 What you shooting today Jeff? Just a few more freight cars. X Rock Island car patched by 1st Cog and Northwestern. Like they acquired about 500 of those then the other two are just a couple more tangent. Home and standard 4750s pretty mild weathering on. Mostly going to be used for background cars later on. Props for photographs. We've got more tangent cars here these are nice ones Jeff. Probably my favorite model that's out in the market right now. I gotta do much too and right out of the box they're pretty much ready to go. Is this an athern caboose? Yeah that's one of the athern Genesis C50-7 I believe. That's nice weathering on that. Thanks. I always love it when you bring freight cars. The guys love seeing all the really neat weathering techniques and what have you. Now you've got this this metal effect it looks like with a metal collects on the waves of the box cars on this is this another feathering job with the black oils. Yeah mostly done with oil sometimes powders but mostly I prefer to use the oils because they stick better with the powders once you hit it with dull coat it kind of kind of can ruin the effect of the powders it almost kind of disintegrates somewhere they kind of melt but with the power with the using oil paints they seem to be pretty much set after you give maybe a day or two to dry they're not going anywhere even after you hit them with dull coat. Oh man thanks for sharing this stuff with us it looks terrific. Thanks for having me. For this segment of What's Neat I want to discuss layouts and layout sizes. Now you're familiar with the large home layout that I've built but the fact is so many people do not have room for a great big layout like that. So then we come down to the scale to where okay I'm gonna build a smaller layout something that would look great in my man cave something that would look good in a den and not be too obtuse so that's when we come down to a smaller size layout like this three and a half by nine foot layout which is great for that but let's say you live in it in an apartment or a place where you're always traveling all the time and you don't necessarily want your layout to be completely up and out all the time it's not obtuse it's not too big but it's still out in the open maybe you're a little bit shy about the hobby so in that case I've come up with a really neat concept for designing and constructing a layout that in fact would fold up something the size of simply six feet by four feet where you've got a continuous run very well weathered nice looking setup but the key here is the design where this one's gonna fold up and be able to be stored away we've got piano hinges built in but the hinges the magic is the hinges are hidden by fake fur because fake fur can bend you can complete your scene make it look perfect and still be able to fold up the layout for storage and let me show you just how easy this is this is a complete layout ready to go and now you can just simply fold it up store it out in the garage put it away and anytime that you're ready to use it you open it up again drop in with your lift your lift sections of track I've got sections of track that are literally built like bridges across the creek and they simply drop into place onto the layout and everything works out really nice so that continuity and it all runs so if you're thinking about designing a layout where you don't have a lot of space something that you'd like to be able to store away but still have enough ample room to operate and run this is a great concept to follow so follow my lead on this this is kind of a neat way to design your layout come on get in we're going on our first what's neat this week field trip segment of what's neat I want to talk about getting your own creek rock your own gravel for scenery and for ballast as you can see in this scene I like to do my ballast using sifted gravel and it looks pretty good also I also like to do it as in this trestle shot you're looking at where I've done the texture of the Colorado scenery using various granular sizes of rocks and that's what we're here at this creek now to do today when I like to come to the creek I usually bring a screen with me and in this case I like to use these deep fryer baskets that you get at the restaurants of lighthouse because what they're good for is breaking down the rock to a size and when we get back to the shop we can sift out into eight different sizes of gravel to use for various projects on the layout on the model railroads so that's what we're going to do today I'm going to show you briefly what I like to do is when I go to the creek I look for these areas where the gravel is really fine where the creek has undulated and brought up the finer sifted material the nice thing about it is it's clean and it's been washed already and it's also kind of pretty dust-free so you don't end up with a big mess when you're working with it what I like to do is I take a laundry tote I take this screen that I've got here and I simply pour up good material now sometimes I'll use a larger screen because I want this bigger material but not today a lot of times I like to just bring a window screen down and just you know sift with a window screen so I'm going for the finer material but today I'm opting to use this screen and it works really well so let me just get a little bit more material and we'll go back to the shop and I'll show you how we screen it into eight different sizes now that we've come back from the creek it's time to take and process all of the wonderful creek rock that we've got we're going to run it through seven different size screens so that we can make the material dimensionalized for all the various projects that we're going to need it for we're going to divide this up into different sizes and when I say that I'm talking about one half inch to one inch stone that you can use for either n scale or h o scale ballast one and a half to two inch stone three to four inch stones six inch stones eight to ten inch stones then we're going to break it up into other dimensions of the 12 inch stones two to three foot stones and then the larger dimensions of anything over three to six feet that's what we got left for scenery type work so we're going to divide this up and screen this out and let me explain to you what these screens are I ran usually I go to the hardware store to get hardware cloth that's simple enough you build a box using the hardware cloth and it works out really well I built the box as an example here this one is using a very fine plumber screen and we're going to go into these two screens later we start with the screen that's going to create our three to four inch material so that we can sift it and break it down easier that way so what I want to do is I'm going to scoop this out of our of our bucket and this will be the first screen process there's no real magic to this it's like popping popcorn when you hear the sound stop falling you know this batch is done and what this is doing is making me some real nice stones anywhere from one half inch right now up to four inches through this deep fryer strainer that I'm using and this is the kind of rock that I'm going to get from that after that we're done with this then we're going to put it into a colander that I picked up at the grocery store and this is creating rocks now six inches in diameter somewhere in that range that you could use for oh and 30 ballast and it also looks good spread on scenes when you're finishing a scene on your layout this works really well for doing colorado type scenery and once you hear that it stops falling and it doesn't take long to go through this batch like this I'm getting some bigger stones in there accidentally but it'd be really easy to filter those out and we're going into a larger deep fryer size basket and this is going to create eight to ten inch stones for our scenes and this goes very quick here it's getting quiet that means there's not a lot falling out anymore and I'm going to switch over to this screen it should give me 12 inch stones and this goes very fast I'm going to put it on top of this grate and this grate's going to give me my two to three foot stones and then anything left over is above three feet just dump into there this screen is the primary screen that I like to take with me to the creek when I don't want the larger size material I want to just cut to the chase and have a smaller material to work with this is a very fast way you go to the creek you just drop it onto here and shake it into your bucket and take the whole load home with you to do your final screening okay you just watch me run the screens five different size screens in order to make our material now this first screen is cranking out material that's anywhere between four inch material down to half inch in powder okay so what I want to do is take this what we got from this results from this and break it up further into the one and a half inch to one inch stone I'm sorry one half inch to one inch stones to the one and a half to two inch stones and a three to four inch stones I want to be able to separate all three because those are the most important sizes that I'm going to be using so I start with this calendar which is is responsible I don't know what size and describe this to you as but this this also came from the restaurant supply house and this calendar breaks it up starts my screening process where what comes out of this calendar right now is turning out to be a one and a half to two inch stones and I really like that what's left in the basket is my three to four inch stones so we're keeping everything and we're separating everything so that's all I got on that here's here's my sifted material which I am now going to run further through another screen here and this is a plumber screen this is plumber's mesh this is what you find in your sink it's very fine I think it's like 60 threads per inch this is pretty fine and what this is going to do is take the dirt out of it and separate the dirt which isn't really dirt it's one and a half it's one half inch to one inch stones so I'm going to dump this in here without making any fuss and now I'm going to shake this and screen this through this real fine plumber screen and a lot of material is going to drop through here and that's the rich stuff that's the n scale ballast and the smaller h o scale ballast and then what's left is the one and a half to two inch stones which is absolutely perfect for our h o scale material and that's the seven screen process as you can see I've got the fine powder in here which I'll take and I'll dump into this container my my one and a half to two inch stones now we'll go into this container and then what's left from the last container will be my three to four inch stones so we've actually broken everything up now into actually eight different size rocks that we've got to work with you use the finer stuff for ballast use the coarser stuff starting at four inches for sprinkling around on your scenery and if you're modeling colorado you want to mix all three sizes of this rock together I know it seems silly that we've just screened it out if we're going to mix it together again but when we apply it to our layout we want to be able to control the amount of each size stone that we've got to make the scene look correct and so by screening it this way we have complete control at how it goes down and how it looks so essentially that's what you've got to do we've gone from the creek to the final process where you've got material ready to go on your scenes anytime you need it and the price is right for what we've just done so I hope you've enjoyed this that's how you sift rock and make your own ballast for this segment of what's neat you know how when you get an idea it's something so simple a simple idea but something you want to share because it's a great idea now here you see I'm working on a foam diorama on one of my modules and it's upside down and what's going on here is last night I put in all the uh I put in all the block wiring for the blocks it's all self contained in the module just like I always do except something different underneath I had to run wires because they were too far to run on top so I grooved out grooves with the router I put the wires in and right now there's six wires inside here running from block tracks to the block switches but what I've done here is I've taken foam this orange foam great stuff in a can and I put it on top of the wires filled the groove took a saw cut it off real smooth and what I've ended up with is a channel with the wires in it self contained and there's no way for the wires to dangle out now because I know the wiring is correct I don't ever have to get to it so covering it up with the foam like this makes it permanent but I don't have to get to these wires so here's another very interesting kind of a cool idea for modular design for containing the layouts the wiring underneath the layout I just I wanted to mention it it's a it's a neat idea it worked I've tried it for the first time and I think it's worth investigating if in fact this is the way you build your modules self-containing the wiring underneath with foam so that's a tip for what's neat this month I'll show you kind of a cool project that I've been working on now I've been working with these blackstone models for over a year now but I've got nowhere really to run them and it's been driving me crazy just short of tearing down my layout and starting to build Colorado my thought that I got the other day and it's working out really well as I've been taking out I've been drilling out holes in the main line of my HO scale track and adding us a third rail so I can run dual gauge so I can run my HO scale models and my blackstone models through the same layout that I've already got and so far it's working good in the yard area I've already replaced a few turnouts with three rail turnouts which are really fun to lay not very complicated as long as you make your cuts right because they've got live frogs in them they're not what they call DCC friendly but I prefer live frogs I'd rather make a few notches make the jumper wires and have the switches work out really well for me like the old-fashioned chin and harrows used to do but now this is kind of working out neat so check it out it's something to think about doing if you want to earn the narrow gauge or even tempting to think about starting to add a little narrow gauge to your HO scale layout you don't want to rip up all your tracks and start over maybe just add a third rail drill it out with the dremel spike it in a little contact adhesive underneath the rail and you're off to the races you can start running trains tomorrow afternoon so it was just a thought that I wanted to put on this what's neat tip of the month that last run by was pretty cool wasn't it there's another really neat run by coming up before the shows after I close the show with another neat run by is what I'm trying to say now the reason I want to talk about turnouts a little bit more because in that last segment I don't think I really left a good description of what I'm talking about specifically about turning or about notching out the frogs notching out the rails on these turnouts because they've got live frogs now Shinohara turnouts code 83 or DCC friendly they come that way code 70 and narrow gauge turnouts from Shinohara come with live frogs and like I said in the last segment I really prefer live frogs because the smaller equipment that the t-12's and the smaller locomotives can get across without stopping without stalling when you've got a live frog well generally what you've got to do every time in order to take a live frog turnout and make it DCC friendly you've got to catch the top notch out the two center rails right before you get to the frog now on a three-way turnout on a three rail dual gauge turnout you simply notch out the center two rails and the third rail leaving the outside rails alone we want to conduct electricity through those all the time and then when I say jumper wires what I'm trying to explain is I run jumper wires from the outside rail to track number ones outside rail and then from the inside rail to track number ones inside rail and by jumping like that it ensures the fact that I've got electricity in these rails after the frog now if you want to avoid all of that and you don't mind how insulated rail joiners look you can go ahead and just use insulated rail joiners and put them on the two center rails right be right before the frog and you'll alleviate any short problems and now your turnout will be DCC friendly but if you do what I'm saying and you make the notches on the center rail on this HO scale number 10 Shinahara for example or the notches I just finished making on this three rail turnout where I've notched out the two center rails and the third rail towards the center if you do that and then you put in your jumper wires now these turnouts are DCC friendly and you've got live frogs now if you use code 83 Shinahara turnouts that have got the dead frogs there's you know there's a lot of aftermarket products that are available the frog juicer is one that comes to my mind that I've heard about on the market where you can have these frogs that are dead on 83s you can power them up so that depending upon which way the switch is thrown you'll then get that correct polarity in the frog that's one option but again I prefer the switches that are controlled where the points conduct the electricity to the frog the frog is live I've made my notches and I can take a regular good hot frog switch and make it DCC friendly for the layout so I really wanted to go over that and explain that a little bit more in depth so you would understand that and now let's get ready to watch that really cool run by for maze what's neat this week tool tips I want to talk to you about a tool that is very useful in the shop I mean you can clean your wife's jewelry with it don't put her pearls in it they'll explode but what I'm talking about is an ultrasonic cleaner and I use an ultrasonic cleaner for cleaning my paint bottles my airbrush parts and when I'm painting brass it's the best way to get the residue off right after sandblasting so let me show you this what you're looking at here are paint bottles that haven't been cleaned in 14 years it's been that long since I've uh I had an ultrasonic cleaner that I purchased from micro engineering about 14 years ago she quit working and I just got her fixed so it's nice to have a machine operating but what you're actually seeing is bottles that haven't been cleaned in many many years they're hard caked with paint and the ultrasonic cleaner is literally vibrating the paint right off of the bottles in an upcoming video on how to paint brass I'm going to show you how this tool helps to clean a model after you've sandblasted it but this is just absolutely an amazing example of what this thing will do just cleaning paint bottles I mean in about 30 minutes I'm going to come back and these bottles are going to be easily wiped off and clean and I've got a slew of bottles to do here so that's just some interesting thing to think about if you need a tool and they make much smaller ones check out ultrasonic cleaners they're absolutely useful for our hobby