 Hi, I'm George Zellios with Fine Scale Miniatures and you are watching What's Neat This Week with Ken Patterson. 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. Additional support is provided by Walthers Trains, everything you need to build a great model railroad. Check out their website at Walthers.com. And by Bachman Trains. Now that's the way to run a railroad. Check out their website at BachmanTrains.com. Further support is provided by American Limited Models, the relentless pursuit of accuracy. Check out their website at AmericanLimitedModels.com. And thank you for helping us support the best hobby in the world. This is What's Neat for December 2021. I'm your host Ken Patterson and this month we've got a great show. In that we start out with a great interview with Ed Dickens, the head of the Union Pacific Steam Program. The big boy locomotive was here this summer and it was a beautiful day and we've got a great interview that will run this month in the show. Also we've got some fantastic drone footage, what I call the Winter Odyssey from Dan Scheidel, our drone pilot. Absolutely beautiful scenery. In fact it looks just like models when you view it. Also this month, Radisson McGuire stops by and he shares with us how he paints military vehicles for loading on a freight car load, as in my train that I've shown in the past. He's a great modeler of all those types of vehicles. We saw a segment from him last month and it's great to have him on the show again. Also Doug Blaine from Bachman Trains, my friend over there from Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, gives us a great interview with different gift ideas for Christmas and some of the new products that Bachman is in fact coming out with. Another great Christmas idea is the Walther's Build World. This is a subscription based series of dioramas whereas it's designed to bring the youth into the hobby and or the experienced modeler that may be downsizing and not have a full layout but they still want to build models on the kitchen table or their desk. This series of structures and dioramas comes complete with all the tools necessary to build four different types of dioramas. So check that out also at Walther's.com. It's a great idea for Christmas. Now Walther's mainline series freight cars, they've got 60 foot three bay hoppers and a lot of other freight cars on Walther's.com that would also make great Christmas gifts or you can pick them up at my favorite hobby shop, Lombard Hobbies up in Lombard, Illinois. That's off to you guys and thank you so much for helping us promote the best hobby in the world. Another idea that I've got for Christmas gift, I ran into this soldering iron made by Milwaukee. This is the perfect gift to give that modeler order in your life that has every single tool because I promise you they don't have this. This is a battery operated rechargeable soldering iron. It runs with the M12 series of batteries. It's kind of amazing in that you can just turn it on, use it when you need it, it's always charged and then it's ready for the go. Easy to travel, easy to take with you to the club. Perfect gift again for Christmas. Also, I'd like to say be sure to check out the What's Neat this week video show that we produce every Saturday keeping you updated on what's new in the hobby, special products, great guests and also our regular podcast crew. It's a wonderful show that we love to produce every Saturday keeping you informed of what's new in this, the best hobby in the world. And with that, let's continue on with the rest of this December 2021 What's Neat. For this segment of What's Neat, I've got Rad McGuire. Now last month, he shared with us an array of amazing military vehicles all tricked out just like we see Mike Buddy do auto racks. But today he's going to be modeling something called a 978 Oshkosh. And that is, what is that? That's a tanker truck. Is that right? Yeah, it is the main tanker truck for the US Army. Okay. And you've started to disassemble one here. Let's get a shot of that and tell us why you took the whole thing apart because that looks scary to me. Well, Ken, you know, back in 2019 I was here for the military train and you showed off your military train. And the entire time I've seen you've done nothing with your military train. Correct. So I drove all the way from Alabama to finally do something with your military train. I'm going to paint one of these vehicles today. Wow. All right, so let's see how this turns out. This will be exciting step by step as we go through the process. Okay, Rad, now we've come outside and you're going to can spray paint this Oshkosh and you've got a very interesting tool holding it. What is that? That's just a helping hand device. You can get these at any Harbor Freight and pretty much a lot of the hobby shops sell these too. It's a great cheap little device, holds them in place very easily and this has multi-purpose from vehicles to trains. But today, like you said, Rattle Can. A lot of people are very uneasy about spray paint. Tamiya makes amazing colors. This is TS61 NATO Green. Now with the military colors is to each his own. But to me, it to me makes one of the most accurate color schemes on the market. This is a very cool man. Show us what you do. Okay, Rad, I see you've got an amazing book there and you're about to disassemble this model. Tell me about this book. This is a US Army paint by numbers book, essentially. It is an official military document to show you what the front page looks like. This is the color markings and camouflage painting of US military vehicles, construction equipment and material handling equipment. This is straight from the Department of the US Army. A friend of mine from Aniston Army Depot gave me this book because it is a semi outdated book. There are the older vehicles from the 80s in this book. But for the vehicle that we're doing today, the 978 Oshkosh, we're going to be painting this guy into Woodland. And I will show you how to disassemble, how to do your basic detailing and then how to paint. And essentially get it to where it is a prototype vehicle for your train, military railhead or just going through your town. Okay, Rad, we saw you outside painting a model, but we're using two models to create this demonstration. And you told me it's very important to understand how to disassemble the model, right? Right. And the reason being is because you do not want to paint the tires and you do not want to paint on the windows. And there's also other detail parts we have to install. So the tires come off pretty easy. You just got to kind of twist them. And then I can do this. There we go. It comes right off. You're good to go. Now with the cab, which is the most important thing, it's a large window. You don't want paint on your windows. So this protective piece right here holds it in place and the cab will slide right off. And then you just push and that's good. We're going to leave the cab off for paint and final reassembly because it'll all go back together once it's fully detailed like the finished model we have here. Now, another thing that you will notice with these older Roco Herpa models or just many tanks in general is you have different detail sprues. We're going to need our mirrors, our tie down points for when we do actually do tie downs and our grab irons. That's just for the cab. For the rear, you're going to need your safety railing and your steps and ladder for the rear tank. So we'll get to something on this. Brad, I see you've already started painting black. Tell me what you're doing there. Okay, so when you look at the NATO scheme on this book, you see one, two and three. Number one is your NATO black. Number two is your NATO green. And number three is brown. We're going to handle brown last. But the best thing to do is you see all these hard lines and angles and the best thing to do is just kind of do it the best your ability. Because even when you look at these trucks in person, they differ from vehicle to vehicle just ever so slightly. It's basically the pattern itself is there, but the spray markings might be different. So we want to try and get it as close to the NATO paint scheme as humanly possible. So now I'm painting the NATO brown on the fueler itself. And the thing that everyone needs to realize here is you can airbrush this. Yes. But just like the real military, they just spray paint this stuff on there. It can be hand done. It's a lot easier than you think. If you don't get it exactly to the prototype picture, that's okay. If it's in the general area and keeps the general shape, that's what you want. Because when you look at the actual photos, they're all different in their own little ways, which we will see here. I mean, it's going to take this end right here and we can tell number three, which goes here would be going right here. So we're going to go in, take a little bit of our paint here, damp any excess water we have on it. We're going to come in and just follow the line. There are no hard edges or hard lines, so you're not going to have any jagged lines. It's all supposed to kind of flow into one another. And that is a little round patch just like we have on the prototype. If I didn't say it before, I am using Tamiya water-based paints. These are acrylic paints offered by Tamiya. And they offer the full gambit of NATO Black, NATO Brown, and they even do foreign countries and specialty paints. For example, USAF Brown and USAF Black and Green, they do to use. Today, for the last part, we're going to decal here. This is a brand new decal sheet from Arsenal in many tanks with people who bought Roco. And they make a nifty fuel tanker set for any color fuel truck you could possibly imagine. We've already installed the ID unit numbers and the weird chevron on the doors. And we've already done the sides, but they also have them on the rear end here. So we're just going to kind of take our finger and slide this decal off like that. Take our Walther Solva sets off here and just give a quick dab. These decals are super thin, but they're super easy to work with at the same time. That went on very straight, so we are good for that. And take a Q-tip, just kind of dab off the excess. And this is decaling. Everyone has their own little way of doing their decals. So I'm pretty sure everyone has set in their ways here. Now we're going to take our 1993, the fuel warning placards, which are here. And these decals only take a few seconds to work with to where you can actually get them off of the paper here. There's some of the easiest decals to work with. Leave it to the Germans to come up with just amazing products like this. Because back in the day, we would have to go out and have to custom order these ourselves and have 30 or 40 sheets or even plus. Take a little bit there and you're good. That's how we decal the 978 Hennet. Alright, this is the last paint process. This is PS-55, flat clear from Tamiya. It's a brand new product that just started arriving at hobby shops here, stateside really. So when you take your flat clear, you're going to of course shake it and just lightly hit every single angle you can. What this is going to do is this is going to make everything look uniform. This is going to basically blend all the paints and all of your decals all into one. And the great thing about this is you do not have to clear coat these like you used to with some decals because this is almost a clear coat at the end of the day. But it's so hot out here because it's beautiful St. Louis weather. It's pretty much all drying on contact. Alright, so now that we have completed the paint and the decaling and the clear coating it's time for reassembly of our Hennet fuel tanker. This is a pretty easy step here. It's actually one of my favorite steps is to watch the model all come together. We're going to reinsert the windows so we don't scrape the paint off our lights. We're going to just barely pull if I can get this to actually cooperate because they don't always like to go on the way you had it. That steps back into place very evenly. The spare tire had a different mounting ring so we're going to install the spare tire back on the prong and just one by one reinsert the wheels. And then, just like that, you've got your very own military fuel truck all ready to hit the rail hood and go off to its next duty assignment somewhere in the country. Bradison, you made this look really simple. I mean, we just spent a few hours watching you paint the camouflage, paint the model green, add decals and we managed to work dinner in there. You do make it look easy. It's a lot easier than people realize and all you have to do is have the patience and you can get this thing done in one evening. Man, thank you so much for sharing this with the viewers of What's Neat and that is this segment for What's Neat. For this segment of What's Neat, we're down here with 4014 and I've got Ed Dickens with me, the main engineer for the steam program for the Union Pacific Railroad. Ed, tell me about your passion for the hobby because I know that you are also a model rider. Well, it's been a long time since I've done modeling, but when I was in grade school, I fell in love with the Rio Grande and back, and this would be in the 1970s, we didn't have the SD40 T-Dash II off the shelf, beautiful models, and I've been out of it so I don't even know what those are called, Genesis or whatever that top of the line is. Right, Athens is going to be proud to hear that. We would have died for something like that, so we had to kit bash them. Yes. I remember the magazines at the time, Model Railroad, that was like the best thing that could happen to us. That's where we spent our money. My paper route money went toward modeling, you know, the ready-to-run Horn Hook coupler, even the Tyco stuff. I just loved all that. The stuff that we have today that I see, and oftentimes we have requests for model companies to come evaluate the equipment and measure it and so they can duplicate it, I have a real appreciation for that and I want to help them so they can make the locomotives as accurate. If you think about, they're willing to invest the time and effort in the tooling, and that's got to be expensive. We want to help them come up with the best model that they can. We're always making little subtle changes to the locomotive, changes that we know Model Railroaders would be interested in, because there's kind of a rivet counting perfectionism with modeling and we appreciate that. There sometimes we'll make a change and we'll want to keep it a little bit secret and wonder how long before somebody notices. They notice right away, so that's just the attention to detail you guys have. There's seven manufacturers currently making the Big Boy locomotive and that's just an HO scale, that doesn't count the ones in large scale, trains USA and MTH did it in O scale, so many different scales. The one thing that everybody has been doing is writing the chalked words Big Boy on the front of the locomotive and we both know where that phrase came from, the Big Boy. Sure, that's a tribute to all of the people that work during the industrial age, not just the individual who wrote it and the workers at Elko, but all locomotive manufacturers, all the designers, the draft people, everybody that did the work on the railroad, not just building the railroads, but maintaining the locomotives, operating them in every way, so that's a tribute. We still put it up there in chalk and the rain will wash it off and then we don't have a schedule on when we're going to put it back up, it's just kind of a fun way to pay tribute. Photographers like to keep track of it. The modelers will write it a little bit differently here and there, but it's become so much of the story of the Big Boy, it's something that people want to know, when are you going to write it up there? Right. Or so it's something that they enjoy photographing and kind of keeping track of that little detail. Convey with me the feeling that the status of being the engineer of this locomotive is. Now, will you remember Steve Lee from 84-44 or at one time 844 and 3095, the Challenger locomotive, he also had that established position of being very famous. I knew his name and so many other people do and now you follow those footsteps and you've been with Union Pacific on the steam program, you said for 17 years. Tell me how it feels to be of that stature of. Well, I think I think it's careful not to get swept into that because it's not about even though I really in a heartfelt I sincerely appreciate that name recognition, but there are so many people that go into making this locomotive work. You know, I think it's natural to look up into a locomotive like this and you've got that big window and it's easy to associate the individual sitting in the window. But I think there's a danger with that too, in that we fail to recognize all of the other people. And there are so many every member of the crew here who works tirelessly in performing all the important work. There's nobody more important or less important than everyone in this crew. A small crew, we have a very small crew compared to what the Steve Lee era enjoyed. So we have to be very judicious about what we work on, how we work on it, make sure that our quality is absolutely the best. In everything that we do, all of the details, we're always dotting the I's and crossing the T's. But when you get to know the members of this crew, you'll see such a talented workforce and so many diverse talents that are necessary. You've got to wear different hats and you've got to be willing to perform all the different functions to make this steam locomotive work. So I enjoy that. It's fun to sign autographs, but I'm always grabbing everybody else on the crew with me and say, hey, get over here, get over here. And some of them are uncomfortable with the accolades and the spotlight. That's normal, I think. But it's also part of the job that people work to be able to tie a human side to this. And in this instance, for the time being, that falls to us. Yes. Is there a word that can describe when you've got this magnificent machine open on the main line, you're doing full throttle, you're doing probably 80 miles an hour plus, is there a word that can describe what you feel like at that moment? Well, we don't do 80. We don't do much over 60 generally. But to your point, it's exhilarating, it's humbling. There's a lot of emotions, a lot of memories and a lot of things that we all have during operations, depending on whether it's morning or evening and the way the whistle sounds, the way that there's an ambiance when you go through a crowd of people, there's an aura that you can detect and you can feel. And you can feel that level of enthusiasm that they're sharing for the locomotive. And so from that standpoint, you're putting on a demonstration, you're putting on a show. So we sound the whistle very nice repeatedly. We sound it in a certain cadence that evokes more emotion from people. So it's all just a really big connection to be able to do that. We've all done it a long time, so there's a lot of experience here. And so when we operate the locomotive, we're very disciplined about every aspect of it. That pressure is maintained always at 300 pounds. We're very diligent about our fuel consumption, our water chemistry. Every aspect of that, there's this reverence about what we're doing. Because we want to carry on the traditions. We've had to fix a lot of equipment and we've got equipment that doesn't run anymore. And so we don't want to get to that point to where we're repeating some of those conditions that resulted in this equipment not running. So we're just very careful about that. But back to your point about what it's like, it's a true honor and a privilege. It's a blessing to be a part of it. We don't ever lose sight of that because this is the moment in time in which we're given this responsibility and we want to do it right. We want people to go away with this experience and very positive experience. We have materials that we give to people. Our interactions with people are very important and very personal. And that we want people to feel like that we're paying attention to them. We don't want to miss people. That's the thing that I enjoy. I know that the rest of the crew really enjoys that too. They're able to interact with people. And sometimes you're able to see those people again along the way. That's always special. But it's the young children that have the passion for the steam locomotive to know that you're impacting that moment in time for them. Yes, forever a memory and that's what leads into modeling. I always say it all the time that this is the best hobby in the world, model railing and railfanning in general. And Ed, it's because of people just like you. Well, thank you very much. It's a privilege for us. And having this locomotive, this iconic machine and being the people that are the ones assigned to maintain it to actually reacquire it and to rebuild it is something from the beginning. We set ourselves on a mission that we want to make sure and do everything as careful as we can. When we maintain this locomotive, we don't have the luxury of having a roundhouse every night and having everything that the railroad had back when they kept these locomotives in operation. So that means we've got to really be careful and diligent about everything, all the details, the grease, the oil, how we operate the locomotive, the speeds we operate it, the track in which we operate it over, how we operate it. I mean, every piece of this is a very well orchestrated, carefully choreographed plan that we set in motion. The majority of those planning details are my responsibility. So that brings everything together full circle because knowing the logistics of everything allows me to fit this big giant piece of the puzzle into the rest of the railroad network and be able to deliver this in product on a timely manner, on an efficient manner, and in a manner that's going to maximize our ability to deliver the call it a return on investment because that's really in the end of the day, that's really what it is. Absolutely. And I want to thank you very much for this short portion of your time. I respect what you do and it's the best hobby in the world. I keep saying it. Thank you very much. Thank you very much. I appreciate it. Thank you for the time today. For this segment of What's Neat, I've got Doug Blaine all the way from beautiful Philadelphia, Pennsylvania at Bachman Trains. Isn't it wonderful to have you on the show tonight? Doug, how are you? Ken, it's a pleasure to be with you and all your fans. I look forward to talking with you and sharing some of our products from Bachman. That's awesome. Now I've been working with you for almost 30 years, Doug, and you have and I have both followed each other through the industry and watched it change to where it is now. Very strong, the best hobby in the world. And while I want to talk about, start by talking about some of the amazing photography that I was able to do for you, I was so honored at the time. And we're going to cover N scale, G scale, and all the various types of scale in these photographs as I run you through them, including ON30. I want to start with the 440s, Doug. That was an absolutely amazing locomotive. I had talked to Lee Riley about that model for years in that it originally has a drive shaft between the tender and the locomotive and Bachman remade that locomotive completely with a Coralus motor and absolutely turned it into a dynamite 440, the best on the HO scale market in my opinion. And I want to show you a beautiful photograph of the sunrise with that. I like to get up early in the morning to do some of these shots. I also did a shot of both of the Jupiter, both of them creating, recreating that effect of when Union Pacific finished the main line out in the middle of the country. And I also have a single shot here of the Bachman 440 doing a sunrise, whereas I used a body of water to reflect the locomotive. Very, very beautiful photography. I'm not toot my horn, but it is neat when I'm able to do art like this. I love it. I also did this beautiful locomotive in G scale. We put this on the 2016 cover. Do you remember what that was? In fact, that's on the shelf down here. Just a gorgeous locomotive with red wheels. I'm going to look and see what the name of that was. That's the grizzly flats. Oh, yes. Remember that? Absolutely, that is a beautiful locomotive and it was a beautiful shot from you as well, Ken. I also did that locomotive with a sunrise and just a little darker type of a photograph, creating a mood that I'm showing to you right here, just a kind of a different scenario. We also did a Bachman GG1 in N scale. There's a lot of avid N scalers out there. And this locomotive was absolutely dynamite and looked just like the one that Williams had done and the one that you guys had done in HO scale. I also want to say that I did this shot at nighttime. And this is going to be another N scale photograph where you guys had come out with these beautiful Pennsylvania streamlined passenger cars. And I painted a moon and I lit up some N scale buildings with LED lights on the inside and reflected a background light off of the track and lit up the train so it would reflect off the rails, creating a very interesting mood shot. I love doing shots like that. I also did, I'm going to show you an array of photographs here that I did with an ON30 locomotive. I think we ran this in the Bachman catalog one time as a centerfold shot. A lot of pine trees in the background, another reflective body of water and the mountains. Guys, this is just, this is the kind of stuff I love to do. On the 2020 Bachman catalog cover, we put that beautiful Amtrak locomotive that I've got sitting on the table. Again, I did use some pine trees and mountains. I didn't want to create a Midwest scene, but I probably should have with that one the way it was set up. This year, we did the Bachman trains 2021 catalog cover with the new Bachman G scale dash nine that's eventually going to come out. What a beautiful model. You guys had sent me the Santa Fe and the Santa Fe warp on it. Absolutely beautiful model. I want to end it up here with the Bachman N scale USAR steam locomotive, USRA steam locomotive that we had done. This was done outdoors. Again, all my photography is done outdoors where I created a scene using code 55 rail on this one. I worked a few Bachman N scale freight cars in the background that were completely weathered and it's just that type of art that I love creating. I think that pretty much wraps up all the photos here that I wanted to talk about tonight. We do have one more and that is the train sets. You guys have come out with an array of train sets. I've done a lot of various train set box art for you, which I do love doing, especially when I get to go to the big box doors and find my photographs sitting on the shelf. This is just one example of an N scale, or an HO scale train set that we had done. Doug, I know you've got some exciting stuff that you'd like to talk about too. Please tell us. Will do. Thanks for sharing those photos with us, Ken, and a reminder of all that great work. Much appreciated, believe me, over the years. I would like to start out actually with a follow-up to Larry Harrington's last appearance on your show. And he was showcasing the ALC 42. And we have a video to share with you showing some of the light sequences and sound sequences. So if you don't mind giving that a roll. Yes, here we go. And I can talk through some of that right now. Absolutely. All right, so here we go. First thing first is the startup sequence. That's amazing. That's absolutely amazing. And then we have separately controlled headlights and ditch lights. And the flashing ditch lights will activate as soon as the bell or the horn is activated. That's the magic of TCS. Their decoders are absolutely amazing with all the functions that they have in them. Absolutely. The next sequence shows the marker lights coming on when the locomotive is put into reverse. And the same will be seen on the back end of the locomotive when the direction changes. That's a similar effect. Very cool. We also have station announcement. And last but not least is a high-speed run-by with a great high-speed effect. And with the Doppler sound effect as it passes by the viewer. That's amazing. And you can control that on your home way out of home as it's running by and probably walking over the sound of this. But it's absolutely amazing to hear it go, as it comes through. I don't know why we had TCS. You did it beautifully. We'll get a recording for you the next time, for the next locomotive. There's other sound effects with this locomotive as well. There's emergency braking. There's a dead man's alarm. And also in the video, I don't know if you can see it very well. It's a little bit blown out by the lights, but there is an interior engine compartment light. That is right. Just like on the prototype. There's more sound effects on there as well. We just couldn't showcase everything. So enjoy. These locomotives will be out very late this year. And I see you have... I just wanted to show you this charger here, which I think I know has been shown before. I know, right? I'm at a special order mine from Lombard Hobbies up in Lombard, Illinois. That's a beautiful model, Doug. I can't wait. But that's the day one paint scheme from Amtrak. Limited edition. Be sure you get yours on order like Ken has. And make sure you get yours. Absolutely. Now you've got some other exciting models to show off today, don't you? We do. I have a train set to show you. Actually, too. I'm going to start out with an ON30 narrow gauge in O scale. And this is the East Broad Top set. I'm going to bring it up. It's going to be a little awkward here in front of the camera, but bear with me. I'm going to come up to the side. Right. That's ON30. That's an amazing looking train set, Doug. So yeah, the East Broad Top. I think a lot of people are familiar with it. It was a narrow gauge railroad that operated in Western Pennsylvania. Right. From starting in 1872 to take coal from the Broad Top mountain and distribute it around Western Pennsylvania and other states as well. The mine closed in 1956. So from 1872 to 1956, that's a good long run for a narrow gauge railroad. But as soon as it closed in 1956, it opened as a tourist railroad. And it operated until 2011. And it is being reopened, yeah, close in 2011. And it's reopening this year. So tourist operations will begin again. And we wanted to have this set ready to go for, to commemorate the startup of the railroad again. I think we also have a picture of the set or just a locomotive and one of the cars that was shown in an ad. And so I'm sure you'll be showing that on the screen as well. But for narrow gauge fans out there, it's a terrific train set. The logos are with a, I'm called a stencil dash around the outside, which is the way the East Broad Top is displaying the logos now. And also, of course, some great historic colors and a great addition to any narrow gauge. Absolutely. And I just want to say, Doug, that that narrow gauge set, it comes with Bachman easy track. But the beauty of that is that's what you get started with. We can bring a newbie into the hobby. Somebody who is just starting out, they get into the narrow gauge, they start studying the history and you can take that locomotive and those cars and build on it with all the other products that Bachman's got in that line of O and 30, which they essentially created from the ground up. And I've talked about that story, how it started on the podcast at one time. But the fact is you can advance yourself, build your home layout, build a four by eight, build a diorama, build a module and continue to grow with that set as you add to it with additional freight cars, different locomotives and all the various things that you can buy from the Bachman catalog and or your favorite dealer. It's a great scale to work in because it's large, but yet it still runs on HO scale track. So hats off to you guys for coming up with that concept. Thank you. Yeah, great space saver. As you said, you can fit a lot of O scale railroading in a smaller space with the HO track. And as you said, it's a complete ready to run set. Great way to get started or get somebody else started as well. Absolutely right. Now I've got it as a gift. I've got an end scale locomotive on the table, runs on end scale track, but it's an HO scale locomotive. And this is one of my favorite new lines that you had come out with just about four years ago. And I think you've got something on that you'd like to talk about today. I do. Can I can I sneak in one extra set first, Ken? Please do. Okay. This is our Norman Rockwell. Again, in the interest of getting people started in the hobby of model railroading, this is a Norman Rockwell. It's our freedom train. This is an HO scale set. Nice. Also complete ready to run. And this has terrific graphics on the side. We're going to, you have a photo of this as well. You can flash up on the screen. Okay. The sort behind this set is that Norman Rockwell painted a series of photos called the four freedoms. It was freedom of speech, freedom of worship, freedom of want and freedom from fear. Wow. And these paintings traveled by rail in the freedom train right after World War II to help with the, it also helped, I'm sorry, helped with war bonds during World War II and after to foster the spirit of patriotism throughout the country that was prevalent after World War II and historic documents including original copies of the declaration, original copies of the Constitution, and the, we had a visitor. That's awesome. And Norman Rockwell's paintings. So this is a great way to share that history and a nice colorful patriotic train with someone new to the hobby. Amen. And now that it's Christmas, think about it. All these products that you're seeing would be perfect for that special model railroader in your life for Christmas. I'd like to see that big box wrapped up in paper. How cool would that be? I like the way you think. All right, Doug, tell us about these smaller locomotives that run on n-scale track that are in fact HO scale. Surely. These are, this is in our Thomas and Friends line. Yes. And it's, as you said, an HO narrow gauge train runs on n-track. It's commonly referred to as 009 in more of a British parlance. But our latest addition is Peter Sam. So this is a new locomotive. This is the first painted sample we have. And I'll show that to you now. Let me get this up here. Very nice. A little bit lower now. There you go, right there. There you go. How about that? There's a little bit of a delay here. And give me a side shot of it. All right, there we go. I'm going to bring it around this way. Actually, I got to come back over there. No, no, more toward your face. There you go. Perfect. And the beauty of these... I would make the worst dentist in the world. Doug, the one... I cannot work backwards. All right. The wonderful thing about these locomotives is, yes, they are in the Thomas line, but there's so much more that you can do with these. The scratch builders out there and the modelers out there that want to build an HO scale, narrow gauge type of a train set or a layout. You can scratch build your buildings. You can take obviously the smiling faces off of the locomotives and scratch build a front or take a front off of a different locomotive and put on it, repaint it. There's so many different things that you can do with this scale, including scratch building your own freight cars. So this is something also that I could see you guys, you know, building into something in the future. I'm going to put up some of our other locomotives we have in this line. Okay. Just to show people the variety and getting a strange glare on the screen now. I'm not sure where that's coming from. Looks good on my end. At any rate, to go along with these cars, we do have narrow gauge slate wagons, two pad, two styles of passenger cars. We've announced a box van and a brake van. So we do intend for this line to keep growing. And here's some of the locomotives we already have done. These are already on the market. Right. This is Scarlowee. Right. That's what I've got right here in front of us. That's Scarlowee. In fact, I'm probably showing photographs of this one because I shot this one outside with some River Point station vehicles and some H.O. Scale people, and it just made it look like a scenic tourist railroad. Oh, I love that locomotive. That's a diesel. Yes. This is Lange. Got it. Trying to get it out of the glare. I can't do it. It looks good. All right. There. This is called Rusty. Okay. So that's another one. So it's a nice family of locomotives. And then this one is Reneas. That's nice. I have two versions of Reneas in this original color scheme and then in the yellow color scheme. That is very cool. And you can find all of these models in the 2021 Bachman catalog. In fact, I'm thumbing through it briefly to see if I can find them all at the same time. And this catalog is laid out really well. It's broken down by scales. H.O. Scale, G. Scale, the whole bit all the way through. We also have a catalog. We can download via PDF from our website, of course, www.BachmanTrains.com. Don't forget the double N in Bachman. And you can download the whole catalog and peruse it that way as well. So I don't have a catalog right here. I'm not sure what page it's on, Ken, but they are certainly all listed. So along with all of our Thomas products in H.O. Scale, H.O. Narrow Gauge, N. Scale, and L.R. Scale. Absolutely awesome, Doug. Hey, listen, I want to thank you very much for being on The What's Neat Show for model railroad hobbyist magazine. It's always great to have your input on what's new and what you guys have got. I do want to wish all the viewers out there a very merry Christmas and you too, Doug, because this show now is appearing just a few days before Christmas. In fact, on the 15th of December is when the show had come out. And I just want to wish you and yours and all the wonderful folks at Bachman a very happy holiday season. Thank you and same to you, Ken, for a merry Christmas and happy holidays to everyone, to you and all your viewers, and wish everyone the best. I'll tell you what, the year 2022 is going to be a fabulous year. So with that, that's this segment for 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.