just make sure you're not in a windy environment when you do this. Now this is the course and I'm gonna do the same thing. I'm gonna apply it quite as thick as I did the other and you can see how it's taking shape here. So we have this uneven colored look and uneven layered look and that's kind of what you wanna have. That way it doesn't look like a golf course. Okay, next I'm gonna take my mixture of Mod Podge and glue or water and kind of spray over it. That'll just help settle it. Okay, and this is the kind of look that you get. You can kind of see the course, how it's standing up on top of the static grass. Now on this side, I took some two millimeter grass and I applied it. I wanted it to look like a field where cows had been grazing and ate a lot of the vegetation out of the area. And you can see on the edge of the rail I applied some more of that coarse turf. Okay, now we detail our models so I want to detail the track and weather it. So basically what I'm gonna do is I use pan pastels to actually weather my tracks like I do a freight car. Okay, now you have several options here. I really like this dark black color for a main line or for a branch line. Sometimes I'll use a brown such as this or the lighter. The lighter looks good for rust from where it's dripped off the rails. So we'll start here. Let's just start with some of this light rust color. All right, so I can get a little bit on the brush and I'm gonna go right down on top of the rail, right down each side. And you'll want to apply it pretty heavily here. And I know it probably looks like it may be overdone but we'll fix that here shortly. This is very time consuming in a way but it really makes a difference on how your track looks. Try to get a good even coat all the way down. Some spots here that need a little touch up. There we go. All right, now let's take some of this brown and I've used this mainly for a branch line where it sees less traffic. So you can see here how I'm applying the brown on the inside. And now we'll apply some black. This is more for main line look. You can see on the left, you can see part of the brown and then you can see the black up top. As the main line sees more action and more oil and things dripping off the train as it goes by. And also possibly newer cross ties. Okay, now I'll come back in and spray it with my water, alcohol and detergent mix. And what this will do is it'll kind of blend it all in and allow it to the pastels to kind of soak into the ballast. And it'll give it a much easier, calmer look, cleaner. And once that dries, it'll be done. Now I have these pens, I have these Sharpies, a black. I have a gray and a brown. And what I like to do is paint these rails with these markers. Or you can use paint, actually. Paint sometimes works better than the markers. If you look at ties, they're typically black for newer and then they go to a brown state and then finally they'll kind of come to a gray state. Here I'm gonna remove the nail that I had put in to hold the track down carefully. Hold the track so it doesn't pull up. And I'll basically remove all my nails with my nippers. Now I like to use the black on the ties that had the nails. And the black will actually hide the nail hole and you won't see it. It disappeared. And we'll do this one here, where this nail was. And you can see how it just disappears in the background. You really have to look close to try to find them. Okay, so here you can see the finished module in the foreground. We have the two millimeter light green grass. Shows where the livestock has been eating it. And then I added a few other little tall weeds here alongside the track, give it a little definition. And put the backdrop up that I had printed. And here we have the local who's picked up an empty car and is headed back to the main line. So I hope this encourages you to get out and practice building some of these modules because each time you build one, you'll get better and better and better and improve your skills. So that wraps up this 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.