 Hi, I'm Rand Hood and the May's What's Neat starts now! The What's Neat show is sponsored by Caboose, sharing our passion for trains since 1938. This is What's Neat for May 2019. I'm your host Ken Patterson and this month we really do have a good show. First of all, on the road with Michelle Kempema, she interviews Abigail Martin and Jill Pope and they discuss things that can be done out in Wyoming that model railroaders would appreciate as they're on vacation, especially you folks out there chasing the big boy this month so it's a really good segment with Michelle. Robert Simmons shares with us a modular layout that we saw at the Rocky Mountain Train Show. This is the western Kansas rails and scale layout. It's absolutely beautiful with great big grain elevators and a lot of activity on that layout. Drayton Black Grove for modeling ideas from above shares with us some fantastic drone footage. It's really nice to see this NNS power running over Jackson, Michigan. It's a real beautiful place to view from the air. Rand Hood, he shares with us an interview where he interviewed Austin Allard, the podcast member on the show. You know Austin, now he's contemplating building a new layout and he's trying to figure out what he wants to do whether it's going to be single track mainline or double track mainline race track as Austin calls it. It's really interesting to watch him formulate ideas midway through the interview with Rand. We also look at Jerry Glancy's beautiful HO and HON3 layout out in Colorado. It's a real treat with a lot of beautiful scenery and neat bridges. We also interview Tim Blackwell from the Cowcatcher magazine. Now here's a magazine that's bucking the trends and swimming upstream just like salmon. Tim gives us a great interview this month for the show. And so that's the lineup for May 2019 What's Neat? Ken Patterson, the host of the What's Neat Shilver model railroad hobbyist magazine. And today I'm standing with my friend Jerry Glancy. And Jerry, we're in your layout room and I can see one time I asked you about your passion for trains. And today I'm standing in the middle of it. Tell me about this beautiful work of art, your passion. Well Ken, remember last time we talked and I said that I like to romanticize what we do with model railroad was great. And I with the layout took it one step further, creating little historical vignettes of Colorado. And in so doing I entered another passion of model railroading, which is dual gauge. So what I've got in this room is three levels. The lower one is mostly standard gauge with a little Colorado and southern narrow gauge coming into Union Station, which it did at one time. And then the middle level is dual gauge and that winds its way up to the upper level. In order to get there I had to build a Y and since I grew up in Sacramento, California, that had to be the Kettie Y. Of course. So that was get bashed from a micro engineering set. And then from the middle level, which is dual gauge, you get up to the top level, the third level, which is mostly narrow gauge. But you pass several things on the way in that trip. You pass the Salida Depot, which was unique for the Denver and Rio Grande. It was an art deco style. It was the only example they had of that style. So it just called out to the scratch built in Styree. Further on, I actually run dual gauge trains. And when you get clear up to the upper level, it's not quite finished yet, but there'll be the Monarch limestone. Nice. I know that. Yeah. Monarch limestone. Yeah. All right. In fact, even down here, you can see there's the limestone that was brought from the quarry, and it will go into the rotary dumper, which is right behind me. It's just a mockup yet, but from there into the standard gauge cars, and of course, off to Pueblo and see if I steal between the two of us. So we've got three bridges. The top one is the Cascade Creek trestle, which is the Cumbres of Toltec. Toltec still in operation today. In the middle is a portion of the Crooked River Bridge in Oregon. Just had to have an arch bridge covering that nice extent of canyon there. And then a somewhat generic trestle down below. And your scenery and your rock castings, your choice of coloring. Plus it appears your setup for operation. Absolutely. You'll notice scattered around here, I call them mini panels. And the idea is that I like to have my panel right in front of where the operation is taking place. So with one push of the button, I can readily see what route the turnout is taking. If it's green, and that's the route I want to go, then actually just like an airline pilot, believe your instruments. If your route is green, then you're all set to go. So those are scattered about. But it also, each one has a stationary decoder. So if I want to operate any of my turnouts from my cab, I can do that through the accessory mode as well. That's very smart. Very smart. This thing is great. Your enthusiasm is absolutely contagious, Jerry. I really want to thank you for these few minutes. All right. My pleasure. This is just beautiful work. This is Michelle Kempembe with What's It Eat This Week. And today I have this whole entire state of Wyoming and Cheyenne with me. This is Jill and Abigail. And we're here to talk about what things you can do real fanning when you're coming to either see the big boy or coming out for NMRA in July. So Jill, tell us about some awesome rail things in Cheyenne. Cheyenne is a great place for you railroad lovers. You try any acts out there. We have two of the big boys. You know, there was 25 ever made. There's eight remaining and Cheyenne has two of them. One is on display in Holiday Park and it's great. They've just went and prettied it up and done a lot of work on it, restoring it and getting rid of the asbestos. So that's beautiful for y'all to come see. And then the other one is in the steam shop being renovated to run again. It was in a museum over 20 years and they're getting ready. UP's getting ready to release that baby so you can all see it again. And after all this time, and it's actually going to operate on the rails. So they haven't released a date yet, but be watching your May calendars real close. And it'll be out there and running and it'll be a sight to see after all these years, this wonderful, wonderful train running again after sitting stagnant in a museum for 20 years. I am really excited. We're all excited to see the big boy. There's one other model railroading attraction that they're not at this show, but we're at the American Bus Association, by the way. This is a tourism convention. Harry Brunks layout sets in the Cheyenne Depot Museum. And so you can go see that when you're in Cheyenne also. And that's a famous layout from the Short Gauge in Narrowland Gazette. Now Abigail, over to you. When they're driving through Wyoming, what is your favorite thing that you can see basically from Cheyenne over to Rock Springs? Like what what awesome things are they going to see in Wyoming? Yeah, well, I would definitely recommend just a little further west over in Evanston, Wyoming. They actually just redid their roundhouse and their downtown entirely. So they actually are an accredited downtown community through the Main Street program, the National Main Street program. I would definitely recommend going down there checking it out. I don't know too much about trains, but trainees, as Jill calls them, the people that love trains all say that you have to check out Evanston, Wyoming's roundhouse. Thanks Abigail. Yeah, and I'm back to Jill again. She's got more to tell us. Okay, so we don't have any dates scheduled for 2019, but UP has been wonderful enough to let us take some tourists over, jump aboard the trolley at the Cheyenne Depot and go on and on over and doing like a really cool detailed two hour tour of both the roundhouse and the steam shop. And that was for the minimal price of $20. I mean, I just can't even believe that you can do something that cool. And we even had international travelers come to do that. And they've all sold out. It's been wonderful. So watch, you know, visit Cheyenne's website for future dates on that. And then I do know that the Cheyenne Depot Museum is getting a promontory point display coming in. So that's going to be exciting. And that'll be in May as well. Sherman Hill Railroad Club will have their display and their event the third weekend in May. And that'll be out at CFD or Cheyenne Frontier Days Exhibition Hall. And that's $10. So it's such a steal. Come join us. And I will be at that show for the Colorado Model Railroad Museum, which is where I work. And we have a booth at that show, which is super fun. And the Sherman Hill Model Railroad Club actually is in the mall in Cheyenne. You can go see the layout. And here's the tie between the layout in Cheyenne and mine. They actually have the original layout from the man who built the Colorado Model Railroad Museum. It's called the Denver Greeley and Tahoe, but it resides in Cheyenne. And so, but we go all around because honestly, Harry Brunk's layout is the Georgetown Loop in Colorado. It was built in Nebraska and it resides in Cheyenne because we're just the friendliest states in America out here in the Midwest and we all love each other. So ladies, you're awesome. Thanks. Okay. I'm really excited to do this because after working with Ken Patterson and my buddy Austin Allen for a few days, there's a lot of questions that kind of came up about railroads and what he's doing. And he's the man behind the scenes. And he's always there and he's on top of things. He's a detailed guy. So just got to know Austin. Let's talk about your railroad. What are you doing? Well, I started modeling the Union Pacific and then I wanted to do my own thing. So I created the hour terminal. I got a double main. It's 250 feet mains and there's a third main now. So all the third main houses, all the industrial stuff. Okay. How big of a room space do you have for this? 50 by 30. 50 by 30. Okay. Pretty fun. All right. And like I said, the third main houses all the switching. So I'm going to end up doing custom locomotives and maybe a custom transfer caboose. Hand all the switching. Okay. And where's this set and what kind of scenery are you going to do? It's set in a pretty urban area, kind of like a Kansas City or St. Louis modern time period. Okay. And then after being at the train show yesterday, I understand you started having a little revelation about what you might do with your layout. You've had some time to kind of conjugate some solutions. And you want to tell me and share what you kind of are thinking about? Absolutely. Yeah. So I was going to, I, well, I told Ken on the last podcast that I knew what I wanted to model on my next layout and having seen John Parker's layout last night and everything that I've seen this weekend. I've completely changed my whole idea of what I want to do. All right. What is that idea now? What's the gist of where this is going? After seeing the layout last night, I never want to model a double main ever again. Because? It becomes a race track. That's all it is. It's just one big race track. And I like being able to operate where you have to duck into a siding and pass other trains. Makes operating a whole lot more fun. I love it. That's my style of railroading too. So I'm kind of getting a little bit of the goose bump going. I think, I think you're on the right track. I mean, I don't know. Maybe you are, maybe you're not, but that's just kind of fun. Yeah. Race tracks. Okay. So is it still going to be set in urban? Yes. I would like to end up doing more of a, I don't know, maybe a Denver-ish area with the mountains. And I mean, even if it's midway, I don't want to do midwestern really, because the plains are boring. Corn is boring. The cornfields in Illinois. Towns here and there would be great. And to be able to have switching along the railroad would be a lot more fun too. Okay. Instead of just the two places that, the layout that I was going to model only has two places for a local to switch. Okay. I'm going to back you up a little bit. I'm going to tell you that there's no landscape that's boring. That you can find ways to make this incredible. I've seen people do midwest that's just dead on. I feel like I'm in a Grant Wood painting of western Iowa. I mean, it's incredible. So you're looking for a geographic locale now? Yeah. I kind of, you know, the layout I was going to build had a lot of rock cliffs and tunnels, bridges, towns, but you know, I kind of, I want to be able to model it all. So maybe have the midwest, the western part of the country. Maybe so part of the, maybe blend it all together somehow. And in one level or two? It depends. I haven't figured that out yet. This is sounds like basilating a little here because of what you've been seeing. Yeah. I like the mushroom effect of John Parker's layout. And I don't really like how you can see one level over another on layouts. I do not like that. Okay. This is brilliant. What you're thinking about because one of the things about John Parker's layout was the fact that Ken just got lost. And I think there's something about the design element at that that right now I can see it in your eyes. You're thinking, I want people to get lost in here and wonder where they are. Absolutely. You know, I went down the steps last night and before he could start explaining to all of us what it was, I was going down the hall, turning again and turning again. And I'm thinking, am I ever going to come out? And then it's a dead end. And it's like, I got to find my way back to where they are so I can go find a train. And it was just these long hallways. And I felt like I was going to get lost. I'm seeing some design work on your future right now. And perhaps you're going to be redoing a little bench work. Well, I live with my dad. So when I move out, that's where the whole design is going to come into play is how big the basement is and how much room I got to play with. Well, we're excited about this and what fun, what fun. It's just fun to see what happens and it's great. So Austin, thank you for this. And we look forward to seeing what you'd produce in the future. Thank you, Rand. It's a pleasure to be here. Great. Thanks. For this segment of What's Need, I'm standing with Tim Blackwell from Texas, the biggest state in this country that we all love. And Tim is an editor and a publisher of a magazine called The Cowcatcher. Now, we're all familiar with that publication. It's been in and about the hobby for good 16 years. And I've seen Tim walk the trade should floor the floors of the trade show, you know, talking to the manufacturers and developing relationships with them similar to what we have on our show. Now, Tim, you're in a business that people think is rescinding, going backwards, but I see a salmon, a strong salmon swimming up the current because your magazine is in fact growing. It is expanding. You've got a lot of advertisers, a lot of quality color and content. Tell me about your passion because I can see it in what you do. Well, The Cowcatcher magazine is all about the community of model, railroading and rail enthusiasm. And that's kind of my background in journalism. I worked for a small community paper and we got the community side of the story. And that's what we focused on. We're not mainstream per se, but it's something that we like to tell the stories behind the scenes. And there are so many stories. Do you have a favorite? Well, the Colorado Model Railroad Museum is a favorite. It is a good one. And we were out there a couple of years ago, I guess. Really, the favorite stories are the people who are the people in the community. This is all about everybody working together. You see on the trade show floor here, manufacturers that compete against each other, yet they are also allies for each other. They work together. And it's for bringing the greater good of the hobby to everyone who participates in it. And it's not a dying hobby. There's a lot of life. Right. It's vibrant. And I think it has a future. What is the future of the magazine? What are your plans? Now, you've been doing this for 16 years, walking the pavement, developing relationships with all these wonderful people that we know in the room. What's your plans for the future? Our plans are just to keep doing what we're doing and do the best that we can. And I know that sounds like a canned speech, but we started off slow and we've always, I won't say we've exactly taken baby steps, but we've lived within our means and we've reinvested and right now we're in the middle of the U.S. We've got some outlets on the West Coast and on the East Coast that we're developing. We're careful not to overgrow. We want to serve our audience and we want to serve our roots and then we'll expand from that. You know the business. It's tough right now. Newspapers are folding. We was just talking to a gentleman over in the other hall who runs a printing facility, another big printer folded last week. So we have to kind of take steps and make sure that we're not overextending ourselves. So the long and short of it is we're just going to keep kind of plugging along and take the steps that we need to take to grow and not overdo it. No, that's fantastic. You're doing the right thing. You are in a business that I do know very well and I don't see you making any mistakes. If you keep doing what you're doing right now, it's going to be a good way to go. I mean the internet's out there. Do you see yourself going in that direction sometime? We are trying to develop our internet present in social media. As far as the publication itself, we want to be print. We want, we feel like there's still a segment in this hobby that they want to hold the magazine. They want to leave through it. They want to be able to pick it up and go back and look at it six months from now or a year from now. And we feel that there's still a place for that. And I get asked every now and then, well, are you going to put it all online? Not anytime soon. I don't think so. And one of the things, the method behind our madness is we want to work with the brick and mortar hobby shops. So we work with them to handle the magazine. So it gives their customers a reason to come back and pick up the magazine. And that's the way it started. And we weren't sure what to expect. But when we started hearing stories of retailers saying, yeah, they're coming in to pick it up, but they won't buy anything from me. It just drives me crazy. I said, we're going to keep giving a reason to come in your shop and you're going to buy something. Yeah. That's awesome. Now, for all the folks out there that want to get this magazine and hold it in their hand and actually look at it, where do they have to go to order it? Tell us that. Well, you can purchase subscriptions on the website www.cowcatchermagazine.com. As I mentioned, we are available at hobby shops. We have a show presence like right here. We're handing out copies. So some conventions, but we'd love to have you as a subscriber. That's what every magazine or publication in the U.S. Ben, if you're in St. Louis, I want you on the podcast. I want to know what you're doing. Keep track of what's going on with you. So thank you very much for this. And that's that segment of What's Neat. For this segment of What's Neat, I'm with Robert Simmons. And he belongs as this beautiful end scale layout. Now, how often have we heard that we don't really see a lot of end scale on the What's Neat show? But what we see today is prototypically beautiful. Tell us about this wonderful layout. The Kansas Rails, the Western Kansas Rails layout that you've got. Well, we're from Garden City, Kansas. And so people always model what they see. So we wanted to bring Western Kansas to the outside modeling world, because you don't see that a whole lot. Right. So we have a prototypical grain elevator. That is an end scale model of the Pride Ag Co-operator in Dodge City, Kansas. And so when you see the Walters kit, it's a very nice kit. But it's actually a grain mill, not an elevator. Right. So that's a long-term storage elevator. And that's the correct size for it. They're actually quite big. So you guys really are prototype guys. You look at the prototypes, you photograph them, you replicate them in end scale. And in end scale, a grain elevator like that can still occupy a good chunk of your layout, can't it? Correct. That's about almost six foot long. It's a scale 128 feet tall. The silos are a scale 24 foot outside diameter. So a lot of the buildings on the city scene on the other side are scratch built. I didn't try to do museum quality where you're actually portraying a specific street, but all of the buildings are real. All of the businesses are real business names. And so we just tried to give you an idea. If you drove through Garden City, that's kind of what it would look like. That's awesome. I can see y'all have passion. How many members have belonged to this group? Well, in the Western Kansas division, we are the largest geographical area of the region, but we have more cows than people. Okay. So we've got about six. We have six in our division. Right. So, you know, it's just, it's a more aggro. About how many shows do you guys do a year with this layout? We go six to eight. That's a lot of work. This is the first time we've been to Denver. And you've got more modules. Is this a standard size? Is it changeable? This is it. This is actually sectional. This always goes together the same way. But it's a mishmash of several different standards. The Sipping and Switching Society of North Carolina came up with the original standards for HO. And we took their theories and put them into practice with kind of end track, kind of that and kind of our own. So this goes together. There's no section, there's no track pieces that go between the sections. The rails just bump right up to it. There's alignment of pins and holes. So it took us maybe an hour and a half to set up. Is this like Code 55 rail? Code 55, microengineering. What's your minimum radius? Tell me, what's your general radius? Well the minimum radius, I made a mistake and put in like nine and three-quarters inch turns. So that's been causing us some issues. Well the reason I asked is your trains look so good going around the curves. So it looks like you go for a wide radius. This would be very similar to an end track three-foot corner. So the outer track's about 27 inch radius. Okay. Well boy, this is a treat. The colors, all the automobiles, the roads. You guys have really thought about this one. It's a great display. I'm sure you've been well received here at the show. We have. So Rock and Roll Robert, thank you very much buddy. And I want to thank you for sharing this layout with us on What's Neat. Thank you. We're looking forward to it. All right. All of the model railroad products seen in this episode of What's Neat are available through Caboose in Lakewood, Colorado or order online at mycaboose.com.