 Hi, I'm Brad Sloan and the May's What's Neat episode starts right now. The What's Neat show is sponsored by Caboose, sharing our passion for trains since 1938. This is What's Neat for May 2020. I'm your host Ken Patterson and this month, as I always say, we've got a pretty good show. First of all, Campbell Rice comes by and he shares with us progress on his layout and he talks about on this show how to make roads and sidewalks. It's really interesting how he does it. It's very different from the methods that I've shown in the past using cement and or plexiglass. He actually shares with us a way to use paper products and it's very simple this month on how he shows us how to make roads. Also this month, Carlton Brown shares with us a really cool product that plays hand in hands with the operators. The guys that actually like to operate their layout and shift cars, have a schedule, a place to go. It's very, very intense when you get into an operating session. It's about three hours long with a lot of paperwork to go with it. But Carlton shares with us a great concept, a new product from his company, RFID tags. And these are tags that allow each freight car to be located on the layout specifically. It'll show up on the computer screen where they are, show what's in the load, what the commodity is and makes operating that much more interesting. And finally, we share a great photo shoot that I had in the backyard the other day. It's two large scale engines from LGB, the Jupiter and the Union Pacific Locomotive number 119. Both of these locomotives were in promontory summit at the closing and the meeting of the first railroad across the country. And these models in G scale were such a treat when I had them in my studio that I couldn't help but go outside, photograph them so I could share them with the What's Neat viewers. And so with that, let's continue on with the rest of May, 2020 What's Neat. For this segment of What's Neat, I'm standing with Carlton Brown. Now you'll remember we talked with you Carlton in Kansas City at that Annamarie National and you were showing the RFDI tags. Did I say that right? RFID. RFID tags, which allowed us to locate trains around the layout. And back then that was really hot, that was really neat. But now it looks like you've got the whole thing. You've got a game changer here. Tell me what this is all about. Well one thing we're doing is we're using RFID to, with operations, jammer eye operations to kind of make things really fun for the folks who like to do operations. And so how we do that, and we'll kind of come over here, is we got a couple of screens that we have. First of all, we have our RFID tags that are underneath each of the cars that we have. And that looks like that, that little tag that you see right there. And those just peel off and stick right underneath the trucks. And then as you have those underneath the trucks, and we have them on one of the cars here, you can actually roll over one of the readers. There's also a reader that we have right here, and this is just a little quick board. And it shows that a reader that is underneath the train tracks. And then on the other side of that, you have a Wi-Fi module that actually talks to a Raspberry Pi and that Raspberry Pi aggregates all the Wi-Fi signals on the layout. Now we have jammer eye that has been integrated into this system, into this platform, so we can actually use our RFID readers with their operations control software. And we just merged those together. We made jammer eye look beautiful. That is beautiful. We already look beautiful, right? And so now we've merged those together. And now what I'm going to do is I have, I can pull a DMRI manifest either from my cell phone, I can pull it from a tablet, and I can get the manifest. And as I get the manifest from our board here, I'll have the manifest and I'll know where to drop cars off at. Now at this point in time, it's asking me to drop these, my manifest is telling me to drop my Burlington Northern and this UP car off at this location. And so I am going to go ahead and roll those in to the location here. And as I roll those in, you're going to see the tags that are underneath the car will go ahead and get identified and what will happen is once it goes over, you'll see the light pop on and pop on. That's for demonstration purposes. As those go over, it's going to read those cars and those cars are going to show up on the display over here as you see right down here. So these cars will show up. It'll tell you the car type, the car name, it'll tell you when it went over it, the time it went over it and the destination of those cars. And then over here, it shows you each one of your trains that you have, all of the information on it and it tells you all the cars that are associated with that train. And as it goes over to its destination point, a green check mark will say that you have put those cars in the location and you can move on to the next job now. So are you saying that this replaces car cards and all that handwritten paperwork? Absolutely. That's what it does. It automates all that. And the thing that we did is an intern key solution so we make it very easy for the user. What happens is the Raspberry Pi, there's one thing that they have to do. We pre-configure the Wi-Fi modules, we pre-configure the Raspberry Pi. The only thing they have to do is put the ethernet cable to the home router and it's up and working. This is awesome. This is just like the real railroads the way it looks to me. This is so clear and looks like it's very easy to follow. Tell me what website would all the viewers of WhatSneak go to to see the price points and to be able to order this great system from you? www.traintrax.com That's T-R-A-X-X for Trax. That's awesome. And I understand one of the fine gentlemen that works with you in this company lives in St. Louis. I want to get him on the podcast and get him and Daniel hooked up together. And let's see how this gets installed into our layout sometime. That would make a great segment. Perfect. We're going to do that. Man, thank you so much for sharing this with the viewers of WhatSneak. All right. You're welcome. Thanks a lot, Ken. For this segment of WhatSneak, I've got some beautiful G scale locomotives from LGB today. This is something really special that I'm shooting in the backyard. I'm doing another outdoor photo shoot on this beautiful warm, I want to call it a spring day. Check this out. These models are absolutely exquisite. This is the Jupiter and the Union Pacific 119. I'm recreating that promontory Utah shot where they had put these two locomotives and laid the golden spike on the transcontinental railroad in the United States. And LGB has represented these models absolutely beautiful. There's not a piece of plastic in these models. Both of these models together come in a beautiful box, a wooden crate, weighs around 50 pounds. These models are made of metal and brass and have been measured to the prototypes. It's absolutely amazing the work that LGB did on these models that I am photographing today in the backyard. I set up a large scale scene using about code 150 rail hand laid and a body of water to get some reflection shots. I did some individual shots of these locomotives. I will show you now the individual shots of the Jupiter, just an absolutely beautiful shot, lots of reflection for this photograph. And then again I shot the number 119, the Union Pacific locomotive, using a reflector setting them up on the track and just letting the sun lick all the beautiful detail that's on this model. When these models run, they smoke, smoke comes out of the whistle and the steam cocks down here. It's just absolutely amazing. I shot interior shots of these locomotives inside each cab. Here's the blue one and then of course the Union Pacific, the details different in both. They're absolutely beautiful. They run fantastic. They run smooth. We ran them on a test piece of track inside about an eight foot piece of track. So it's not something that I get every day but this one's really special and I wanted to share it to the viewers on What's Neat before I have to send these back in the next 24 hours. So check it out. They're available online from LGB and or at your dealer. And that's this segment for What's Neat. Well in this What's Neat we're talking roads. A lot of you out there best how I make my roads and I do several different ways. I use some products available over the counter and I use some other not so known products. So let's start off by talking what products are available. A lot of people will use this that they can get from their local hardware store. You just paint it on there and let it dry, smooth it and then color it. Remember there's other things available like this AK Terrain's Asphalt. And the good old stand by the Woodland Scenics, smooth it and their paving tape. I've seen some people that use a foam or some that also use a foam core board such as this black foam core board here that you can also purchase at a hobby center. And I use a mixture I've used all of them and I actually prefer to use this. And what is this? This is actually watercolor paper. You can get this at most hobby centers and actually it makes for a great road. One thing about using paper is a lot of papers they will curl up when they get paint or wet on them but this is made to take it so it won't do it. It is a fairly thick paper and you can get this notebook in several different sizes and if you look it's actually got a rough texture to it. And so what I'm going to do today is show you how I make my roads out of this. Now this right here road was made with this paper. And basically what I did is I stuck it on the back of a piece of cork. But you don't have to do that you can place it straight down on the road. So let's start off by looking at roads. What are the widths? What are the colors? Here's a picture I took of a road in my backyard and you can see I measured it from side to side not including the gutters. It was 21 feet wide. In this road this close up picture you can see all different colors. You can see whites, browns, and blacks. So what is pavement exactly? Well pavement is a mixture of asphalt, cement, and aggregate. Now these aggregates can vary from location to location depending on where you're located and around the world actually. Some areas I've seen use recycled glass actually in part of their aggregate. But in most places it's a small type rock. So when it's heated and mixed together with this cement and then put down on the road hot and then tamped it becomes a real hard surface. Now asphalt is basically cement. It is actually only 5% asphalt cement and 95% aggregate. So what we're going to do is basically I'm going to show you how I do my roads. Like I said I measured the one outside this this one here that I did is actually about 25 feet wide scale. So what I'm going to do is I'm going to take this watercolor paper and show you how it would make a road just basic small roads. So basically what I'm going to do is I'm just going to rip a sheet of this out and like so you can get this in bigger sizes. A lot of my downtown roads are made out of this and some of my other roads out in the country I did with the Woodland Scenic smooth it and paving tape. Okay so there's our paper you can see it's it's quite thick and heavy duty. First off I'm going to start off I'm going to cut this little rough edge off at the top. So we'll tape my rule we'll cross there in an exacto knife and I'll cut here so that it'll cut all the way through. So now I'll take it I'm going to mark let's do I'm going to mark 28 I like that with the top and I'm going to mark it at the bottom as well. Show scale 28 right I'm going to lay this out take this dull knife sure you don't want to move your ruler or you'll pretty much have to start it all over again. All right there we go that's separated now this will be my base road now if you had curves or whatever the best thing to do is just take you I take a piece of cardboard and I stick two pins down in it and measure the distance apart and drag it to however you want to go but for ease right now I'm just going to do another section like this and basically you can see that's that's basically our route. I'm going to start by giving a base of flat gray primer this is what um what I'll start out with so here we go just give it a good coat make sure you cover up all the white all right now that once our base coat has dried I'm going to take several different other colors this is um uh not sure exactly what colors Avery, Bisk and basically what I want to do is I want to take it and I want to get away from it and sort of let it fall dry fall on top of the on top of the road rather than getting up close so from a distance basically I'm going to come back in like this it doesn't take much just a little just like that all right and I'm going to take this other here and it's a little bit darker you can kind of see as you saw on our roads there were many different colors of white and tans and browns so do the same thing with this one I'm going to take it back and I'm going to just kind of give it a little coat a little squirt just like that all right a white because there was lots of white in it same deal you kind of get back and just let kind of dry fall on top of it just like that all right and then I've got a brown there look at these are gloss black typically it's not enough to show up the difference then I'm going to just kind of do the same thing a little a little hint to brown okay so that's basically our base road there now that our piece is dried I'm going to move on to the next step what I do is I take 91 alcohol and a small rag old cut-up shirk here and basically just dab some on there get it and now I'm going to go down each side of the road here and it'll give it kind of have to put some muscles in here it'll sort of give it that weathered look and the other side don't too much alcohol I'm going to do the same thing right up and down just like this right here just using my finger giving some pretty firm pressure and if you do this and you don't like it you could always go back over and paint and start it again there's no real science behind this okay now we're going to let that dry good and we'll go on to the easy part now we're ready to apply the stripes on our sample so there's a couple different ways you can go about doing that there's a company called highways and byways that makes a nice little kit that you can get that has individual peel and stick lines of yellow and white and they also have all the railroad crossings and turn lanes and everything like that I do use the graphics and and then some of the white and yellow peel off stripes as well but if you're doing a long section what you may want to do is you can go to a hobby center and actually get some of this tape here they have this available in yellow and white as well so that you can you can mark it another way that you can do that is is by painting the lines on it takes a little more time to mask it out and cover up everything and do your lines but that that is also an option to do as well so we're going to take i'm going to take some of this yellow here on the center strike just to kind of show you how it goes down and basically you're going to peel and stick it we're going to take both ends and i'm going to lay it down each side of the black stripe mark that is almost right upon it okay and then then i'm going to cut and then i'm going to come back and you could do dotted lines or you could do a double however you want so i'm going to do i'm going to make this a double so i'm going to start up here next to it i'm going to come in right beside it real close so i'm going to say i'm going to make this about the width of a ho scale car tire just to kind of use for reference that's pretty good all right on the sides i'll use some of the highways and byways so that you can see how that works and it's basically on a sheet and you take your hobby knife now they have uh short lines for the dotted lines or they have the long lines for like the side of the road so basically you're going to take your knife get up underneath it here just one please now i'm going to come in i'm going to come in just a hair bit inside the edge all right i'm on the same thing i'm going to leave about a car tires width on that outside now if you're doing a city road and you want to curbs and gutters and things you can come back in over the top of that with some tape and paint this more of a concrete color to kind of give it the appearance of um a gutter i'll take another one here now the hard part here is lining them up and i'll start my overlap it just a tad bit and slipped off the other end wind up there cut it and then what i'm going to do is i'm going to put this short section back on my sheet to save it for another time if i need another one okay i'm going to take and do the same thing here on the other side quiet right up here you can certainly see that if you're working a large road if you actually have the tape it might work a little easier so you're not having to piece together so many sections but it's all good okay like that so that's my basic road now we'll come back and what i like to use are hand pastels of course and give it that weathered look so i'm going to come through with some some darker dirt and you can kind of come around like this here just to kind of give it a little bit of weathered look i'll kind of go with the striping as well okay so i selected not the best brush for this okay so let's say we're going to put some graphics down um in fact let's let's just do a uh let's do the school zone so i'm going to take my rule i'll cut out the school zone just like this trim off this excess here a little bit trying to get the lettering centered so it it goes so we can center a little bit better so all you have to do on this let's say we're gonna put let's just put this right here so you're gonna peel it and it's going to come off just like that all right then you're going to basically stick it right in the center looks good there cross it then make sure it is sealed down real good and then i'm going to take the corner instead of pulling up i'm going to kind of roll it back roll my finger back just like this here and comes off you're pushing down so it's not going to come off with you so that's school zone now i can take some more weathering different colors put down through here i'll also use this real fine brush that you can see doesn't have much to it um but it allows me to get down the edges real good so i'll kind of go down the edges with this just like this okay it's always dirtier on the side of the road now just all the way down it's no uh this is uh no right or wrong way here at all take a little bit of i'm gonna take a little bit of black as cars tend to drip a little bit of black oil on the roadway now one thing you see in a lot of roads is you see uh pavement cracks you see where they come back in with tar and tried to patch it so the water didn't get down underneath the pavement and freeze and create the potholes so what i do is i take this it's a jelly roll it and it's uh the tip is a fine tip and uh so what i'll do is i'll just take and make make some uh crack lines out of it just real light lines and typically they're gonna branch off like roots these are and they typically go now they can go both wet directions but typically it's it's heavy loads of cracked asphalt or whatever and uh caused it to do that and you just you can just do these all over just any kind of random way that you want to do them and it'll just typically just add a little more realism into your photo you don't have to get real carried away you want to be sure you use a fine tip you don't want something real fat so that's not not in scale usually these lines are very small okay so i put some several lines on the area and how they will they show up on the camera but they do make a big difference in real life so that's our road and that's kind of more of a country road but let's say what if you want to do a city road with sidewalks well i went to the hobby center and bought this basswood it's it's a little bit heavier duty than than uh balsa wood and uh this was already the width which is about typical for a sidewalk uh so what i can do is you lay this down here on top of it just like that and then come across with my uh my road okay so i'm gonna take my my basswood here and i've already cut an angle and kind of sanded it down and uh this this will basically give me my curve for my sidewalk as well so now what i like to do is take a little bit of mod podge here and i'd like to go over the top of it with the mod podge first just give it a good coating just like this here and what this does it what it'll help the painted here to the wood rather than soak in and also it'll it'll give it that non wood look so you won't get the wood textures take this section here i'm going to coat it as well okay now that my mod podge is dried i'm ready to go ahead and give it some paint so what i'm going to do is take a little bit of this i got two colors here a little bit different just kind of give it a a quick little spray here and then i'm going to take the darker here too much and kind of give it that uh sort of a concrete look now we'll let this point at this point we'll let this dry now that our wood has dried i'm going to go ahead and take my knife and my rule and i'm going to basically i'm going to mark all the joints i'm basically making it the width of the ruler just i'm just going to score right across the top of it lightly just like this continue on this just gives it the looks appearance of the expansion joints inside of the sidewalk like this yeah there's a little side piece that i'm going to do right here now that those are done i want to come back over it with just a little bit of weathering not anything really too harsh i'm just going to kind of do a little dirt here and it'll just fall into these cracks that i may just kind of highlighting highlighting those cracks and i think my paint is still a bit damp so i should have waited till this dried but for the sake of showing you guys and taking time it does take a while to do these videos so so this is what i come up with here so if i were to take my road let's say for example here i'm going to lie this out and this would be the curb on that end and then example just like that so that that can be your downtown area another option you can buy these these are commercially available these are sidewalks and you can see these are the these are the weathered so they have like the cracks in them and they're just basically plaster and you can put these down and they as well come with the corners as part of the kit let's see if you get it right so it goes across somewhat like that so that's our road there so i hope you enjoyed this section on what's neat and learned something a little bit about roads some of the ways to make them and some of the way that i do mine and that is what's neat 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