TRACK TALK LIVE: September 2019

Hello! Welcome to Track Talk Live. My name is Leah. I'm here with Doug Hodgdon, fondly known as Mr. Clickity.

How are you doing today, Doug? Excellent.. That's right. We are here for a little Q and A session. We'll get to that a little bit later, and I'll be keeping an eye on your questions as they roll in, but first I've got a pretty exciting announcement.

We had the grand layout of the Model Railroad Academy community gallery, so we were asking for submissions for your layouts right here into that gallery, and we received over 100. That's pretty exciting. What do you think? It was fantastic. Yes!

And keep sending them in too. Keep sending in. That gallery is going to remain open. You can click the banner below the chat box right now to find that gallery, or if you're watching on Facebook, follow the link in the description. Since we're focusing on that gallery, we've got six photos that Doug picked, I believe.

Yes? Yes, I did. I just picked them out out of the hundred. We are going to feature those right now. And please send more.

And if you have more than one picture of your layout, you don't have limited to just one. But we found some pretty, or I did, I guess, some pretty fantastic layout photos I think. Right? So we're going to go through six of them right now. Doug's going to get us started off with this first one.

This first one, and the commentary that goes with it, is- That was a close one. This was sent in by user darrlyh08. And the close one is referring to the skid marks there, you see in the foreground. Somebody who's probably on their cell phone, right? Oh, perhaps.

And they're not paying attention, and right up to the train crossing, but this overall, I think, was a great photo. I mean, the lighting first of all is great. And there's a lot of other just great detailing. You'll notice off to the right of the skid marks, there's a guy, well, that looks like a kid with a backpack hiking up to the crossing. Oh wow.

And then you see what looks like probably a railroad crew with the truck over there in the ditch. And so looking toward the background, you have the great fall colors in the trees. Beautiful. Which is really neat. I mean, I think that's really fabulous.

Structures and so on, and then the lighting. You look up at the ceiling. You know, lighting is really very critical and this scene, I think, was very well lit, and the ceiling looks finished. You know, a lot of model railroaders get their layout built, and then kind of forget about the, you know, the ceiling. Right.

And so here you actually see the ceiling, the backdrop and the ceiling, and it's very well done, very finished. And so I give this, are we grading these? I think we can give it a two thumbs up, don't you think? Yeah, I think so. Hey, okay.

So I think that is, that is really super, so that's the very first picture of our gallery. And I hope to have many, many, many, many more. Of course. Okay, this is number two, and the, oh, by the way, the first one was HO, we know. And then of course, the second one we can tell is HO also.

Now let's have the description there. Yeah, this is Rural America Circa 1970 running MOPAC and Burlington. It's a 23 by 13 layout. Farm scene featuring 1,000 plus hand-made corn stalks, four lines, DC operated. There you go.

Well, let's see handmade corn stalks, wow. Mm-hmm, that sounds like a lot. A lot of work. But obviously another layout that is very well done. And of course, when you're doing this, you know, this, what's the word I want to say?

I mean, there's elaborate scenery with all of the trees and the corn stalks, and you know, that's a lot of work, and you can see there's some rock outcroppings in the background, and a lot of trackage. Pretty fantastic. So yeah, I mean, overall, this was really great, and we have a couple of BL2s in the foreground, which is a rarer locomotive, but I can see he's, and the first one there he's weathered it. And so, yeah, overall, I mean, I think this is great. Yeah.

I'm going to try not to butcher the username. It looks like that one was sent in by dholsinger. So that's who sent in this one right here of Rural America. Ready to move on to the next one? Yeah, okay.

Fantastic. All right, this one was sent in by postman482000. This is Processing and Loading Coal on this SAM Railroad. Yeah, SAM, which was an abbreviation for, acronym for something. He didn't say what, but I'm assuming it's something, but I mean here again now, I mean, there's a lot of aura in this photograph.

I mean, look at the buildings that go way up on the hillside on the left, and the main line, which with the light colored ballast, and then the cinder colored ballast on the other sidings. And then looking at the mine building itself, it's very well weathered. It looks like it's a loaded a few car loads, and we don't know what kind of, this a coal mine possibly? I don't even know what kind of- Perhaps. Oh, it does say loading coal.

Okay, it is a coal mine. Yeah, coal mine. So yeah, a lot of stuff going on. I liked the scenery work. Awesome.

Very good. Well done. Okay. Let's move on to the next. This is user seg57 sent in an image of Columbia and Susquehanna HO model railroad in Columbia, Pennsylvania.

My home state. Really, oh? Good. Pennsylvania is big. I'm not too close to Columbia, but you know.

Okay, so this is an urban scene, and you can see a lot of great detail in the buildings in the background. A lot of tall buildings that go way up to the sky by backdrop back there. And so viaduct off to the right that comes into town. And then as you come forward, there's obviously a classy railroad station there with a lower level trackage and platform. So yeah, I kinda like it.

I like the billboard along the highway coming into town, and it looks like a fencing there along the road as it takes the curve into the station. Yeah. Pretty nice scene. Good stuff. Send in more like this.

All right. Keep them coming. We know there's a lot of them out there. This next one is sent in by user john_cootz, and this is Delivering Produce at Laurel, California. Well, you know, I'm a sucker for produce warehouses, so that's what I'm doing.

And this just kind of, it looks like a rural scene, and I'm not sure if Laurel is a real name, or it's a fictitious name, but I liked the idea. I mean, obviously there's wooded hillsides in the background, and it just looks real. I just kind of like the overall feel of it. I like the platform with the people on the platform, and it looks like sacks of produce. It looks like you could almost just go shopping there.

Pick up some fresh produce. There you go. And the weathered refrigerator car, Pacific Fruit Express, I think that's it. Oh, and the grass in the foreground is great. I just like the yellow grass.

It really makes me think of California. Nice and soft, yes. All right, we've got one more. Let's hit it! Let's see what this is here.

This is sent in by user jlwitt, and this is a Taggart Transcontinental Mikado rumbles past the houses on the, quote, wrong side of the tracks. Aha. Well, it doesn't look that bad, but okay. Yeah, I really like the idea of the, kind of the older style housing right along the railroad track. I mean, this is really great.

And a double track main mainline with a crossover, and you have what looks like a freight house in the background there with the interlocking tower. Wooded hillside in the back. There's a guy standing there watching the train in the back too there. Yeah, very good. I like it.

Keep sending more like that. Yes. I love the, when you put in the aura, I mean, to me that's the most important thing is the aura. Them putting the human element into it, and just creating an aura with your scene. Absolutely.

Fantastic. And again, you'll find that link either below the chat box, or if you're watching on Facebook in the description. So keep all of those photos coming. And like Doug said, you can send in multiple shots of the same layout. Oh, yeah.

Different angles. Different things to feature every time. Yep. Awesome. Well, now that we've gone through some of your photos, Doug, what have you been up to?

You know, I'll tell you what. I've hardly been home since the last show. I had been doing crazy stuff. So I'm going to maybe, maybe we'll go through that first, and then I'll show you my picture that I have here, but I, my wife and I actually, went, well it was sort of a railroad trip, but not completely, because my in-laws have a place in upper Michigan. And they went to do a little handyman work.

Manistique, Upper Michigan, but also in that vein, I probably mentioned on the show before, I do commercial work for the pizza restaurant in town, Broadway Pizza, which has been actually around. Broadway Pizza has been around since 1953. Okay. But there's a location that was built in the early seventies, which is right on the river, and there's a lot of new development going along, going on on the upper Mississippi River. And so they are potentially looking for a new home, not right away, but their property values are getting to be such that they may have to make some changes there.

They do have a bunch of other restaurants, so it's not like the restaurant is closing. And the neat thing about Broadway Pizza is we have G scale trains running around on shelving up above and kids just love it. You know, it's for kids and families. Absolutely. But, and I didn't get this off to be put on the screen, but I'm just going to hold this one up.

This is a flyer I made. This is a picture of the Broadway Pizza caboose. It says looking for a new home. So what happened was is that my wife and I on the way up to upper Michigan, we followed the Soo Line. Basically the Soo Line went across the middle of Wisconsin, so we went from west to east following the Soo Line, and I stopped at various small museums along the way, and just mentioned that this caboose is available.

And of course there's going to, the big problem is moving this caboose, 'cause it's not something you can run on the rails anymore. Oh, yes, of course. So it's going to have to be trucked wherever you go. So anyway, it was kind of fun. We stopped at these various museums along the way, and talked to people, and then on the way back, I went to the Soo Line Historical Society meeting in, in the Wisconsin Dells.

Oh yeah. So I just want to show you this, you know, I could have photographed the stuff and put it on the screen, but I didn't. I've been so busy. I mean, I got home then I'm here. So this is just the, just to show you the pamphlet of the Soo Line Historical and Technical Society.

If you're interested in becoming a member, it was really a neat, you know, it's about a three-day deal kind of like one of those RPM meets. And I had a great time talking about the Soo Line. One of the places we've visited was the Mid-Continent Railroad Museum. And this is a fantastic place. It's in North Freedom, Wisconsin, which is very close to the Wisconsin Dells.

And this was founded, trying to remember, about the late 1950s, but they have a phenomenal amount of equipment there. And they're really, they're well-known for restoring wood equipment. And they have sheds full of antique passenger cars with beautiful woodwork inside, and phenomenal amount of work. So I bought this book. I mean, this is a thick book, you can see, and it's all about the history of the, you know, the kind of the work that they've done at the museum.

And if you're anywhere near that area, I would definitely suggest that you go visit. And it was really a phenomenal place. Looks like a lot of content. And so this is just another, I just grabbed a flyer to show you. This is a flyer for the Mid-Continent Road Museum and they have a train ride.

You can actually ride the train for about five miles I think it goes each way. So we can also ride the train there. And another interesting thing is Circus World. You know, the circuses really started in, started big time in Wisconsin. I mean, it's just amazing.

I didn't know that. Baraboo. And there's a Circus World Museum there that not only has a circus railroad cars that you can visit, but also the site of the original Ringling Bros., Barnum & Bailey home, the home for the circus. Oh wow. And later on, they moved to their headquarters to Sarasota, Florida, but they originated in Baraboo, and there's a tremendous circus history there, and a tremendous museum if you want to go see that.

And that's in Baraboo, which is in that same area. That sounds fantastic. And then one another little plug I meant to do is there happened to be a restaurant right across the street from this hotel we were staying in, and this is another restaurant kind of like the Broadway Pizza that actually has G scale trains inside. So fun. So it's called Buffalo Phil's Train Delivered Food, and the train actually delivers your food.

To your table? On flat cars. And it was crazy. And we would happen, my wife and I, happened to be sitting at a table next to a family with a couple of kids, and these kids just went berserk. Oh, they would love it.

And the train shows up with their order. And I've got a picture that I'll show you. In fact, okay, we can put this one on the screen. I'll show this one. Yeah!

This is a picture of the inside of Buffalo Phil's, and you can see the train and the shelf up above there. Really cool. I mean, it's a beautiful log building. They told me all the logs were imported from Canada. This is all built out of logs, the entire thing.

Beautiful structure. Looks really nice. So, and I'll show this one here. This is the, just to show you where I was, to prove I was in Manistique. There's the Manistique Depot with the main line, which has now, it was Soo Line, but it's now run by the Canadian National.

So there is the Manistique Depot. It's cool that it's still there. Yeah. Now just to a little modeling thing, and I'll talk more about this at our next show, because we got a lot of other things to do here, but I bought this car and anything in S scale is rare. I mean, to find anything, and this is the rare of the rare.

This is a model of a Milwaukee Road, what they call a peekaboo gondola. So it has open sides. You can see from the picture it's open sides. And I actually, because I grew up in St. Louis Park, and we had our claim to fame and St.

Louis Park was our creosote plant, which polluted everything. But aside from that, they creosoted a lot of bridge timbers and ties. And I'd see these cars as a kid. I'd see these cars a lot, and they would load creosoted ties up in these. And so there was a little bit of a hill coming out of this creosote plant up to the main line, and I was telling somebody at the convention it was funny, because here it comes to this old first-generation diesel pulling a string of these cars up the hill.

And of course these creosoted ties are pretty heavy. And so here comes as diesel, just snorting away up the hill, and so the first thing you smell is diesel fumes. Right? And then the next thing you smell is creosote. So it's the combination of diesel fumes and creosote coming up the hill.

And so I bought this car, although I model California. I sorta had to have this car just for my own sake. And then I, sort of cheating on history a little bit, because they didn't, these cars were actually built about 1919. That's a USRA gondola, but they weren't modified into this until about 19, I think, it was 1957. And so I'm modeling the earlier, before in the mid-fifties, and so I have to cheat on history a little bit, and modelers do that.

I mean, I love history and I try to be historically correct, but on this one here, because I love this car, I'm going to have to cheat a little bit. Do a little bit. But don't spread the word Just stretch it. that I'm going to cheat a little bit. So I'm going to have this car probably three years before it actually showed up.

It's just between all of us. We'll keep it quiet. Yeah, don't tell anybody I'm doing it, and then probably by next month, I'm going to weather this car and make it look, actually, I got a picture of it in the weathered conditions, so I will show you that, but I haven't had time to work on it. I just wanted to show you that picture. So, okay.

It's coming up. Neat car though. All right. Well, before we dig into the questions and answers, keep them coming in. You can fill them into the chat box at any point.

Just a quick shout out to follow us on social media. We've got Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, and Twitter. Doug, you ready for some questions? Okay, let's do it. All right.

Let's start right here from the top. We've got a question from John from St. Louis. I would like a suggested track layout for an L shaped O scale layout which is 12 feet long in back then eight by four. 12 feet long and then four by eight, so basically a plywood L-shaped layout.

Well, you know what happens when you do a layout like that, and it's very common to, like people get started in model railroad and they do that, but the curves are a trick. And especially if you're doing O scale, and say if you have the end of the layout at four feet, that limits you to pretty tight radius semicircular curve on the end. So people are pretty much restricted to what's called a dog bone. What's that? Well, it's the shape of a dog bone, but it might be bent in the middle.

So you can have a dog bone with a big balloon shape, round in the end, and then it could be narrower in the center, and so whether the layout is a long straight layout, or bent into an L, you have to have those loops on the end. Yeah. And people generally what they do is, and if you're starting with a four by eight plywood, is that if you're against the wall, those square corners are fine, but then inside the room, a lot of times they'll scallop the corner of the plywood to match the curve of the tracks, so you don't have that big sharp corner poking out at you. You know? Right.

So that is pretty much, I mean, there are certainly track plans out there. You can look online. I'm sure there are plans, but Atlas makes O scale track, which would be similar, or more realistic let's say, then I would say the Lionel Track. And so you can check with Lionel or Mike's Train House or even Atlas, the people that sell the track, and see what they say for, you know, what they recommend for their own track plans for their own track. Sounds good.

Does that make sense? Yeah, hopefully that's helpful. Okay, so I hope that helped you out. All right. Let's move on to Doug from Kentucky.

Doug has quite a detailed question, so we'll take a moment here. Several times watching your Q and A, you say to stop using brass track. I do G gauge and all that I know of that is made now in G is either brass or plastic. Aristo-Craft made stainless track, but they have been out of business now for several years, and what shows up for sale is used and expensive. In the past, you suggested going battery and remote control for G to avoid the track issues, but if one has several locomotives, that could be expensive and some work to do all of them in that fashion.

So what would you suggest with all of that in mind? Okay, well. Quite a picture to start. Just to kind of a little background. When I say don't use back brass track, that applies really to the HO brass track that was out there years ago, and there's a lot of alternatives in HO.

Right. Now in G scale, like the track we have right in front of us here, that is, and I'm not exactly sure what's all is in there, but this is a brass alloy that doesn't seem to oxidize like the typical brass track. And of course this is made to be outside. So it seems to work pretty well, whatever it is, you don't get that oxidation problem. So I don't think it's pure brass, like the old stuff was.

And so I'm not bad mouthing the G scale track. And I know I'm familiar with the stainless steel track, and I know that's pretty much impossible to get, so this is what you use in G scale. And the oxidation doesn't seem to be a problem. I like the fact that a G scale is large enough where you can actually have a wireless battery operated trains, and I know that gets more expensive. So anyway, I didn't mean the G scale brass was bad.

I think that's a kind of a little different. Between the two scales. Little different thing compared to the HO track. All right. Well, hopefully that's pretty helpful for you, Doug.

Let's move on to Don from Tucson. From Tucson? All right. Do you have any tips for touching up scenery water? The water's shine has faded on my layout.

So touching up instead of creating. I know there are two ways you can do it. People use furniture polish. Really? And, you know, you can get in with the, oh, like even, well, depending on how big an area you're talking about, you know you can get in there with a little pad, like a sponge pad, and wipe it down like you do if you're working on furniture.

You know, like if you have those furniture pads that are kind of a soft whatever they're made out of. And then on small areas, you can use a Q-tip. Okay. You know, and also if it's real bad, you can actually add another layer on top of what you've already got. The gloss medium.

Gloss medium! I got it! So yeah, I mean, it depends. You could try cleaning it, and if that doesn't work, you can add another layer on the top. And that, I mean, that is even true with like grass scenery.

Sometimes if it gets real, real like dust, if it gets dusty and the color kind of goes out of it, you can, first of all, try to clean it. And of course, with scenery, you can take just even a, like a spray bottle of a soapy water, and spray it and just kind of wash the dust down, you know? And if that doesn't work, you can add another layer of color over the top. Absolutely. All right, sounds good.

Let's move on to Charles. Charles asks what do you use as a fade coat for your weathering projects? Well, you know, I'll tell ya. I don't like to stay with just one medium, and I think that, in fact, if you're doing multiple cars on your own layout, you don't want them all weathered the same way. It would look kind of funny.

I mean, these cars are supposed to be all over the country, so it wouldn't all be weathered the same way. And so I certainly, with an airbrush, I mean, that's the easiest way I think, 'cause you want to start out with a very light coat and not necessarily try to cover or weather your car all in one pass with your airbrush. You want to do a little bit at a time, and just keep working with it until you get it the way you want it. And another trick, I think we've mentioned this before, is to when you're doing your weathering, do it under the same lighting that your layout is lit with, because keep in mind if you're working on a different kind of a light, different color of light, It's going to look different. Different Kelvin.

It's going to look different when you get it on your layout, so use the same lighting, and just very lightly and so, so you're going to do a feather coat, and for example, your car might be say dirtier on along the bottom edge than it would be up above, so you might start with a heavier coat down below and then work up feathering up. Oh, that sounds good. Very lightly a little bit at a time. And with multiple coats until you get it the way you want it. Right.

All right, that's pretty helpful. Let's move on to Walter. Walter is asking how much time do you spend doing the details inside your buildings and trains? When you mentioned this, I don't know, a show or two ago, and I only do what you can see from the particular viewing angle that you're at. And I don't, on my layout, I'm not doing night scene.

Oh, okay. But I'm doing a, we talked about a little hardware store I have in my layout, and, you know, a hardware store would have its lights on during the day. Right. You know, so what I do is I can, in the retail part of the hardware store, I've made some, oh, I bought some wood bench work, a work bench, I guess, they were kind of things from Model Tech, and they have them for S scale, and they're a good starting point. So I started with those, and then colored up some of the items so they look kind of like they're up for display in a retail store.

I have signs in there, you know. Kind of colored signs that would be in a retail store. And so I put lighting in there, and I have lighting, I use these mini Altronix lights with shades, or a very small led with a brass shade. Then I kind of poke them up through the ceiling. And then the wiring goes up into the ceiling, so you don't see the wiring, but you see the shade.

With the shade, of course, can be painted anything you want. And with the light bulb in there, and spread out the way they would be in a regular store. And that works great. And I have mine kind of dim, because you don't want it too bright in there. And, you know, over the top kind of bright.

So that's what I do. I just detail what you can see from my particular viewing angle. Right, so depending on how much visibility you have, it'll be more time or less time then, huh? Yeah, and in the back, if you want to do something in the back, I mean, you can just have shapes too. I mean, it doesn't have to be anything real well detailed.

So you might have a dimly light area, lit area, with some kind of a shape. All right, well that sounds good. Or two dimensional, even people. You can just take pictures of people two dimensional. Right, right.

For example. And that's good enough inside of a building. Right, well, Walter has got the next question here. Walter's asking how much time do you, oh, nope. Walter just asked that question.

Oscar has the next question. Oscar's asking when building plastic kits, do you paint and whether the pieces first, and then glue it together? It kind of depends on the building. I mean, if it's a plastic building, and it looks real plastic-y, you don't want your building to look plastic-y. So you want to do kind of a base coat to dull it down, or maybe you want to change the color.

True. Or if it's a brick building, it might be different. You want to do a say, put mortar into the brick, and so those kinds of things I would do ahead of time. Okay. But so then I get the building done, and then I do more esoteric, finer coloring and weathering after the building is done.

And then, there again, depending on your viewing angle and your lighting, you want to set the building on your layout. You know, you're not going to try to do everything all at once. Set the building on your layout and look at it and say, "Well, you know, "I need this or a little bit of that." And another building in my layout, I decided to add a little kind of a lean-to addition on the back with the little shed roof. I just thought, well, you know, this wall looks a little too flat. Okay, got to add something.

I need something to kind of bump it out, you know? So I just did a goofy little, very simple little thing. It took me maybe an hour to do this thing, but I popped it on the back of my building. Maybe I can show that to you sometime, but anyway, that, you know, it just, you got to look at it. Kind of set it on your, just like, you know, like doing artwork.

Look at it a while and see what you think. And I want to tweak this up a little bit. Right, a little bit of both. Yep, yep. All right, sounds good.

George has our next question. George is curious. What do you use for glue? Curious George! That's too perfect.

We're going to pretend that even if it wasn't on purpose, we're going to pretend that was on purpose, because it's so clever. All right. Curious George. What do you use for glue on your buildings? Oh, gads.

Well, there again it depends on the material. Right? I've used, actually I use yellow glue sometimes, the carpenter's glue, but I, you know, I buy these little bottles, the smallest bottles you can find of the regular white glue, Right, right. Like for school kids or something. Like the Elmer's Glue, right?

Yeah, the Elmer's Glue, but I buy the little bottles, but you can't buy yellow glue in those little bottles. No. So I save those bottles and then I put a little bit of yellow glue in there. Nice. And the little bottles can get into tight corners and all that.

And then of course I label it yellow glue. Otherwise I'd probably- So you know. Duh, you know. So anyway, yellow glue, and then I use that, like say on wood and things that are wood, or maybe cardboard. I do like a Gorilla Super Glue in the little bottles.

That's my favorite super glue and I use that too. Yeah, it kind of varies I think. For bigger areas, I've gotten into this, and I think I showed this in one of the shows. I used this E6000 glue. Comes in a silver tube that you can buy at, say, Michael's.

All right. You know, it's a kind of, you know, the heavier glue, so you wouldn't wanna use it in a real small part, but on a big part, you can use that. That's a real good glue too. All right. Anything that sticks, right?

Yeah, and you know, it depends. I mean, you kind of through experience, you figure out what works on certain things. So, you know, you have, some things are more porous than others, so you want to use a particular glue that will work with what your. Super glue doesn't really work on things that don't meet very well. It works better and things that meet pretty tight.

So you already get a little bit of a connection going. Yellow glue is a type of glue that is made to kind of soak into a porous material, so it actually bonds And hold it, yeah. by soaking into the material. So pick and choose, right? According to your material.

All right, Ed's got our next question. Do you think styrofoam or plaster is better for making a mountain? Which is easier? Well, you know, the rigid foam has really come a long way. I mean, it's really neat, and you can carve it up real easily, but if you're doing a huge mountain, you know, you'd be doing a lot of styrofoam, and so I would say on a smaller scene, styrofoam is great and it's lightweight of course, too.

Right. But then if you're doing a big mountain that, you know, you'll want to use a form, I mean, on big mountains, we would use like say even say chicken wire, and then put a letter gauge metal screen over the top and shape it and then do a actual plaster. And of course we used Hydrocal. I mean, that all is techniques that you'd use before there even was a rigid foam. So yeah, I mean, on big areas, I would use a shell that, I mean, sometimes you want to be able to crawl under your mountain if you have a tunnel in there.

I guess, yeah. That's an axiom. One thing in model railroading, it never goes bad on the front ever. You know, it goes bad in the worst possible place. Where it's the hardest to get to.

So I always want to have access. And so if you have a big mountain with a tunnel in it, you don't want to like prevent- Cut yourself off. Access. You want that to be able to get in there, so you make a big shell, so you can actually crawl in there when it goes bad. When it does go bad.

Perfect. Plan ahead a little bit. That's one of the axioms of model railroading. It always goes bad where you can't get to it. All right.

Let's move on to Harry's question. Harry is asking do you have any tips on making plastic look like weathered wood? Oh, well, people do that all the time. Depending on what you're talking about, like say a building is supposed to be wood siding, as an example. Well, you know, it's, first of all, it was way too shiny, so you have to dull it down, and depending on what you're going to do with it, I mean, maybe you want to make it a different color, but you certainly don't want that shine, because it's going to look like hokey plastic.

So they want to dull it down one way or another. There's plenty of flat paint you can buy. You can buy flat model paint. You can buy flat paint from like say a place like Michael's, artist's paint. So first of all, you want to get the sheen off of it, and then if you're doing, say you're doing wood siding again and it's the plastic is too smooth, you can buy a little brush that's used in, oh, for like soldering, heavy-duty soldering.

Like I guess maybe like a wire brush for plumbing, I guess, is what they sell it for. It looks like a big kind of a heavy duty toothbrush. All right, yeah. But it has wire. It is wire.

Like bristles. Bristles on it, not, anyway. Then so you can scratch it up. Ooh, give it a little. Give it the wood green look, you know.

Put some texture, because pretty much anything you do, I mean, the texture is just as important as color in mind. So, and there, again, depending on your lighting, you know, how much texture you need is kind of dependent on the type of lighting you have. All right. Should always do your lighting ahead of time. You do when you're building a layout, the lighting should be one of the first things you do.

First. So as you're building for that particular lighting. That would be great. Kind of know what you're looking at. All right, let's move on to, I believe this is our next question is from Jorge.

I am planning on building a bridge to go between two modules of my model railroad, similar to the bridge on John Allen's Gorge- Gorre, Gorre Daphetid. Gorre. Gorre and daph-e-tid? Daphetid. Gorre Daphetid.

Gorre Daphetid. Gorre Daphetid. That's what he called it. Oh, I cannot speak. He sort of regretted it later on.

John Allen's Gorre and Daphetid, got it, at Angel Falls on his layout. I have run into a problem though, and hope you can help. I need a source for lace type girders and spans. Can you suggest a place I can buy these from? I need a bunch.

Ooh, you know, I'll tell you what. Yeah, I mean, there are foreign model railroad manufacturers, like German, for example, that do a lot of that lacy kind of stuff, you know, more historically confirmed. And so that might be a possibility. I mean, those things are, I think are getting harder to find than they used to be, but the other thing that's happening is is this 3D printing. Oh, right.

And so it makes it even easier. I mean, you can, if you can find the right kind of plans, or even if you have the ability to draw it yourself on the computer, you can do anything you want, and then you can make unlimited numbers. However much you need. And this outfit called Shapeways is kind of the biggest one, and you can go onto shapeways.com and the way that works is people that will design something, they have Shapeways actually make it for them. And then Shapeways will keep that computer file for other people to use.

Oh, that's really handy. So they share it, so you can go on there and just say, "I'm looking for bridge girders," on Shapeways and see what you can find. And, or if you know somebody that can do the computer part of it, you can actually send it to Shapeways, have them make it, and then they'll keep it for other people. So good luck. I love John Allen's layout.

It's very inspirational to me. I was actually out, he was a pen pal of mine when I was a little, a young kid. Oh, that's fantastic. And I actually went out to see his layout at Monterey, California, and it blew my mind. Oh wow.

I haven't recovered yet. So- Very long lasting impression Well, hopefully that will help. We've got a second question coming in from a guest BB Bucks. Any ideas on creating real looking pine trees? Well, there are many methods depending on, I mean, there's so many different types of pine trees.

You know what I mean? The kind of the old fashioned original method was what they call the bottle brush, where, What was that? Well, you know what a old fashioned bottle brush looked like? So basically you'd have a piece of wire and it's in kind of a loop, flat loop, and then you put all these, you can buy these bristles from a place like Michael's, and it's all laying flat, and you put one end in a vice and the other end in an electric drill and you go Oh, gotcha, yes, yes. It spins it up and these bristles are all over the place.

And I mean, you can buy those commercially. There's a lot of places that sell commercial bottle brush pine trees, and they're fairly inexpensive. They're kind of easy to make bulk, but, and then you're going to have kind of funny looking bristles, but then you can cut them. Shape them. Yeah, cut them to irregular, so they don't look too perfect.

Some of those you buy, you know, they're like just like a perfect cone, you know, but yeah, you can, and you can color them. I was just talking earlier today about you can use like say a rust colored paint and paint, Right. Paint some of the foliage rust colored, so it looks like dead foliage, but there are other, you can use, people use tapered dowels. You can buy chopsticks, which are tapered and use those. But that's a lot, you know, a lot more work, because people actually drill holes- And place.

and put the air fern branches, which you can buy in an art store again, or craft store, and put these branches in there, but it's a lot of work, so, and the other thing is too, there are a lot of commercially made trees out there that look pretty good. So depending on how much work you want to go to, you know, I'm using palm trees in my layout, and I just, I just bought them. You know, I want to do something else. I don't want to make- A bunch of palm trees. I want to do railroad stuff.

So yeah, I would say look around online and see what you can find. There are some very nice trees out there, and a lot of, there's a lot of people out there who sell trees for architectural models. Of course, those are a lot more expensive ones, but they're out there. I would just look online, I think. Great so a couple options.

Or try making them on your own. All right. Let's move on to Max's question. Max is asking easiest way to wire track signals to function with Atlas code 83 track to show turnout positions? Well, I mean the track doesn't really have anything to do with it.

It would be operated off of your, you know, whatever your switch control is. And like, for example, you know, the tortoise is probably the most common. Well, they give you a set of contacts, would be a double pole, double throw a set of contacts that are part of the switch motor. And so you have these auxiliary contacts that you can use to operate. You know, you can feed people, feed that back to a circuit board or even a computer, JMRI, or anything like that.

Now the real railroads would use what was called a shunt and they would, it would work off the detection, and in a real railroad across when your wheelset spans across the rails, you can read that conductivity across the axle. And so then what the railroads would do would put like a like a resistor kind of a thing into the switch. And so as it was thrown against the track, it would trip the shunt and then make, kind of trick the signal into saying, "Oh, this block is occupied," when it really wasn't. It was just a shunt. Well, you can do the same thing in the model railroad, so that's another way of doing it.

But so, I mean, it really wouldn't matter what size rail you are using. It's just the your switch control. All right. Let's move on to Eddie R's question. How do you create depth in a layout, not physical or track distance, but how do you make it your small layout look bigger?

Ah, well, that's a good question. There's a couple of different ways of doing that. And of course, you know, like say an artist would do that with forced perspective. You know, it's like the track running off in the distance, and, you know, coming to a point. So forced perspective is very important.

They use it at, you know, like say at Disneyland, to make Disneyland look bigger. Disney World. There's a lot of creativity and forced perspective and theatrics in what they do. And that's the same thing. If you look at the castle at Disney World, the stones get smaller as they go up.

To make the castle look bigger. Kind of like disappear into. I mean, that's the trick, but so forced perspective is one thing. There's, I'm sure there's all kinds of things you can read in forced perspective, but your scale gets smaller as you go back. So it looks, the eye thinks that it's further away.

Then also with with lighting, things that are more distant look cooler, and so the trick and model railroading, we were talking about lighting earlier, is warm lighting for closeup. Okay. And then as you get further back, Cool the lighting down. Cooler and that fools your eye into greater distance too. Thinking it's further away.

Yeah, let me know if you do work on this stuff. Let me know how it turns out because I'm really fascinated by the creative aspects of that. Yeah, little optical illusions. Fool the eye. Jason Simpson has our next question.

Which makes a better road bed, cork or I'm going to say this incorrectly, home-a-so-tea? Homasote. Homasote. Homasote has been around for a long time, and it's a compressed, it's like newspaper that's been compressed. Kind of a panel.

And people use that a lot. In fact, there are companies would actually make, cut road bed out of that. You can go to home supply places, like we have Home Depot and Menards around here, and you can buy actually homasote boards, 'cause they work good for like for a bulletin board. You know, they'll hold like a pin better. You know, if you put a pin in for a bulletin board.

And so for railroad purposes, the homasote will hold railroad spikes very well. And it's also a sound deadening, 'cause it's a pressed paperboard. Right. Cork on the other hand is quick and easy to use. Cork tends to deteriorate over time, so if you're going to use cork and want to keep it for a long time, you're going to have to seal it with something like Matte medium.

And when you do your ballasting, so the cork will be sealed so the air doesn't get to it and make it deteriorate. But I mean, personally, I love homasote, and it's, you can use it for a lot of things. You can, you know, it's dusty if you cut it in sheets. You can also buy a saw blade that's like a knife blade. Yeah.

Rather than a saw blade and it's a slower cutting, but it also cuts that real smooth and true and you don't get a ton of dust. And like I said, I think there are still some manufacturers out there. There was one called Homabed, and I think there was another one out there that would actually sell pre-cut road bed, cut embankment, cut sheets in different thicknesses, so you could have your main line road bed thicker than your sidings and your industrial tracks. Fantastic. Little- Homasote.

Little convenience. Good old homasote. We've got a few comments that came in. Jason Rush says recycle that brass track. And then another guest said, I love Buffalo Phil's.

So fun! Hey, okay! Commonalities there. Yeah, there you go. I was just right across the street from it at our convention.

Fantastic. We're getting right back into the questions with Dave. Anyone watching this have a winter theme on your layout? I'm having trouble creating realistic snow for my mountaintop. Doug, do you have anything to say for that?

Well, you know, people have done different things. I mean, there's one thing, the people would actually take like say plaster of Paris and then wet the surface a little bit, and then take like a big kitchen strainer, you know, and then kind of sift it out, 'cause you don't want the plaster to get wet. Right. And you know, smooth it out, but you just want to just put the texture on there. So that's one way.

People used a spray snow that you buy for your Christmas tree. Oh, right. You know, you can just spray down there. So yeah, whatever you do, it tends to get a little dusty after a while, and you'd have to kind of redo it generally, but to keep the really crisp white look, but you know, that's, you know, any kind of powdered plaster probably, or I dunno what? Any white powder basically would work.

Give it a try. See how it looks. All right, we have some time for a few more questions. We're getting to the end of what we have so far. So if you have any more, keep them coming.

We do have a quick comment. Jason is saying It's a Small World at Disney uses forced perspective, so that's one of the specific places that you were talking about. Oh yeah. In Disney, the It's a Small World. When you're riding that ride, I remember that too.

Forced perspective, it looks gigantic, but it's not that big. Disney was all about theatrics. I mean, the whole place is about theatrics, so for sure, yeah. Absolutely. We got a cute few more questions coming in now.

This one's from a guest. Do you have any suggestions for adding clouds to your layout? Well, painting clouds on a backdrop? It doesn't say anything specifically, so maybe either way? You know, there are some pretty nice photo backdrops you can buy with really good looking clouds nowadays.

You know, and I would just kind of, the old fashioned guy, where, you know, I would actually use a sponge, and paint the- Little dab strokes, yeah. I would use not only white or light shades of gray, but then there was a color they call iridescent white, and I think that's a little different name nowadays over at Michael's, but it has a little sort of like a reflective or phosphorescent kind of look to it, you know, whereas the clouds sort of glow, so it looks like the light is hitting them, but maybe it's a little silver. I don't know if they put a little silver in the white or whatever it is, but anyway, it kind of makes the clouds glow. A little bit of that shimmer, huh? So I'm not, you know, I'm not a master at doing clouds, but I, you know, I can get, kinda fake my way through it.

That's right. All right, we've got another guest asking you a question. This is from Irv. It's what products should I use to make an HO scale gravel road? Ah, well, there's, you know, there's a lot of commercial stuff out there, but you know, we've talked before about natural products, and hey, what's better than something you can get for free.

The best price. And so we talked about this before in the show, where, you know, every time I go, whenever I'm out rail fanning or do anything like that, traveling around, If I see some gravel that looks pretty cool, I'll just, you know, Pick some up. we would buy Gatorades when we were traveling with the wide, you know, the wide mouth. Wide mouthed bottle. Yes!

And drink the Gatorade and then just put gravel in them. Of course, they think you're kind of weird on the, at the airport when you're coming back with the bottle. They might give you some looks on that. But if you're driving, you know, but so then we'd bring all these different colors and types of gravel back, and then sift them. Yeah.

And really that's what I would do. I would use, find some gravel you like, and we went to a baseball diamond one time and they had some really nice kind of more reddish gravel. I don't know what they were using, but we snuck over there and stole some of their gravel off of their baseball diamond. But anyhow, or go to a lake, where like lake, when we go up to Upper Michigan, Lake Michigan, that sand is so, it's just pulverized by the lake. Yeah, very smooth.

Very fine sand. And so, yeah, I just look around, and find it, and glue that down. And I like doing it in layers again. And you can do like wheel ruts that are like darker than the rest of it. And you can, you can color that in and do it with layers, and you're going to get a really nice gravel road that way.

Just bring some empty containers with you wherever you're going. Get some Gatorade. All right, next question is from Ford. And it is what is the strongest plaster on the market? Well, again, it's well for a model railroading we'll use Hydrocal.

Now there might be stronger plaster, you know. People that do molds for like, oh, sculpture and that kind of stuff. I mean, there's all, there's a million kinds of plaster, but we always bought what was called Hydrocal, and that was very strong and very thin layers. Right. But then later now, lately people have been using this medical gauze.

Oh, right. And I don't know what, what kind of plaster is in there, but it's, you know, between the gauze and then the plaster that's in there, and it's easy to use because it already has the plaster. You can cut the gauze to the shape you want, and lay it down, and boy, that stuff is hard. And Woodland Scenic sells their own variety, their own brand name of that in rolls. Or you can just go to a medical supply place and buy medical gauze.

And then the handy thing is like, say you break your arm at home. You're set. You got your own gauze. You can fix it yourself. Two uses.

So there you go. Two birds with one stone. I like it. Ooh, this is good. This might be the color you were talking about.

James is wondering if you were talking about titanium white when you were talking about the clouds? Might that be the new name? I know titanium white, but no, it used to be called the iridescent white and I wish I could think of the current name, but it's actually, it has some kind of glow stuff in it. Titanium white is white, white, white, but this is something that actually has sort of a glow component to it, so when light hits it, it almost is like is glowing a little bit. Gets a little reflection back.

You could ask them had Michael's. I'm sure that if you're looking for iridescent white, what's the new name for it? That will lead you the right way to the right place. Maybe the iridescent white was just a brand name? Maybe.

You know, and then somebody else has the same thing in a different name. All right, let's move to Glen's question. Can you use coffee grounds for mulch in flower bed scenery? Do you think they would rot eventually? Well, you know, people used to use it.

That was, you know, going back like say the World War II era when people were making boxcars out of flattened-out soup cans. I mean, they'd use anything that would work and old coffee grounds, they'd dry them out. And I know people used them, but of course, you know, once they're glued down, they're sort of, There. you know, they're preserved. You know, so it's probably fine, and you glue them down with matte medium, of course.

And then matte medium dries a little bit flexible, so they'll, if you use white glue, it dries hard. And if there's any movement in your layout or expansion and contraction, that white glue can crack, Crack a little bit. Where matte medium will be a little bit flexible and it should preserve the coffee grounds, I would think. Now I wouldn't try to reuse them for coffee afterwards. No, but if you drink coffee like I do, you probably have plenty of coffee grounds to play with.

So give it a try. The price is right. Exactly, James is asking: I have a set of Bombardier. Did I say that correctly? Bombardier, yeah.

Bombardier commuter cars and they roll very poorly. Do you know any way to make them roll more freely? As I remember on those cars, and this course I'm in S scale now, but I'm just messing around with HO. As I remember, there was something kind of funny about those cars, where those, the cast on brake shoes would rub on the wheels. And so, yeah, figure out what's causing it, but I think what we ended up doing was bending those brake shoes very carefully.

If you do it too much in my break them off. Right. But you can bend them very carefully, just a tiny bit, so they're not rubbing on the wheel. You know, the brake shoes are actually, you know, They hug the, yeah. Like a car brake shoe.

They go on the wheel like this, but somehow in the manufacturing process, they would get a little bit off, and so either bend or I suppose you could actually take a real sharp, like an X-Acto knife, and shave a little bit off of that brake shoe too, so it's not rubbing on the wheel. Well, hopefully that will help. Yup. Jason just put in- It's like running your car with the brakes on, you know? Jason says that he just stole some red gravel from the local baseball field last week.

Oh, there we go. So all that free. Oh yes. I don't think they'll miss it, a little jar. What the heck.

No, they'll barely even know that it's gone. We got a few last questions coming in. This is probably last call for questions here in the next minute or so. We'll get through these last few. Dump them into the chat box if you've got any last minute questions.

John's got one. What kind of tools do you use for kit bashing, scratch building, and repairs? Oh, well I got a whole box full of stuff. I mean, there again, it depends what you're doing, but you know for sure an X-Acto knife and some various kinds of blades. I mean, I really like the big number five size handle with the chisel blade.

You know, and the smaller handle with the number 11, their pointed blade. That's like the most common blade there is. Everybody knows that one, but I also like the bigger handle with the chisel blade, 'cause sometimes you want to cut something off in kind of a straight line. You know, if you use a chisel blade for that, if you're scraping things up, and I have dental tools. Oh, wow.

Those little things, the little pointer things. Everybody's favorite. Yeah, those things. And I actually have a, it's a sharpening block and I bought us, this was at Home Depot. I think I bought them.

There's like three different sizes of sharpening blocks. And not only do I use it for sharpening my X-Acto blades, when I'm working I'll just rub it on the sanuola, and the stone, like sharpening stone, is what I'm trying to say. You can also use the sharpening stone as just a straight edge, almost like a file. Oh, great. You know, you can rub your whatever you're doing on a file and just clean it up and get a really nice straight edge.

And so I've got a whole box full of tools there. Little screwdrivers, needle, miniature needle noses, miniature, the nippers, side cutters, and you name it. Just keep it all, all the tools that have got, collecting them. You can never have too many modeling tools. You gotta have the right one for the right job.

All right, Lee is asking have you ever tried weathering with chalk sticks? Yes, I have. There's a lot of different kinds of chalk out there. That the chalk sticks are not quite the same as, at least if you buy it from an art store, they're not quite the same as you'll buy from the model railroad people who sell the chalks. And the model railroad chalks have a little bit of like a powdered glue in them, so when you rub the weathering onto the car, it activates the glue.

And then it stays. Must be that under the friction, maybe? Maybe. Activate a little heat or whatever it is. Anyway, it activates the glue and it sticks better.

If you buy the kind of the regular art chalk, then you can use it, but then you need to put an over spray, like a clear, To seal it in a little bit. flat over-spray over it to seal the chalk onto the car. So yeah, I love chalks. They're, for weathering, they're fantastic. Just take that little extra step if you need it.

All right. Oscar has a question. You mentioned airbrushing earlier. Which airbrush set would you suggest for a novice painter? Well, I use a Paasche, and I'll guess what is it?

A model E or so? I forget the model number of it, but just to kind of the standard Paasche. It's probably about a $50 airbrush. It's an external mix, uses a pickup that goes through the nozzle of the airbrush, and so there's very little paint inside the airbrush, so it's easy to clean, Right. is what I'm trying to say.

And depending on what I'm using, like I use, if I use the acrylic paints, I'm actually thinning them with the alcohol or that kind of thing, rather than water, 'cause water just is too kinda unfriendly with the paint, and wants to bead up and all that. So then you always make sure you clean out your airbrush when you're done. I mean, I actually stick the tip of my airbrush in some jar of alcohol after I'm done, and just bubble it out and let the alcohol run through it, so it's nice and clean. And if you leave your airbrush nice and clean when you're you're done with your work, it'll really be dependable for years. Absolutely.

Well, that brings us to the end of questions that we've gotten. I would like to just put a little reminder in about the Model Railroad Community gallery. Remember to submit your photos. You may get them featured on the next Track Talk Live. Follow us on our social media.

Doug, do you have anything else to add? Well, what I wanted to say was we got a lot of really good comments about that little how-to thing I did last time, which was draws and all that. And I'm sorry, I just was so busy this last few weeks. I haven't had any time to do anything, but we'll, I promise to do more of those little how-to things. Oh, that would be great.

And we'll try to do it with like things you can find at home and relatively inexpensive things. Oh, looking forward to it. So let's look forward to that for the next session. Oh, I did want to mention I'm doing two things this coming month toward the end of October. If anybody is heading that way, I'm going to the Chicagoland RPM in Lisle, Illinois, suburb of Chicago.

That's 25th, around there. You can look it up online toward the end of October. And then at the same time, I'm going to the Illinois Railway Museum up in Union, Illinois, which is nearby. I haven't been there for a couple of years. They say it is the largest railroad museum in the country.

They have got so much stuff in there. It's unbelievable. You can stay there for days looking at things. So if anybody's traveling that way, let me know. I'd like to meet up with you in person.

Oh, that sounds great. Well, until then. Yeah! Come back the next time for some Track Talk Live. I'm Leah.

This is Doug, Mr. Clickity, signing off. Thank you.