 what's neat tooltip. I'm telling you I'm working on a station platform for the small station that I had on one shelf layout and I've moved it now to another shelf layout so I'm having to build a whole new platform, passenger platform and what I'm doing is I'm cutting strips of wood one by our 2x12's and I'm putting them on a piece of plexiglass which will then when it's finished this will just fit right into the layout very nicely. But what I want to talk about is the tools that we use for cutting because I took it for granted today while I was working on this that all these sizes needed to be exactly the same and I'm talking about over a hundred boards where I've got to cut them exactly the same size. Now of course we can use to try to intrude exacto blade type of a knife and it's always good to buy the blades in bulk 100 at a time they'll last you forever you just you'll never run out of blades but another thing of course when I was younger I used to model just to cut my wood and strips just using straight safety razors these worked really well my grandparents had a lot of them around and you buy a whole box of these from the Home Depot for under 10 bucks so not a bad deal but when you're doing repetitive cuts like this I find that it's best to use a Northwest short line chopper this is a really tool that's worth a good investment really truly this is something where you can set the depth up to be the same size for cutting every time so that when you pull the handle down and you cut your wood all your strips of wood and you can cut like 10 or 12 at a time they're always going to be the same size now over the years I've had a couple of these cutters the first one that I had was one up was on a piece of masonite which allowed me to cut larger strips of wood and this one works really good and I believe both of these are still available in the market but just something I wanted to talk about and that's the cutting tools that are necessary to make repetitive redundant cuts which to do it by hand would just it would just drive you crazy why do it when you can buy a really good tool that works for just that purpose for this segment of what's neat it's about 2 a.m. and I'm doing another nighttime photography session outside and it's gonna be totally dark so I don't expect you to see me at this point but check out these buildings I've got these buildings lit with LED flashlights I put an LED flashlight in each one of these buildings so that they'll serve as the background for this photograph I'm doing an exposure shot the camera is set in bulb once again so that I can leave the shutter open and I'm keeping the shutter open in this photograph for one and a half minutes with the buildings fully lit and then I hit the lights on the house here and I can light up the whole diorama outside and you can see the locomotives that I've got set up here it's a bicentennial shot using multiple units that athron's got available right now and with the buildings lit for one minute and then the house lights left on for about 19 seconds I'm able to get an exposure that comes out pretty darn interesting so let me show you the way this shot has come out it's just something different it's something interesting and it's just that experimentation with outdoor photography that lends itself to creative art so that's what's going on at two o'clock in the morning here on the bluff the river is busy lots of trains in Illinois about 52 degrees and it's just a beautiful evening to be doing an outdoor nighttime photo shoot for what's neat for this segment of what's neat I sort of want to set this clip up before we watch it John Deetson is our new drone pilot for a new segment on the show that we're going to have from time to time called modeling ideas from above and what this does is this gives us a great opportunity to visualize the perspective of viewing a layout except for this is prototype footage from the same height that we would normally be looking at our trains from so with this footage you can study details you can see a million different things without words the color of pavement the the subtleness of automobile paint schemes the size of all the things in perspective to each other the trees the dexterity of the leaves on the trees there's a lot of things where when you visualize for example the buildings in the city you can actually see in your head and understand how you can make your models look just like the footage that we're able to see from the air without the cost of a $1400 per hour helicopter trip this drone allows us to have just magnificent vantage point views of things that we choose to model now for this clip we're going to look at Durand Michigan on and I pulled a picture here of Durand out of my book Heartland by Greg McDonald and this is just a beautiful location it's got a nice train station on the old grand trunk lines so enjoy this this clip coming up about three minutes of just visual eye candy from above in the new segment that we call modeling ideas from above for this what's neat this week tool tips I'm installing a another single-stall engine house this is one that I've already built while I'm building another one now for another whole new shelf diorama which I'm not actually making a video of I'm just building this and trying to get this finished and although I did put a plexiglass bottom on the last engine house that I built because it's a two-part building with the workshop and the main building this time I'm only gonna build it with just the engine house and not add the shop to the side of the structure but I've still got to settle it down into the foam now normally I use a router for that or I'll use a hot foam cutter but today I tried something different and that's what this tool tip is all about when I get a great idea I've got to share it with you a whole lot less mess is to use this dremel cordless tool with the router attachment on it I've got a router bit in it set for the depth that I've got to cut this down in order for the track to fit flush into the engine house and this is simple as can be and I'm not having any mess with this I'm simply going through and trimming out just about an eighth of an inch deep and this is working out really nice no fuss no mess no mess I'm able to cut out the groove for each one of the rafters so it's a structure will fit snug down into place and be level with the track work so that's just a tool tip another useful tool for the cordless dremel is this router attachment for implanting and settling the buildings that you got into your foam scenery base shoot today and I'm shooting something kind of really cool I want to show to you this is I would say this is what's neat this is a brand new climax an HO scale from Bachman now they came out with this model I don't know how many five ten years ago and now it's been reissued and re-released and this has got all metal gears in it so this thing should run real sweet I'll put this inside on the layout and see how well this runs I think it's going to be just a real slow beautiful machine to watch operate but just doing a photo shoot today the wind is blowing my mountains all over the place I've kind of got this shot set up you can see what I was after here just something real sweet with the water reflection just one of those really cool little trick photos that you can put together in a matter of an hour and try to have it pinched out the wind like I said is causing me a lot of trouble today but I'm real happy with with this gorgeous little engine that I've got to work with today something really sweet new from Bachman and I just wanted to share it on this segment of what's neat another tool tip for what's neat whenever you've got these floccal bottles or any kind of paint you're shaking it you're shaking it you can't quite get the paint to loosen up I found a great use for the ultrasonic cleaner and that is I take this cool filter basket I drop my paint in it and I drop it in the ultrasonic cleaner and what that does is it loosens up the paint because the jar is a solid and the paint is now inside vibrating so that's going to loosen up the paint so if I pull this out in about 30 or 40 seconds I can shake the bottle of paint up no problem everything is loose so that's just another benefit of using an ultrasonic cleaner for this month's layout construction segment I'm working on my river section I had put this on ebay and was unable to sell it and I've used it for so many photographs that I think it's time to make changes on it now to refresh the scene and kind of make it a whole new location and so my plan is is to take the outside border of where this layout is right here and actually have it curve all the way in and do a nice s-curve to match up with the with the plywood where you see it down there where it matches up right here so what we're going to do is we're going to take a big long french curve made out of a piece of plywood and literally just lay the french curve right here along the edge of the layout make it so that I cut off about a foot and a half where it peers out and make it match up to the back of the room where the layout is back there by using the plywood as a french curve it'll ensure that the lines that we draw are just where we want them to be plus you can visualize it during the construction process and kind of have an idea even if you want to do it this way or not so we just completed that it looks good and we're getting ready to take the super saws all now and just simply cut through the foam and cut through the metal studs underneath and then re-laminate everything with plywood and that would make a scene that I'm planning here where I can have a river launch location for either a stern wheeler or a modern type of barge where you can roll the freight cars right off the mainland and onto the water for transportation so that's the plan here let's see how this comes out the demolition slash construction process started with pulling off the quarter inch stained plywood fascia I then used a 12 inch printing saw to cut through the foam modules matching the line drawn where the new border of the layout would end up being I cut through the water I cut through the cement roads I also sliced through the fake fur following the line all the way creating the new form of the layout at this point the reality of the demolition set in as the layout came apart you could see this was going to make for a wider aisle space an easier reach onto the main lines without having to step on a stool I was starting to like the way it was going to look the next step in the process was to cut the bench work's flat table surface I did this with a super sawzall this powerful tool cut the wood and the metal studs clean just like butter the bench work pulled away clean and revealed the new dimensions of the layout I used a Stanley shore form planer to smooth the curved sides of the layout so the new plywood sides would have a surface to attach and wrap around I cut new plywood sides to cover the lower bench work areas the tabletop and this will be stained to match the rest of the layout sides now it was time to figure out the track plan and the grade and how to get the track from the main line down to the river's edge now in order to get the track that's going to run from the main line down to the edge of the river and to be able to load the freight cars onto a barge or onto a sternwheeler ship what I've been doing is I'm taking I'm starting right here and I've taken a red laser and I've got it positioned exactly right and I've also added here where I'm going to add on to the water service with more land so that I can make an area for the ship to be able to pull in a dock right here and then load the freight cars and have a one track holding yard so there's a lot of work this can have to be done for the conversion of the scene including pulling out all the bushes pulling out all the fake fur and then cutting the main line so it follows this red line all the way down along the scene so right now it appears that I've got my work cut out for me I've got the edges and the curves of the diorama pretty much shaped the way I want it so now I'm just going to work on this topography for this new track section a really cool thing about using this laser is the fact that while I'm actually carving the foam with the shore form planer here to the exact grade that I want I've got the laser light pointing on to the scene and I can literally while I'm carving it watch the laser light move from here back to here as the grade matches where the light is talking about a precise way to make measurements in order to carve out your foam exactly to the grade that I want to my low point from the high point where it starts this is just super simple and a great way to do it just carving it out and watching that red light move over tells me that I'm getting very accurate now to where I want the track level to be now that I've got my track grade drawn onto the foam and carved out I know where the track is going to go all the way down to where it's going to meet up with the lake or the river here now the plan is to take this part this existing part of my layout where I've always had a great large body of water that runs over to this bridge and the plan is to take this area and fill it up with foam so I can have more land mass and what I want to fit in here somehow is I want to get enough trackage where I've got one track going directly to the water where I can then create a steamboat offloading facility like what you see here turn of the century where they're just loading the trains off of the bank of the river and onto a single track steamboat I think something like that would lend itself well here figure the boat would be 250 to 300 feet long and it should fit in this inlet area just fine I've got a piece of foam here laid on top of the water so I can kind of get an idea where I want to fill the land to fit three tracks one to the water one over to a siding where I'm going to put this bts hide pulp mill kit this is a really uh in-depth complicated craftsman structure and what the plan is is to build that in this area and do a two-hour video on kenpatterson.com on how to build buildings craftsman structure kits which this kit would be great for something like that but at the same time for what's neat I want to show how I've built this section and how it's going to actually fill out I need to wait until I get the kit so I know the exact footprint and how I need to build my bank and then build the pier to feed the uh from the water to the rail transportation and then I'll have room here for three tracks one holding track one track that goes to the mill and the third track that'll run down to the water's edge and then load on to the steam boats so it sounds like I've got a lot of work ahead of me here but I really think that this is going to go pretty quick because in reality it's a pretty small area and the only complicated parts are going to be simply building the structures and building the steamboat and we may or may not cover that in this video but as long as we show how I want to show illustrate to you how it is I've built out this section of the layout converting an existing layout into something new completely neat and different and I think it's going to come out pretty nice so let's let's keep going on this project and see how it works out so what I'm going to do is take some of this great stuff foam pro and I'm going to use that to build out where the track is going to go going down this grade I've carved out an area here thinking I was actually going to lay a piece of foam in here and have it just level but I know this material is dense enough where if I fill in this area I can cut this material level and lay the track directly on top of the probe foam so that's what I'm going to start to do here is I'm going to start to fill this area and just make this a nice gradual matching grade to what we had with the laser I'll set up the laser again when I carve this but spanned and set up it'll be very dense and firm and level retaining wall in here there's a lot of different ways to handle the scenery packing it tight that's all I'm going to need to finish this area so if I want to drop in a road down to the water I can do that it's more expensive than buying a sheet of foam but this will be a very good way to do this and have control over my grade as I go down here foam is set up I've got my laser set in place and now I'm cutting the grade following the line of the laser and just a little bit of final carving here and I'm going to have this foam section all perfect just with the grade that I want all the way down to the water's edge so what I've done is I've taken the sure form and the saw and I carved out this orange foam and I kind of changed the relief of the topography here where I've got a road going through I've kind of figured out where to lay the track that will run on down to the edge of the water and load up onto the boats and plus I also was able to take a title to and get a hold of the hide pulp mill from BTS models and by as soon as I received this box I opened it up and I looked for the immediate footprint of each building so I could sort of lay it out here on what I would call is going to be a warp scene I'm going to reverse the dock the dock on the kit comes off this way I'm going to reverse it so it comes off to the right hand side as I model it I'll still be able to run two tracks up the middle and all the buildings are going to fit just right I've got it plotted out here which really dictated that part of the scene so what I did was I took some additional pieces of foam and I literally glued them right on top of my water surface here and now I've got more land mass and I've ended up with four tracks one to park some trains on its relatively level here and then a track that's going to go on down to the water and unload onto a boat and I've got two tracks that service the pulp mill structure so all I've got to do now is well what I've got to do is I've got to put in block switches and put in panels but between now and the time that I'm going to get this finished I've got one of these open houses where I'm going to have people coming by to visit so what I've got to do on this is put up the plywood stain it but put it up temporary so somehow I'm either going to screw it or tack it on temporary and then I'll go back and I'll cut out the panel mounts for the four block switches that I'll have to put in for the siding tracks but right now I'm going to focus on getting everything painted and sealed with some latex paint and then I'll go back and as I get more three rail track I'll be able to continue laying the track here and plot this out I don't really see me doing any more construction on this after it's painted and the wood is on it's just going to sit here for a few weeks as I work on some other projects so at this point that's kind of what I wanted to show on layout tips for this month was the in process of this section of the layout that's getting built and in future shows we'll follow up on this and I'll show as the rest of the diorama and the building and things sort of go together to create a really cool scene for photography and for video run buys and it's also made a great deal more space in the room now that you've watched me cut everything down so that's this segment of layout construction for what's neat