 The What's Neat Show is sponsored by Caboose, sharing our passion for trains since 1938. This is The What's Neat Show for January 2018. I'm your host Ken Patterson, and this month we've got a pretty good show. First of all, Daniel Coombs comes by and shows me how to put a Digitrax power extender into my narrow gauge goose so that it no longer stalls on my dirty switch points. Then we look at some beautiful footage from Steven M. Conroy of this Amtrak train climbing the mountains in beautiful Southern California. It is just absolute eye candy to see this segment of modeling ideas from above in this January's video. Also this month, we interview Joe and Patty Fugate, the editors of Model Rare with Hoppiest Magazine, and they share with us some of the insight and what they go through on a day-to-day business working together as a man and wife. It's a really good interview this month for What's Neat? And lastly, we look at the brand new micro-engineering ladder system that they've created recently. It's new to the market, and it's a space-saving ladder-track system. We go into it in depth. I show you how it works, and we compare it to other turnouts later on in the show. Now, I also want to say that it's 2018. It's a good time to run out and get your latest copy of the Walther's catalog. And the reason I say that, if you're new to the hobby, there's no better way to familiarize yourself with what's available on the market when planning a layout. And this year, they've put all three scales, N, H, O, and Z scale together in this catalog. I see they've got their brand-new GP35 on the catalog, and Stacey Naffel-Walther's sent me one of their new GP35s to run in a segment in the January show. I took it outside and photographed it in real sunlight from all directions. The detail and paintwork looked really crisp on it. This is Burlington Northern Model 2580, which I know from living here in St. Louis. This was an ex-Frisco unit built in 1964-1965. This started out its life running the Frisco around here in St. Louis in the Springfield. So it's a pretty nice model. The one feature I do want to point out on it that I notice it sets itself apart is it's got individual number board lights that are separate from the headlight. So by pressing I think it's F5 or F6 on this unit, you can turn the numbers boards on and off separate from the headlight function. It's kind of neat and it looks really good. And with that, let's continue on with the rest of this month's What's Neat? Hello, this is Michael Gross, and you're watching What's Neat with Ken Patterson. It's a good frustration with that. What would you suggest? I have actually got a solution in my hands. Digitrax has recently came out with their own power extenders for all the DH126, 166, and the 2110 decoders. Oh yeah? So basically, so this thing... So I just got to plug this inside the goose? Plug that decoder into the goose. Is there a little plug on this decoder here? There's a two pin plug, but on the decoder to where you can plug this in, and that acts as a capacitor. So when you hit a dead spot on your frog, the goose will not stall. Man, this is exactly a great idea. Let's try this and see how this comes out. All right, let's do it. We open the model to see how much space we had to work with, then cut out about five seats from the model to fit the power extender module under the circuit board. Using the eight pin connector, the DH126PS decoder was simply plugged into the model's main board. The power extender's plug was simply connected into the decoder. And that was it. The top was snapped back together, and the model was ready to run in the layout. Wow, Ken is running real well. Yeah, Daniel, it's not stalling on any of the switches anymore. So whatever you did here, what did you do? I installed Ditch Tracks PX112-2 Power Extender with the two pin socket harness that they provide to where you can plug it into your DH126PS decoder right into the back of the decoder, and then you'll be able to have no problems over dead frogs or whatever. I love it, Daniel. Minus a couple seats, and I don't care about that. Everything fit inside just fine. Right here it worked, and that's a segment on DCC installations on What's Neat. For this segment of What's Neat with us on the show, now we have an interview you want to catch up on the latest on what you've got planned for the magazine, and I'm sure there's a whole lot of other things that we're going to be able to talk about here this afternoon. But Joe and Patty, it's wonderful to have you on What's Neat. You both look great. What a nice picture here. What's it like on your end, Joe? Tell us what's going on with the magazine. Well, coming up on issue 95, that's the January issue, and that's kind of basically what's going on here. I'm looking forward to 2018. That's the beginning of our ninth year. Yes, your 95th issue, in fact, is January, and you said you've got some big plans for the 100th issue. You want to tell us about that a little bit? I've got a very special issue there. The Comstock was in the very first issue on the cover, so we're looking to get Charlie back and to talk about the Bear Creek in South Jackson. There hasn't been much in the magazine about that for the last couple of years. Charlie used to be, had a stint as editor of the magazine for a while, and then he retired from that to go work on his layout. Can you imagine the gall of that? He's been working quietly on his layout and making progress on the Bear Creek, so we'll have an update on that. Mike Conflone's a favorite. We're looking to have, in that issue, the 20th century by Richard Bale. It's like an encyclopedic type. Interesting layouts in that issue. So anyway, it's going to be a very special issue. Lots of our favorite authors all in one issue. That's fantastic. Patty edits, along with Joe, the magazine. So they've got their hands full of mouses and keyboards all month long, as you're cranking out about 300 pages of content. Patty, what's it like working with your husband in a profession like this? Kind of from your perspective, share with us what you're going through. Pounded it into me when I grew up. Whatever your husband does, get in there and help him. So for me, it's just like, what are we going to be doing? So I do whatever he does and just enjoy being with him. Well, yeah, I got her started early too because when we were courting, she was just still a teenager and I was just getting to the point where I was graduating from high school myself and going to college. So we had a long distance relationship. I actually met her at a church camp in Idaho and I lived in Oregon. So I was going to college in Oregon. She's over in Idaho and so we were corresponding. So I'd send her kind of as a test to see if she was going to think I was nuts. I sent her pictures of my trains and showed her my hobby and kind of see what she thought. Tell me it was models. I thought it was real and I looked at these pictures and went, what's he sending me pictures of trains for? What does that have to do with the price of tea in China? And I only found out the next letter that they weren't real life-size things. That's amazing, Joe. That's a testament to your photography and your work. Well, yeah, I was, at least I learned a few things as I was going along. Yeah, and so then she actually participates in the hobby. I've drafted her for operating sessions. Plus, she's gone with me on op-session meets where you actually go to a meet and the whole reason for being at the meet is to run to be a guest operator on layouts. And so I've taken her along and she's been a guest operator right along with me. And then also over the years she's worked on scenery a lot. Scenery, you've told me that one of your favorite parts of the hobby is scenery. Yeah, I mean that's probably pretty typical for wives. It's easier to do, it's not meticulous, it's not mechanical so much. And you kind of get to just fly by the seat of your pants on those. Plus, she's pretty good at it and she's very picky. She has the eye, I guess you could say, where she knows what realistic scenery looks like and she's very finicky. She also is quite the critical eye when we're doing layout tours and she'll say, I like what this guy did but I don't like how he did this. She's always given me this feedback. Her latest thing is, well we were talking and I said, if you had some time to do whatever you wanted to do with the model train hobby, what would you like to do? I'd like to get better at structures. Boy, do we need structures. Man, watch some of my What's Neat videos. We cover structures. It's gotten so easy to me. I mean these BTS models that we've been building, they're simply walls, windows, and a roof. That's essentially the structure. Walls, windows, and a roof repeated over and over and over as I go through these buildings. And it's just amazing how it does become easier after you've done it but check out some of these What's Neat videos. Now, Joe, when I approached you to do this What's Neat thing about six or seven years ago, we simply wanted to do one photograph and a little bit of text every month. And I don't know how we've gotten where we are, but we aren't doing one photograph and a paragraph of text. We have created something that I think modelers around the world are starting to discover. I'm not tooting our horn, but between the What's Neat shows that we've had and I think there's 70 of them now, we're pushing almost over two million views on all of those shows. So it's really, really a neat thing that you've allowed us to do, Joe, and I appreciate it. You're welcome. And thank you again, too. You know, as we've found out at Trainfast, the What's Neat show is one of the major ways that modelers discover modelers are hobbyists and, you know, the whole array of what we're doing. You know, you told the story about the three kids that I was talking to. On the podcast, that's right. That's the What's Neat, this podcast. Yes, I asked them if they'd ever heard of MRH. And they go, oh yeah, can Patterson's What's Neat? And so it's like, aha, okay. So YouTube, that's, you know, a major way that people discover us. Yes. Now, I understand that I guess you've worked, Patty, on Joe's layout, the Siski lines, but the word on the street is you're taking that layout down. What's going on with that, Joe? Well, sort of a little bit of backstory. We're taking care of my elderly mother and she's living with us. But Patty and I talked, you know, long term. Well, what would we like to do long term? We said, right now we live in a subdivision. And we said, well, long term what we'd like to do when mom is gone, we'd like to go get some rural property. And so that means relocate. So I'm looking at this 26 year old layout in the basement and thinking, you know, if we're going to relocate, this isn't going to come with us. So I'm going to have to, you know, I'm essentially working on dumpster fodder here. Uh-oh. Plus I've been talking a lot in MRH about this Toma thing, the one module approach. And we think it's a great way to do a home layout and bite-sized chunks. So I was thinking, you know, what I'd like to do is be able to, quote, leisurely take down the layout that I currently have and restore the room back to conditions such that we could sell the house. And it would have an ordinary basement, right? It would be more difficult to sell a house with a basement full of layout, unfortunately. And so then I'd get the basement all refinished. I'd also start on Siski Line 2. I love the concept of Siski Line, but start on Siski Line 2 and do it as a Toma. And the nice thing about the sectional modular approach, one of the benefits is that you can take it with you. So the Siski Line 2 is the new layout that's going to replace the original one you're tearing down, correct? So this is a whole new concept now. So you've already started planning a new layout before you've even moved. Yes, that's right. And I don't know exactly what the new space is even going to look like, but as I'm planning what Siski Line 2 will look like, I'm planning some things that I'm expecting are expendable modules. For example, the main yard to fit in this space is going to be V-shaped. And so it's going to have a curve in the middle. And I'm expecting that curve module is just expendable because when I get to a new space, the yard won't fit in that space the same way. But if I've got the ends, right, with all the turnouts and all the, you know, that's the expensive, that's the complicated, that's the hard to do part. If I've already got those ends, then I can just build a new middle to fit the new space. So that's the kind of thinking that I'm trying to use on Siski Line 2. So it gives me a way to build the layout and run some of the layout, the new layout in the current space. And however far I get, however long Mom is with us, that's fine. She can take her time, no problem. But then when she finally does pass, I'm ready to go when we relocate. So that's the idea. Well, how about that? Well, the two of you work so hard to produce what I think is arguably one of the nicest online magazines out there. In fact, it's the only one that I'm aware of at this point. There isn't anything else to know. But what kind of future plans have you got for the magazine? You've done so much already. Is there anything just dynamite that comes to mind? What were we going to be in five years? Five years, that's a good question. Well, we're going to continue to expand the magazine and make it easy to access. One of the things that we have now is we have an app that you can get on the Apple Store and Google Play so that you can access the magazine on your mobile device with this app. And we'll continue to enhance that. The current website that we have is not particularly mobile-friendly. We're going to be upgrading that to a new mobile-friendly website. The other thing I've been thinking about starting with this anniversary this year, the 100th issue anniversary. So I'm thinking about going back through Model Railroad Hobbies and pulling out the best articles, what I would call the timeless articles, and putting a collection together into a series of volumes that are paperback called the best of Model Railroad Hobbies. And so if you want some of the really good stuff that we've done in paperback form, so some people still like paper, then you can also get those that way. Now the paperback version won't have ads, and of course it's not free to be able to print and to ship these things. So they will cost something to get to paperback once. But if you do want it in paperback, we're going to do that. And I won't put a date on these volumes because like I said, I'm looking for what I would call the timeless articles. And it'll just be like volume one, the best of, volume two, the best of, volume three, however many volumes it takes to take what I consider to be the good timeless articles and put them in paperback form. Very good. Now I know you've had some good success with this recent book that you published two years ago on paint and matching paint colors to various types of paint. You want to elaborate as to, I'm not describing that correctly. No, you're doing a pretty good job. We call it the Model Railroad Hobbies Guide to Acrylic Paints in a post-vocal world. And the idea was that people's stash of folk worlds start to diminish and so now what? Right. And really, paint has come a long way. And you think about it. The airlines have converted to using acrylic paint. The auto industry uses acrylic paint. The railroads are now using acrylic paint. Shipping, I'm talking about stuff that sails on the oceans. They're using acrylic paint now. So the whole painting industry is moving to acrylic paints and it's because acrylics have come so far in the last couple of decades that with the right techniques, they're ever been as good as solvent-based paints now. So we cover some of that in the book. Plus we also look at some of the leading paint lines like Model Flex, Badger Model Flex, Vallejo paint. And of course, Testers, the guys who acquired Floquo and Paul Cascale and then decided to shut it down because of its less than environmentally friendly formula. So there's the Model Master, Testers Model Master stuff too. And Testers really supported me in this because I explained to them what we wanted to do with this book and they go, oh man, that is so needed and we're behind it 100%. Tell us what we can do to help. And so they sent me a full set of their Model Master paints so I could use to create formulas to match the old Floquo colors. So we got 72 Floquo colors, the most common Floquo colors and formulas for them, you know, Vallejo, Model Flex and Model Master formulas. And then also there's a lot of suggestions on air brushing and brush painting and how to get, and I even have some what I call some economical thinner formulas so that you can get a solvent-based behavior out of these acrylics. So yeah, that's been very popular. Testers has really supported it. You can get the book on Amazon as well. And so yeah, it's been very popular, very well received. I have people come up to me at shows and say, man, I got that book. It's transformed my painting of models. Right. It's like, wow, great. I'm glad it was helpful. Super good. Well, before we close it out, Patty, any last words about how cool it is or working with your project, Model World Obvious Magazine? Oh, I'd do anything with him. That's awesome, you guys. Everybody's going to love this part of the show. This is really great. I guess we're going to close out this segment of what's neat but I want to thank very much our editor and Patty also, Joe and Patty Fugate for being on The What's Neat Show and that ends this segment of What's Neat. Thanks, guys. Thanks, Ken. For this layout construction segment of What's Neat, we're going to talk about a new ladder system that microengineering has recently introduced to the market based on number five turnouts. Now for years, microengineering has always created this number six turnout, which is tried and true, and we've been using these for a long time because, as you know, microengineering track is arguably some of the most beautiful HO scale and end scale track that's available on the market today and the folks that use it swear by it and so we've used their number six switches for years. But now microengineering has introduced a set of number five turnouts brand new to their line. They've offered a standard number five turnout, which isn't exactly standard and I want to go into that in a moment, but they've also introduced a series of ladder tracks which allows you to save space on the diverging ladder system, which allows you to have longer yard track in space in your switch yard. So they've put a lot of thought and engineering into this new ladder system, which I want to talk about starting with this number five A standard turnout. Now, being a number five turnout, this has got the standard frog angle of 11.42 degrees on it, but the way it's designed, it's set up so that it'll give you the two and one sixteenth inch spacing that the NMRA has got for their standards for turnout spacing on yard trackages. Also, the end of this turnout is a little bit longer because they've added flex track to it so that you can curve the end of this, allowing you to reposition the turnout and do special things in a yard that we couldn't do before. So consider this the number five standard turnout that they've come out with, labeled number five A in their line of turnouts. Now, to start their ladder system, which is a space-saving converging system, we start with what's called a 5B turnout. Now, this 5B turnout is similar to a standard number five in that it's got the 11.4 degree frog angle, but the way it's designed with the diverging curve on it, this turnout allows for an angle of about 16.2 degrees, which allows you to save more space again and allows your trackage to be wider as you go along. Now, the second turnout that we use for the ladder system, and this is their lead ladder track, as you see this one is designed where the trackage ends right at the frog, which allows the points of the next turnout, which is a standard 5D turnout to be connected right to this. This is the same thing that we used to do when we hand-laid our track. You'd start your points right after the frog, which allows you to convert your switches tighter together and save space when you're hand-laying it. A feature that's never been available in flex track or sectional track before is now being made available through this system. So with this, you can see that there's this extra track that's on the side that mates up directly with this track. And I have found that when you connect these together, it's best to lay them flat on the flat surface. Dirk, can you get in here and get this coming in here on this tight surface? When you lay this flat on a surface, it's easier to connect the micro-engineering track jointers because as you see this angle, it's just a little bit tough. It's not straight on. And now this is connected with the frog and the points right after that. Now, I'm using three of these turnouts to create our yard system here. One, two, three. Now, the last one that I'm going to talk about is this section right here. And what this is, this is labeled as a micro-engineering 5E ladder track. And this is the track that you would end your ladder system with right after these 5D turnouts right here. This one allows you to then have your last remaining tracks or have a run-through track go around the yard, which then finishes your system. So what I want to do today is I'm going to connect all of these tracks together on top of this piece of foam along with the number 6 turnouts right next to it. That will allow us to see what the space savings is and tentatively it looks like we've got a space savings of about 17 inches when it's all set up into place. If you just figure these number 5 turnouts by themselves, the way they're designed, as opposed to standard number 5s, not only do you get the additional 16.2 degree angle which allows you to have quicker spacing of track and the spacing is 2.5 inches on these turnouts as you figure it out, but also the system allows you as you go along to lay it all out, save 17 inches, but overall compared to number 5s, you still save about 1 inch per turn out using this system, which I'm pretty sure is going to come out to 6 or 7 inches of savings using this system as opposed to say number standard number 5s made by other manufacturers. So this is new and exciting, something new for microengineering that helps add to our creativity when it comes to laying out switch yards, saving spaces, and getting as many freight cars in our storage areas as we could possibly put in. So I'm going to assemble this now and then I'll close this segment with any final thoughts that I have after I've put this all together. So I've assembled together both of our ladders, using the microengineering ladder track system on the bottom here, and using standard microengineering number 6 turnouts on the top area. I can tell you that the distance saved, I measured it, it's 47 inches to create this ladder, and it's 64 inches to create the ladder for the same amount of tracks on both sets of ladders. So that's a 17 inch difference. Also, I want to say that the way this is laid out, I was able to run an 89 foot car through it with no problems at all. It was able to make it around the curve with no derailments. So I've got my 5B converging track here. That's the lead ladder, the first track that I put on. Then I've got my 5C, the lead ladder track right here. Then I've used 3 5D intermediate ladder tracks. And then the last one is called the last ladder, number 5E right here, which completes my 7 track switch yard and condensed into a space of only 47 inches. So check it out. It looks like it worked. And in case you want to find out if this is going to work for your layout, microengineering has these templates online on their website of each one of the turnouts in full size. So you can print these out, lay them in your switch yard area and see if this type of ladder system is right for you. So that's this segment on What's Neat. All of the Model Railroad products seen in this episode of What's Neat are available through Caboose in Denver, Colorado, or order online at MyCaboose.com. I like those long shadows though.