The What's Neat Show is sponsored by Lombard Hobbies, your value hobby shop for over 40 years of modelers helping modelers. Big inventory, value pricing, fast shipping, and great service. And by Bachman Trains. Now that's the way to run a railroad. Check out their website at bachmentrains.com. And by Roka prototype models. We make it real. Check out their website at www.rokamodels.com. And thank you for helping us support the best hobby in the world. This is What's Neat for January 2023. I'm your host Ken Patterson. And this month we've got a good show in that we build a switch yard diorama primarily designed for outdoor photography with regular trackage in code 70 on one half and a cement apron on the other in order to load freight cars and share auto racks and other types of railroad equipment that you would see photographed on a tarmac of cement. In this video we also share with these brand new models from Roka prototype models. These are Safe Pack auto racks and they're absolutely amazing models. Also this month Larry Harrington from Bachman Industries shared with us a lot of the new products that they're coming out with for this new year including those amazing dash nine locomotives in 129 scale. They're absolutely beautiful. Also this month be sure to check out if you haven't already seen it the What's Neat This Week video podcast that we shoot every Saturday night down here in the studio with our crew of podcasters plus special guests a lot of new announcements and new products every week on What's Neat This Week and model rariting on YouTube. So with that let's continue on with the rest of this January 2023 What's Neat. Hello this is Michael Gross and you're watching What's Neat with Ken Patterson. For this segment of What's Neat we're gonna build a photographic diorama for shooting models outside. This is one that I can use over and over for a multitude of models. Now I presently have a diorama that I had built some time back for atherin trains. I wanna guess this diorama is good better than six or seven years old and this was part of a double piece diorama. It used to be eight feet long and it was a scene that we built to replicate an exact switch yard. Well as time has gone by this has been stored out in my garage over the years and the humidity and the moisture in the air and the drying of the air and the heat and the temperature has slowly caused the ballast and in this case this is ground up walnut shell ballast from Woodland Scenics which is standard what I like to use all the time for scenes and I'll probably use this ballast again or maybe mix some real rock into it or maybe simply use dirt and color the diorama by painting all of the track to give it that look that I want. The diorama itself is just gonna be a base for shooting freight cars which is something that's very important that I have to do from time to time for the podcast show or maybe the occasional advertiser that would like to have their freight cars look amazing in outdoor sunlight. So also another thing that has happened on this diorama over time and it's just simple wear and tear is the track has come loose from some of the spikes on various parts of it on ends just various areas of the diorama are not doing so well when it comes to being in great photographic condition for a diorama. So what I'm gonna do is I've got a piece of foam underneath it. I'm gonna cut it so it's about the same size as this. I like to keep the backside plane so that I can place buildings on it to vary the type of scenes that this switch yard in fact can be used for. I'm gonna use code 70 microengineering track on the diorama. I'm gonna glue everything down with a sealant that is safe on foam but yet dries clear and does not have silicone in it so that the ballast can in fact stick to the track areas as the track is then glued down into place. So with that I'm gonna start working on this project and see if I can get this down as quickly as I can because I've got a photo shoot coming up in three days where I'm gonna need to use the brand new diorama that we're about to build. So let's see how this project turns out. So I'm cutting the diorama so it closely matches the same size as what I'm used to using and working with simply by taking a saw and cutting off the pieces. One thing that I do like to do on these dioramas is I always like to cut off the corner at about a 45 degree angle because what that does is it allows me to get the camera in close from the side because the corner usually blocks the scene and I wanna be able to get the camera in closer to the mainline trackage to get into the scene more intimately to share and show off the model. So what I've got is I've got this simple DeWalt pull saw. These things work really good on foam. I'm simply cutting out this corner with the saw. And then what we're gonna do next is we're gonna seal this foam all the way around on all sides with latex paint so it'll experience any type of foam degradation or foam shrinkage. I don't want the foam getting soft and starting to powder off over a period of years. So we're gonna do that next. So I've painted our diorama all the way around with latex paint. In this case, I'm using flat house paint. It really doesn't matter what type of latex paint you use on foam. It does the same thing. It helps seal the foam. I like to use a dark color. The darker the color, the better because then it doesn't show up through the ballast or the dirt in the event that you miss a spot. It all blends in with nice earth tone colors. So I'm gonna finish painting this and then we'll start establishing where we're gonna lay the track on this diorama. So I'm using micro engineering code 70 weathered rail, the spikes are scale. This track will look very good on film. And I'm laying a bit of a random pattern in that I wanna be able to use each side of this diorama for different types of settings. So I've angled two main lines here that are gonna go off to the sides and I'll be able to shoot great photos from this cut off corner looking this way up the diorama. Depending upon the sun's angle, I can turn this thing around and use it in various ways outside as I shoot it. I've got five tracks lined up assuming that the first two would be main lines and the second and third and fourth track here, fifth track would then be holding tracks for background freight cars during any one given photo shoot. And I've got plenty of flat space here to lay buildings and structures if I wanna break up the scene and add variety to it. So all I'm simply doing now is I'm fitting in my track. This is not track work where we actually need it to operate or run on the layout. This diorama probably will not be wired up and run. It's simply there to do still photography, which I think at this point, it'll work really good for what I've got planned out here. Another important thing to note is when you're using weathered micro-engineering track and you wanna put two sections of it together like I'm doing on this diorama, it's always important that if you use the weathered rail, you wanna take a dremel with a wire brush and in this case, this is a small three-quarter inch, half inch wire brushes. It's quite worn down. And after you pull off the ties and before you put on the rail joiners, what you wanna do is you wanna wire brush off the weathered part of the rail because that part will have difficulty conducting electricity and solder won't stick to it if in fact you're laying your track using this track, micro-engineering, to use on your layout where you actually wanna run a train. But because I don't have to run these trains here on this diorama, I'm simply just putting the track together with end-scale rail joiners. These rail joiners are very small, they're from Atlas, and they look really good and they're not too big. They don't take up too much space and look that obtuse when you're putting together your track work. They work really well on code 83, code 70 and code 55 is what these rail joiners work well on. So that's just another tip as we move along on this project. Another thing I like to do when I'm laying my track and this doesn't matter if it's a layout that I'm gonna run trains on or if it's just a diorama as I'm building here is I like to take a straight edge and I like to take a black Sharpie and I mark where the track placement, its final position will be on the diorama so that after I glue the track down I can then put it back in its approximate location as to where I want the track edge to lay on the diorama. And the black marker helps facilitate that a great deal when you're building a scene whether it's curved or straight trackage, just like that. Now let's talk about gluing down the track. I like to use in the past I've used this Quick Seal Plus from DAP. It dries clear. I've also got white here in fact, which dries white but I like the stuff that dries clear. It goes on white and when it cures it dries clear and it's a good adhesive whereas paint can stick to it. Well I've had a difficult time finding this in the past year at the Home Depot where I generally go to get some stuff and so I've discovered something else today after going through the entire store. I found this clear material also by DAP it's called Dynaflex 230 is what they call it. What I like to do, there's two ways to do this. You can put it onto a piece of foam and use it as your palette for the glue and then I like to take a painter's knife and I'll put the painter's knife in the material and apply it to the diorama and then lay the track into that. Another way that works really well is simply to take a bead of glue, run it up where the track's gonna go and then I'll take the painter's knife and smooth it out and then put the track in the bed of glue, which is what I'm about to do. I've already glued two sections of track down to make sure that everything's working the way it should and let me show you how I do this. This works for a diorama and or for a permanent layout. It's how I always adhere the track to a piece of foam because also this material does not affect or anyway damage and eat the foam. So with that, I'm gonna go ahead and show you how I do this briefly. Mind you, we've drawn our lines with the tracks in to go so I've got a bit of a guide to be able to follow here which makes it simple to do and then I'm gonna run my bead of glue all the way down the diorama where the track's gonna go. Then I'm gonna take my putty knife, my painter's knife and I'm gonna smooth it out to about the width of the trackage itself, just like this. Then I'm gonna lay the track right into the bed of glue and press it in and make sure everything's straight or curved depending upon what you're doing with your track working. In this case, I want it relatively straight on the diorama. You can also put weights on this as it cures to let it weigh down overnight while you're waiting for this to dry and this glue is going on white but again, when it cures, it will dry absolutely clear which is essentially what we want for doing this project and then what I'll probably do is take some Rust-Oleum Coma-Flage Earth Tone Brown paint and paint over the trackage areas just to make sure the rail, the rail jointers and everything is dark the way I want it to be for the final setup of this diorama that we're building. So let me continue on now gluing down the rest of these tracks onto the diorama and let's see what's next as we move along on this project. This is also the time in the project when you wanna glue down those ties that you removed to put in the rail jointers. Now all the spikes have been sanded smooth on these ties so that they'll simply slide into position into the glue and I've got two tracks that I have not completed yet and I'll show you, it's a very simple process of easily just slipping the tie underneath the rail. It's in the glue and it'll set up and it'll close that gap, that unsightly gap and everything will just look, it'll have the continuity that you want it to have just like that. So now we just wanna let all of this dry. Everything's glued into place now and the entire diorama doesn't look that great but when it dries clear and we paint over this and then cover it with ballast it should look absolutely just the way we want it to look for an outdoor photo shoot. So let's continue on with the project. While the glue is drying, I do like to put weights on the diorama just to make sure that none of the track work pops up or nothing moves. I just want everything to be flat and weighted down until all the glue becomes cure and clear and dries. I love it when a plan goes together but overnight while I was looking at the diorama and the track was being glued down and drying overnight under the weights I decided to change this up a little bit. I would like to be able to shoot trains especially auto racks on a surface of cement and apron and so what I've done is I've created this diorama where this whole half side of it is now gonna become a cement apron for loading auto racks or other railroad equipment with forklifts. So what I've done is I've taken a few strips of wood about an eighth of an inch high and I've glued them in the place creating forms of which we will fill the center area here with cement, make it all smooth with water and then take a razor saw and make the flange ways for the wheels in the cement. Now this time I'm using the same type of damp cement that you've seen me use in the past few years. It doesn't come in gallons anymore. Now it comes in quartz. So it'll be a little bit more difficult to work a wide trowel into the quart and what I may do is just scoop it out all on the surface, wet it and then spread it as you've seen me do in videos in the past. So let's see how this part turns out. So now that I've put down some forms and in fact I glued these down with wood glue in the last video you saw me do about two years ago I spiked them down with pins but I think wood glue will work in this case because this is a simple standalone diorama and it's going to look fantastic. Now here's the cement in the quart containers and what I'm going to do is use water and a trowel and start scooping it out on top of this diorama and make it the thickness of just the rail height all the way across the seam. And this should work pretty well. I'm also going to wet the material a little bit in the can, just give me some moisture. I know it looks like a mess now but it will turn out just right when it's finished. So I'm going to stop the recorder and continue to work my way through the diorama and pick this up as we get closer to the end. Now we want to take a 12 inch trowel in this case, wet it, make sure the surface is wet and pull it smooth across the top of the rails and the wooden forms that I've got. Just like this. It gives you a nice smooth cement surface, real nice. And now we just want to let this dry for an entire 24 hour period. So it's been about three hours since I put all the cement in place and I've taken this hacksaw blade and I've been running it while the cement is just starting to set up. I've been running it along the inside of the rails here to clean out the flange way, which works really, really well. I've done this for years on all the sections of tracks so far. I also took an exacto knife and I cut free the wood that we use to create the forms so that I can go ahead and just peel that out as the cement sets up further. And what this will do is this will allow the air to get into the cement on the sides here on the base and help set this up. Now it'll take about 24 hours for this to dry and as you can see, there's a lot of cracks starting to show on the surface and this is completely normal because what we do is we go back over the surface with a small painter's knife and just fill in the cracks, a little bit of water and I'll show you how to do that as we get to that part. But so far we've got a great subsurface now to create a auto rack loading facility and then of course the other side will simply be ballast and dirt and rock and we'll have a diorama that can be shot on either side to give a different type of result for every photograph that I would choose to do. So let's see how this continues on. So I'm using a painter's knife here and I sprayed a little bit of water inside the container of cement that I've got here and what I'm doing is I'm going over just like sparkling you would do on drywall work. I'm going over and I'm covering up some of the various cracks on the scene. Some cracks look really good and they're acceptable but in this case some of the larger ones I actually want to patch them and fill them in now and now everything hasn't completely dried yet it's still drying. There's a good skin on the cement at this point but all I'm doing is taking this putty knife this painter's knife and I'm simply taking the wet cement that I've got and I'm filling in the cracks and drawing the knife smoothing everything. I also use a bottle of water to spray it to help further smooth the cement into all the cracks and the adjacent areas so that the cement feathers out smooth on the edges and when it's all completely dry we'll simply take it and sand it with a sander and make everything smooth. So I'm in day three of building this switch yard project and the cement has dried overnight and it's all very smooth. I use this disk of 80 grit sandpaper and I sanded the entire diorama just to smooth things out after the cracks were repaired because this material does crack on its initial first application and then you go back and you can patch it like we did, like I showed you. I also used a hacksaw blade this cut off hacksaw blade right here and I ran it in the grooves where the real flanges will go so that it makes it very easy to just drop a freight car onto the seam now. Just like that, it's on the track and everything's smooth. Everything's just the way we want it to be for the photos. So now it's time to make the diorama a little bit darker, the cement work and I like to do that using India Ink. And India Ink is simply what it says, Black India Ink, you can get this at the art store. It's a very strong black liquid and I've got a jar of India Ink that I've been using for well over 15 or 20 years and all I do is I add a little bit of alcohol to it and a few more drops of India Ink to it every couple of years and it keeps on going. So I'm gonna do that now and I will show you exactly how that process works as I bring the camera down into position. Here's the jar that I put the India Ink in. I'm gonna use this dropper and I'm simply gonna drop in one eyedropper of India Ink into the bottle. Okay, I'm not using another eyedropper, I'm just gonna pour it in directly. Just a little bit, just like that. Doesn't take much. And then what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna fill the bottle with some fresh alcohol that I just picked up from the drugstore. This is a 71% alcohol. And just pour it in there just like that and shake it up. And that'll give me a nice dark coating of the India Ink which will soak into the cement and give me the effect of darker weathered pavement. As I pull the camera back, I like to use this and this is a brand new fresh two inch paintbrush. And here's how I do this. I wanna even coat on the entire scene. I'm gonna test it here inside and it looks good. So I'm just gonna simply apply this India Ink to the diorama just like this, wetting everything. See how the cracks just are accented just like this. It's looking good. I like the way that looks. And everything is now coated equally and evenly. Gives a nice darker effect. It's gonna look great in outdoor sunlight and that's it. All I do now is let this dry for about an hour and then we'll go to the other side and start ballasting and putting down dirt and finish the other side of this diorama so that it will be ready to shoot tomorrow first afternoon sun. So let's let this dry and we'll continue on with the rest of the scenery on this diorama. So we're almost up to the final step in the process and that is adding dirt. And for this, I'm gonna use real backyard dirt that I had been sifting for years and I've got a back stock of that. I'm gonna use gray ballast fine from Woodland Scenics. I'm also gonna use some light gray ballast to create a road, a gravel road adjacent to the trackage. India Ink is completely dry on this part of the diorama at this point. And so now what I'm gonna do is work on this area right here with our dirt and our ballast. I'm gonna be using artist paint brushes, a fan brush and a very nice smooth round brush for spreading the ballast in between the ties evenly and the dirt on the diorama. So let's continue on with that. When I sift out dirt, I'd like it to be relatively even all around the diorama. So I'm gonna start with the dirt and I like to use an old calendar to shake the dirt smooth onto the scene rather than just pouring the dirt out of the container. And as you'll see, this goes very rapidly. Makes a lot of dust in the room. It's a very good way to do this. I'm putting the dirt next to the cement next to the concrete work so that we'll have a smooth transition just like that. And I'm also gonna put some dirt out on the outside edge here of the trackage. Just like this, nice, smooth, even. Everything lays out just even using the screen to help spread it. That looks real nice. Just like this. Okay, maybe you didn't wanna drop this rock zone. I'll pick those out in the piece of grass. That was my oops moment as we do this live. Now I'm gonna apply the ballast. I also wanna take my fan brush and what I'll do is I'll brush the dirt off of the cement, off of the concrete work smooth just like this. So I have a nice even transition. Any event the vehicle drives off of the concrete work into the gravel dirt area adjacent to the cement work, the concrete work. It's important to get all the final topography of your layers the way you want them to be because once we put down the glue, it's permanent, everything stays the way you made it. Now I'm gonna put down the ballast and I'm gonna dump it right out of the container. I like doing it that way. Taking a nice edge, a nice transition edge between the dirt and the last piece of track here. See that? Now switch yards usually have a multitude of different types of gravel in them and this will be no different. I'll mix up things just a bit and I'll come over it with some paint and weather this yard after all the glue is completely dry and the ballast is dry. And that'll be the final step in our process of building the scene and she'll be ready to photograph tomorrow outdoors. There's no magic to this. Try to make it even. There'll be less brush work. The more even you make it in this stage of application, the less brushing you'll have to do with the paint brush, the smooth things out just right. A gravel road of some type, assuming it's limestone, a different stone that when the railroad brought in with the freight cars for the yard. So I'm applying this lighter coat of limestone which will weather it all together so it all blends and evenly looks sorta okay. For this service access road that I envisioned would be on this side of the yard. And just like that, we take our fan brush and we start brushing it smooth. Between the ties, evenly, gently. This part could take a while. This could take me probably 30 minutes to sit here and brush this all out just right. So what I'll do is I'll stop the camera as I do this portion of brushing things out.  So here we are, one more step almost finished and the whole thing is looking pretty darn nice right now. I'm adding just a small amount of light green and medium green vegetation to the dirt areas on this diorama and a little bit on top of the track edge because you know what, this stuff grows everywhere. It just does in nature. It'll add some depth to the overall scene after the glue dries. I do this on every diorama just a little bit, just like that.  And that pretty much finalizes everything with regards to the diorama. Everything's looking good, the ballast is down, the indiate ink looks good on the concrete work and the yard, all the trackage looks good. So at this point, we almost have a completed scene here, complete with dirt, ballast, the yard trackages, everything looks good, a little bit of weathering with some paint, but the next step now is to take all of this and glue it all down with a couple bottles of Woodland Scenic Scenic Cement, which I'm gonna mix a bottle of it now. Generally what I like to do is put it into one of these sprayers, run it on fine mist, I'll pour two containers of Woodland Scenic Scenic Cement into this bottle and we're gonna wet the whole diorama including the cement work. Because when you wet this concrete work, what the Woodland Scenic Cement does is it seals it. So if I come along and I put a soda on it or a beer or some drink or any kind of liquid gets on it, it won't discolor the cement. In fact, it protects it just as it adheres and seals all of the ballast. So let's continue on with that. Let me mix a bottle and we'll spray it on and this thing will just have to dry and we're almost finished. So I've got my Woodland Scenic Scenic Cement in this bottle and everything has been mixed. All the chunks, I like to take some screen and get sometimes the chunks of glue that's set up at the bottom of the bottle and they'll completely dissolve. I like to screen them out just to make sure that the screen on the spray bottle doesn't get clogged during the process because then we'll have to stop and fix that before we can continue. We wanna have a very fine mist on this as so it doesn't disturb the dirt and the walnut shell ballast. So I'm gonna hold this now up above the diorama and let me see if I can get a good camera position for you to see me do this, such as live video. And I'm gonna hold this up now and spray this onto the scene just like this. I've got a piece of wood, I got a drop cloth at the table and it's okay again if this glue gets all over that cement that's what we want. And if you're gonna spray the cement you gotta do it evenly so you don't get any uneven coloring in the cement. We want everything to have the same continuity of wetness at this point. The ballast, the dirt, the ground foam is gonna get soaked very liberally. I've got two eight ounce bottles in this right now of Woodland Scenic Scenic Cement and we're probably not gonna use all of that. I just have a feeling. You want it to soak in. So if you're an eighth of an inch deep with material you wanna do the best you can. And the reason I use Woodland Scenic Scenic Cement is because it's already got a wetting agent built into it, mixed in, which really lets it soak in to the walnut shell ballast and the dirt nicely. I'm gonna spray this until the diorama looks white and then we'll let it dry overnight, just like that. All the cement has got the Woodland Scenic Cement on it, the glue. The cement work has got the white glue on it.  So I'm just gonna wipe this off with a paper towel briefly. And that's all there is to it. So the Woodland Scenic Scenic Cement has been drying for about four hours. I got a couple little fans on it helping to speed up the process. But I wanna take this Rust-Oleum camouflage paint now and I wanna just go over the scene a little bit just to weather up the trackage on this side of the diorama. So what I wanna do is I'm not using an airbrush, obviously I'm using a can of paint because it works. And I'm just gonna just spray, just to kind of blend the colors and bring it all into a nice weathered, see that? We're gonna write down the center of the tracks really well for weathering a yard area. Just like that. Subtle, just to blend things together a little bit. There's one characteristic of Woodland Scenics ballast that used to drive after trains, crazy. When I had the ballast on the side of the rail where it's not supposed to be. And that's because when we spray on the Woodland Scenics glue, what it does is sometimes the water is beating up along the side of the rail and some of the ballast is attracted up with that. And therefore the ballast is then glued to the side of the rail. As I can share with you this freight car on the new section we just built, listen to this. What that is is ballast buildup on the inside. And there's no easier way to do it than simply take your fingernail or your thumbnail and run it up along the side of the rail on the inside and the outside. And that'll remove any of the Walnut Shell ballast or if you use rocks, the same differentiation whereas it will be cleaned right off. It's as simple as that. But if you don't do it and you go outside and take photographs of your models, here we are with ballast stuck to the side of the rail which is not at all, prototypically correct at all. It's not the way things work. So other than that, that's just another quick tip as the scene is now drying and I'm starting to take out some models which we'll be shooting over the next three days on this brand new scene that we just built. So after four days of building this beautiful diorama, today I finally have taken it outside and doing a photo shoot with it. I'm shooting some beautiful SafePak auto racks from ROKA prototype models and these models are absolutely beautiful. The diorama itself worked out really well in that I've got the squid yard on one side as planned to shoot photos. And then on the other side, I've got the cement apron in which for some of the photographs, I used a ramp that Mike Buddy had built to help illustrate and show off these freight cars. The models themselves are absolutely amazing. You can check these models out on a What's Neat show that ran in the middle of December when these models were announced and shared with the public for the very first time. The diorama, again, is working very well. The cement apron in the background is set up so I could actually put buildings on it that would complement this yard trackage area right here. It'll reverse the diorama and shoot the cement apron areas and I can still put buildings on top of this track work here if I still wanted to have a different type of background. Beautiful day to be doing a shoot with this brand new diorama and all of the techniques and tricks that we use to build this could be used on a permanent home layout and or a diorama for you to shoot outdoor photos with. And so with that, that is this segment on diorama construction for this January's What's Neat. For this special segment of What's Neat for January 2023, I've got Larry Harrington all the way from beautiful Philadelphia, Pennsylvania from Bachman Industries here to tell us about some amazing new products. Is that right? Yeah, so some stuff we talked about before but it's still relevant and it's coming to your door really soon. So hope you had a really good holiday, Ken. I did. It was awesome. Yeah, so it's getting really cold now so we'll talk about a few things. First off, the Dash 9's large scale should be getting to you pretty soon. They should have left the water as we taped. We got the production samples flown in. Beautiful. Here's one, I barely can get it on screen. I brought two samples with me today because they're so big I could barely fit them in the room with me. So these things weigh 11 pounds each. They have four motors in them. They pull a ton and I brought the Santa Fe. I'll sit that down here and I got the, there's a couple of detail parts that I didn't put on because these are fresh out of the box like the antennas and stuff. But I just, so they're not missing those things that there's a view of the CSX front on there. Absolutely gorgeous. A lot of detail, a lot of extra parts on the top too. You try to get this in the screen here. It's hard so. Yes, I need to make sure the garden railroad is constantly in perfect repair so that I can videotape those things running. So there's some neat features about this. The center pops off on the top of the roof here. When you get, you have a lot of options that you can hold it up just well, there you go, perfect. There you go. There's a control panel in there and you can turn on lights, smoke, battery powered polarity and a number of things there. So it's easy to get to, you don't have to take your whole locomotive apart. You just basically snap the roof back on when you're done. So it just pops right back on. Nice. So that's coming to you soon. I know we've said that a couple of times, but good things take time to do so. No, that's an awesome thing. Thank you for sharing that. So one thing, it does come with an adapter that shows, that plugs in, you can hook up just about any type of command system that you have. So we're all excited about this. This is our first one to 29th diesel locomotive and we have really good response so far. So we can't wait to get them out to the dealers and consumers and see them on the garden railways. Every model railroaders should have one of those if nothing else on their mantle. Right, exactly. It's a beautiful piece. It's a beautiful piece, exactly.  So what is there to do besides model railroading? So I just wanted to remind everybody of a lot of the products that we have to expand upon your model railroad. First of all, you wanna make your model railroad bigger. You need track. We have Easy Track and HO actually in three different styles. This is our nickel silver track. This is if you have a starter set. This is our steel alloy. This is all black and it will match up. All these will connect together. So it doesn't matter as far as interconnectivity but just to match the style that you have. We're just shipping, we just shipped in December the city sprinter set. And this was the first set that came with our concrete tie track. Nice. So we have extra track that you can add onto that set as well. So I don't know how many, I didn't look up how many SKUs that we have but our track selection is tremendous. So we also came out last year with bridges. These are the Easy Track bridges that you can just plug right in. They have the connectors and snaps right into your Easy Track. Wow. We did them in I believe five different road names or decorations. So and that keeps expanding. And we also announced that in end scale at NMRA. So it's just been a very popular item. We do have an end scale. We have upside down here. We got end scale track. Very nice. Again, a number of SKUs. We have turnouts. We have, in HO we have DCC equipped turnouts but we also have a DCC control box which I didn't bring with me today that has, that you can convert basically your analog electrically operated tracks into a DCC turnout. So it just plugs in. If you have the original control box on your control panel, you just basically unplug the wires and plug the new one in to the exact same footprint. And it's easy to program. It takes about 30 seconds to program a DCC switch. And then of course, once you get the track down you're gonna need to do some landscaping. So we have trees in numerous sizes. This is one of our smaller trees. This is a two inch, the two and a quarter inch walnut tree. And it's listed as end scale, but I'd like to say that trees have no scale. This is one of our larger trees. This is listed under O scale as an eight to 10 inch conifer tree. But again, trees growing all sizes, the small ones, if you have a larger layout you can use your end scale for your shrubbery. Trees that around the houses and your layout are urban scenes where the trees line the streets and stuff like that. So there is no scale. You just use what you need for your application. And we have a large variety of trees to choose from. Of course, we have some figures as well. Showing some HO, we have them in HO and HO and O scale and a few in end, but not many. And then here is another example. These are great for passenger cars. They're in there so they fit perfectly in the seeds. And here's another set that we have there. So that's just three examples. We have a good number of examples of things to use for your layout. Also, we have some detailed structures. These are resin structures. Those are beautiful. Yeah, this comes with some signage that you can modify and put on your name or your town on there. And well, I can't forget this. This is what started it all for us and trains was our plastic go line. We just celebrated our 75th anniversary and we have numerous structures in HO and O scale. Back, this started to believe in 1946 or so. So it's been around for a good long time. So this is, like I said, this is a time, it's great time of the year to concentrate on your layout. You don't have any hard work to do. You may have to shovel snow every once in a while.  So you might as well have a good time with it. That's very true. And all the viewers can see the people, the Scenescape line of trees, the Easy Track line and all of the products that you described at your website, is that correct? That's correct, yes. And that website is? If you want to go right to the store, it's shop.bachmentrains.com or you can just go to bachmentrains.com on our website and go and search through the menus. That's very true. You can also go to, I didn't mention, but you also may want to be tuning up your locomotives and things and you need parts. We have a good selection of parts from our website as well. So you can get what you need. If it's in stock, you can, if it's not shown in stock, you can always give our service department a call or email and they will be happy to assist you. There you go. And with regards to after you've gone through the Bachman website and you find out what you want, the show sponsor, Lombard Hobbies in Lombard, Illinois, you can find your products there and they're ship them out right away as soon as you place your order. Well, that's all I have for today. I just want everybody to have a good time. I hope they survive the winter and we can see you at a show soon. Well, we should be doing the Springfield Show in Massachusetts and the Amherst Modelers Society. That's a great show every year. We see all the serious modelers there. They're always excited to come to our booth and check out all the new things we have to show. So looking forward to seeing our friends in Massachusetts soon. That's a fantastic show. Larry, thank you so much for presenting these wonderful new products for this January What's Neat and we just always look forward to what it is you've got to share. Thanks, we should be having some new test shots coming up in the near future of some of the new projects we announced at NRA and we will be happy to bring them on the show as well. Awesome. Well, thank you so much, Larry and that is the segment for What's Neat. All of the products seen on this episode of What's Neat are available from Lombard Hobbies in Lombard, Illinois or order online at LombardHobbies.com. Bachman Trains. Now that's the way to run a railroad. Check out their website at BachmanTrains.com and buy ROCA prototype models. We make it real. Check out their website at www.rocamodels.com.


I wanted to talk to you about Christina lay cannabis. I think that now is a really good time to position yourself a Christina lay cannabis I've actually just shown you here. Pretty much how it started started around 40 cents, and you can see here that is trended up from around 40 cents, all the way to a high of a dollar 10 dollar 10. And then, since then, it's really started to trend down. It's been trending down right until it hit the low low of 66 cents. And since it got to 66 cents, it's started to bounce back up found a floor there, and it's starting to climb back up. Now the interesting thing about Christina lay cannabis and I think this chart is extremely bullish by the way. Typically stocks will go up retrace 50%, which is kind of like what it did here went from a dollar 10 to 66 cents is almost 50% retrace. And now it's starting to climb back up where I found a floor is starting to build steam. I don't see why the stock went down. And when I look at the indicators is extremely bullish for me. Right now you can see that the RSI is sitting at around 44. We're moving off the bottom of 30 which is screaming by on RSI 30 or under is the buy zone. We teach all of this at the trading club, rich picks daily calm if you'd like to learn how to become a better trader, and you'd like to learn how to win in these markets, you can join the club, and you can become a member and our members are having enormous success and this is what I'm really looking for see this how the MACD was really high up, and then it came down went up and came down and down again so you can literally see the MACD is the lowest this isn't a buy zone for me so this is clearly representing a buy zone for me, you can see how the MACD is about to cross. And because it's low I believe it's going to cross up. So the next move up here for the MACD would be to cross up which would be a very bullish indicator. And in my opinion what we're going to see here is we're going to see Christina lay cannabis go right back to a dollar and for anyone that wants to get a quick nice little return on Christina lay cannabis. I think you're going to see go right back to a dollar there's no reason for this stock not to be a dollars a tight float stock.  That's right in Canada. So I want to show you the US symbol. There's also a German symbol. So I really like the fact that you can buy the stock in all major markets, Canada, the United States and Germany. Those are the three major markets where our members are investing. And want to give a shout out to all the rich TV live club members love you guys without you guys know this is possible. And we are literally changing the world, one pick at a time, one investor at a time, and our only goal at the club is to help you with. So if you're learning how to trade or you're a good trader and you want to get better. Love to have you be a part of the club we're looking for the sharpest smartest minds on the planet. And we're looking for people that want to help us find more winners really undiscovered gems. I believe we've done it better than anyone else on the planet and we're going to continue to in fact not only do we talk about them we interview the CEOs. We go to their facilities, and we want to continue to do even more for you the people at home, so that you guys can win in this global pandemic it's crazy time. People are struggling people are losing jobs. It's a tough time for everyone for mental health mental illness. And what we want to do a rich TV live and what why we created rich picks daily, we want to create a place where people can all go together, have fun and make money. And it's a crazy time in the world, but if we can find a way to have fun and make money, then you know what it's going to make our time a little better. The news that really caught my attention caught my imagination for Christina lay cannabis is the news with which just enormous news that they become the exclusive developer and distributor of tat lifestyle and wellness. Here's the news right here. Christina lay cannabis to become exclusive developer and distributor of tat and beyond tobacco trademark in Canada. Christina lay cannabis CLC in Canada CLC FF in America CLB in Frankfurt Germany is pleased to announce it has entered into a minimum mechanism of understanding mo you with tat lifestyle and wellness symbol TAT in Canada to be AF in America to TP to in Frankfurt Germany, which was dated on February 24. So for some reason, after this news the stock went down. I think the stock should have gone down. I think the stock should still go up. In my opinion, I don't see any reason why the stock goes down other than the fact that market makers are giving investors an opportunity to get back in. Or if you didn't get in the first time now you can. So, in which CLC is to develop and distribute tat nicotine free and tobacco free and alternative to tobacco cigarettes for the Canadian market. You grants CLC exclusive rights to develop and distribute tat in Canada for a two year renewable term this is huge for Christina lay cannabis enormous and provides for budget schedules and contributions to both parties of both parties for each stage of product development to be agreed upon by way of written agreements to set out specific stipulations for each stage after tat was first announced in mid 2020 considerable interest was received from legal age Canadian smokers who appear to be drawn to the properties of tat as a tobacco free and nicotine product as well as a low price point compared to tobacco cigarettes $399 for tat in Ohio versus approximately $7 for Marlboro, the base material of tat is known as beyond tobacco a proprietary hemp formulation which undergoes a 14 step process to taste smell and smoke similarly to actual tobacco. Canadian law generally requires hemp products this is the reason why tat partnered with CLC. Listen carefully is Canadian as Canadian law generally requires hemp products and derivatives to be produced distributed and sold through entities licensed by Health Canada. CLC status as a licensed producer under the cannabis act can enable tat to be produced and sold in the Canadian market with a tobacco industry is valued at $19.1 billion. Big, big, big news, huge news for tat lifestyle and wellness and for Christina Lake. enormous news. The CLC is inaugural harvest in 2020 yielded 32,500 kgs 71,650 pounds of sungrown cannabis, which is primarily being extracted to produce winter dyes cannabis oils and distillates for the Canadian market. Although else CLC does not presently cultivate hemp, which would be used to produce beyond tobacco trademark for the manufacture of tat. CLC has sourced multiple local growers who can supply high quality toxin free hemp biomass, which is suited to the ideal composition of beyond tobacco. Brilliant. The base material of tat products as tat continues its rollout in the United States CLC believes it could capitalize upon this momentum to strategically place tat in authorized online retail and sales channels across Canada to capture the interest of legal age smokers who might desire a nicotine free free alternative to tobacco cigarettes. This is epic. Nico Dehan chief operating officer master grower and a director of the company commented working with tat is a wonderful opportunity for us to branch out into the commercialization side of the cannabis and hemp industry. The partner of a third party firm, the Canadian environment for cannabis and hemp can be tricky to navigate, which creates barriers for players from outside of Canada when it comes to entering the market here. We believe that has created a novel product formulation, which has clearly resonated well with smokers age 21 plus in the United States between our ability to develop and produce tat and it's beyond tobacco based material for the Canadian market, as well as to distribute tat through authorized sales channels. I believe we can unlock a lot of value for both CLC and tat as they work towards expanding into a new country for the first time. Huge, huge, huge, huge, huge, huge news about Christina late cannabis corp Christina late cannabis corp is a licensed producer of cannabis under the cannabis act. It has secured a standard cultivation license and corresponding processing sales amendment from health Canada March 2020 and August 2020 respectively, as well as a research and develop license early 2020. The facility consists of a 32 acre property, which includes over 950,000 square feet of outdoor grow space offices propagation and drying rooms research facilities and a facility dedicated to processing and extraction. CLC also owns a 99 acre plot of land adjoining its principal 32 acre site, which enables the company to grow at a much larger scale. CLC cultivates cannabis using strain specifically developed for outdoor cultivation, and it's inaugural harvest year produced 32,500 kg 71,650 pounds on its existing facility before developing an adjacent 99 acre expansion property. An adjacent expansion will ultimately bring CLC's annual cultivation footprint to over 4.35 million square feet, which could enable at least 150,000 kgs 330,693 pounds of low cost, high quality, sun grown cannabis to be produced annually by the company. I thought this news was just epic huge huge huge news, and I'm very excited to see what's going to happen next for Christina lay cannabis I think that this retrace is buying opportunity. Now remember rich TV live is strictly for education entertainment purposes, always do your due diligence always do your research before you invest in anything that we talked about here in which to be live always invest in the best. And you deserve the best. I think that Christina lay cannabis has a chance to be absolutely one of the best cannabis plays out there. And now that they've partnered with TAT that's a game changer. Take a look at TAT. I mean it's been one of the biggest players for us over the last year it's been just an incredible winner for our community. Congratulations to all members on this company that's not even a year old started at 41 cents and today trades at $4 and 52 cents, a 10 bagger up over 1000% for members. Congratulations to all members on TAT lifestyle wellness. So in my opinion, this partnership now with Christina Lake is just enormous for Christina Lake, and this bodes extremely well for investors of both TAT and Christina Lake, and you can see TAT has never really done anything other than succeed. It's been an enormous winner. Congratulations to investors all over the world for TAT lifestyle and wellness, and the fact that they're partnering with CLC exclusively tells me that Christina Lake cannabis is next. Let me know what you guys think do you agree with this, consult your financial advisor chances are if you consult your financial advisor your financial advisor after they do the due diligence is going to say where'd you get this pick. And you're going to say from my boy rich and he's going to say, or she's going to say, that's a great pick. I hear it every day. Thank you guys for watching if you're not winning you're not watching we bring in the winners and we bring them to first. We love to identify undervalued underappreciated under exposed opportunities before anyone else on the planet. That is our modus operandi comment on the video what do you think do you agree do you disagree do you love Christina Lake cannabis do you own Christina Lake cannabis. If not, the price might be right let me know what you think you're a boy rich and rich to be live and I'm out peace. Could be another smoke show.


Finally, we caught a decent runner in the morning. It was right as we were finishing up the audio commentary, the final 15 minutes, really at least here. So it was a tough first 30 minutes hour prior to this trade. I need to let you know that it was really rugged and lots of break evens for myself. If you were able to get in and out for like, you know, 20, 25 cents a pop on a trade or two, then that's perfect. That's great cushion money.  Not everyone's making the same money each and every day, folks. And I feel like all of us realize that, but that also includes old Josh here. So it's not every day where I'm killing it out there. Not every day am I hitting it big, you know, I'm going to take what the market will give me.  And then finally the street came along and obviously went our way. Now that question is, why did it work out our way? What led to it to make an easier breakout here? Easy to say it moved up. Well, let's go over this trade from head to toe. Now, if you really want to know the best entry, you could just say, okay, well, when it fell down to $9, it broke under and over, under and over, right? That's easy to say. There wasn't really a whole lot out there, you know, when the market had opened up. Now if you're looking here, this could be a more apropos level to look at. It's really from the CBP column and it appears to be at nine. So this is actually sticking out as sharply as it does here from the pre-market hours. It popped right before 9.30. So perhaps on the pullback, it fell under and over. All right. That worked out. I didn't take the trade from there though. I didn't have levels prepped up on this trade. Well, hey, in that case, then maybe you could look at the opening bell print right here at 9.45, 211, 212,000 share black fill that came in right at the market open. Let me ask us here, Yehuda and Scott and Kent and Larry and all of our students here, namely all of our gold students above perhaps in my essay, my apologies if you're not a gold student yet, but what do we nickname green as? What's the nickname that we give for green? Buy. Right. Perfect. Says Eric, Larry, Bell, Scott. Perfect. So with that said, you'd like to think with as much buying as you had here and for all these nips over the level and tests of that level that the more buying that we see off of this price that we should get that larger pot, that larger reactionary move on hindsight, not only did it break over the opening bell print, but it flipped that damn thing into support perfectly. So actually you could have had the chance to jump in on the breakout over the opening bell print. And then also his support once it broke under and over, under and over. I didn't take the trade from there. That's easy. That's all easy to say in hindsight, but I'm telling you, just as I review a trade myself, whether it's something I took or something I didn't take, well, it gives us the chance to go back and realize, well, why did this exactly make the move that it made? Well, it made the better move here at 10 o'clock and after because it already teased the breakout above this price earlier in the morning. We already saw a buying interest from here. We already see a ton of buying. So the more buying that we have, something's got to give. Now again, that's easy to say in hindsight, I didn't take this trade from here. What I did was I ended up focusing more on the breakout. It was more the test of support actually from here. So I saw this begin to push up. I missed it from the initial run. All right, let's figure something out here. Let's just ask us really briefly here. What's our big resistance? Scott Bell, Larry, Eric and all of a sudden in chat. What's our big resistance that we have on this trade? Great to have Patrick joining us here on YouTube. Great to see Patrick G and we got Irving, one of our gold students actually should be inside our trading room. Irving, just join our trading room right there. You get the full service right there as well. But yeah, you don't need to be in both the trading room and YouTube. It's the same deal. All right, so for all of our students inside our room, there we go like Alan and Rhonda. There we go, 10. You see the dark beet red line right here? So that's clearly an order out there. Is that support? Is that resistance? Well, the white squiggly line here is the stock. It's the price of the stock going up and down. Well, if this beet red line is above, where the stock is trading at, that's going to be resistance. So that's clearly a big level because not only is it a darker red line, but it's representing like 89,000 shares. That's a ton. For comparison, there is like a smaller one here at 975. And that was at, well, 975 the price, but it's for about like 39,000 shares. Now, if you're on YouTube, you're not going to be able to capture this one here. But inside our live trading room at 10.11 in the morning, I wrote this comment to you at 10.11. I wrote this chat to you on the top right. You should see it. I'll even repop it up for you in a moment. So it shows again. I wrote to you at 10.11 in the morning, said Lunar needs to hold above 975 area now. Well, why did I write that at 10.11 in the morning? Because it broke over this resistance line here. Oops, sorry, sorry, sorry, sorry. It's because it broke over this resistance line here. It not only broke above 75, but it broke over 10. It started to move off that too. All right, well, let me just ask us here, really simple. I went over this with Manny on our coaching call just before, so for all of us here now, just regardless of the price, just in terms of simple support resistance. When a stock breaks above resistance and it runs right from it, we would like to think that the first time that it tests that price on the way back down, the first time, not necessarily the second, third, fourth, but the first test, what should we expect to say? The best test, right? Mark says support. So once it breaks above resistance, even here, I was saying, okay, well, let's see what happens. Hell, this might keep popping. It might get halted on the way up. If that were to be the case, then I wouldn't have been in the trade, right? I'm not chasing this thing that much. This was already running from like $9 at first. So I felt a little iffy, but by the time this broke over 10, I'm saying, okay, well, if it can come down to 9.75, go under then over, then I think that there could be at least an entry there. And that's exactly what happened. I'm a cyber group member today. Just click the link below and receive all these amazing products and a world of knowledge for just $9. Do it today.


Sup you guys How are we? What is going on and welcome back to another video I? Think the title says it all for this one.  No kidding And I'm gonna try and sum it up for you before I prepare my dinner up here At my car park up on coronet peak which is Officially my favorite spot That I've been to so far. So look I'm gonna Have a wee seat and talk to you all Okay So I'm sitting here by myself There's no birds No cicadas Nothing No noise, that's why I absolutely have fell in love with it And this is what I get to see every day. So, you know as I was driving up here today something hit me and it's it's It's why being up here on my own and looking out over basically what looks like a kingdom Has affected me so much, especially this morning It snowed last night if you've seen my previous video I woke up this morning with my band completely covered in snow. I couldn't see a thing. It was a whiteout I got outside this whole area This whole area the whole entire landscape was white. It was Absolutely incredible epic. I mean I've seen snow before but I haven't certainly haven't woken up In my van alone because Tim's gone now You know in the snow like it was just it was absolutely incredible It was almost like God was was telling me something it was like it was like he was welcoming me to The real world, you know what life's about the small things experiences memories So we started with that But what I was gonna say before is what I thought about when I was coming up the hill before is the movie Aladdin Okay, Aladdin came out when I was like five. I watched it with my sister Probably about 300 to 400 times. I know every single word in the original Aladdin movie. We're not talking about the new one with Will Smith We're talking about the old one with Robin Williams rest in peace. Okay We can was we're talking about the classic and Aladdin is homeless He's fighting, you know tooth and nail to succeed in this world. He needs all he needs is a little bit of luck You know what I'm saying and every night after he heads off out into the Kingdom so what he does he goes down there into the township every single day plies his trade tries to make a quick buck with his His sidekick a boo the monkey and at the end of each night they both Come up to his little area that he's found What we'd call in today's age a freedom camping area believe it or not He finds his little area. He goes up there every single night reflects You know and fit for nothing for free He has a view very similar to this looking out over the entire city and obviously with the the kingdom in the background in the castle And so he sits up here every night Draws back his curtain sits there with a boo and imagines daydreams maybe one day Maybe one day my luck will change And I think I'm feeling those those very similar things, you know I feel like when you look out to something like this even if you've got no money in your pocket You do feel like anything's possible You do and and before I got up here. I felt like that and so you can imagine how I'm feeling now now Why did I have such a good day? This is this you know what after today? After I describe my day today, you guys are gonna know exactly how I'm gonna live my life for the next at least two to three weeks So there is literally no reason for me to get this camera back out And so I'm actually stoked to be making this video because I'm gonna put it all on the line I'm gonna tell you guys exactly what's going on And then I'm gonna see you in another two to three weeks. Okay, so In fact, you know what let me let me sit down.    I was not meant to be here I was meant to be in Australia and you know what I Wasn't even meant to be going out in my van I said to myself maybe two to three weeks ago that I was gonna try it Made that video can I survive seven days in a van? I thought it would only be seven days maximum I thought there's no way I'm gonna be able to do it Because at that point I didn't know that I was gonna come with my mate Tim And then I had my 30th birthday guys on the 27th November Tim came around the next morning.   In fact, I do know how he did it because he was in the driver's seat And I was in the passenger seat, okay No good anyways, we got to our destination.  He's actually left now He's he's met his dad and he's on the the Milford track, which is a three to four Well, so it's a four day great walk here in New Zealand. So he's off doing that. He's out of coverage I have no idea where he is so I'm back here in Queenstown by myself and today was the best day of my entire life.  I'll never forget. I didn't call my mom I didn't call my dad I called her and I experienced it with her and it was because I'd literally I'm not I'd not gone outside yet and so That was a great start to be fair after that. I made a vlog Which was successful after that? I got five reaction videos done Sitting in this car in the middle of the snow. I think you guys have seen those already, okay? So the day is productive already the day is going well. I'm in my own little little basically snow hut okay my portable snow hut Making reaction videos It's just Really is that possible and it is possible because you put yourself in those situations so after that and so during that I got my little cooker out. I made it. I made a coffee guys in the snow sitting up here, bro It was just next level for coffee lovers out there. You know when you do get a nice spot in fact One of the main things that I imagined one of the main things I was looking forward to about this trip about getting away in my van is the coffee in the morning Wherever it was going to be it was going to be better than fucking at home Okay, and it has been and today was just the best so it started with coffee reaction videos a vlog and Then the snow started melting so I thought you know what it's about time I do my washing right because I've got a shitload of it so I guess we're gonna start there. I went to snap fitness.   It's a good first impression. They're gonna see you around So you may as well say hello. Don't walk in there like a stranger.  Anyways guys That's that's that's just the start of the day. Okay, so that was good I did 45 minutes on the treadmill. I didn't do any weights. Literally just got a sweat up It was it was really good probably burnt about 500 calories Which for any of you guys out there who you know do get on the treadmill or do track their calories That's a decent workout. So we started with that had a shower Fresh as a daisy. I Left the gym at about lunchtime. Okay got a second coffee No food yet. I run on no food until 2 3 p.m. Easily. I'm so used to it now It's not even funny. I like to eat a lot when I do eat so I can push that first meal out Hours and hours and hours. I mean I do feel fatigued at certain points and I wouldn't I probably wouldn't want to be doing too much of a workout Without eating but as far as a run in the morning, it was fine After that I went to the laundromat First time I'd been there. They have the biggest washing machines.  I got my card easily. I put 30 bucks on it I started the machine and put everything in there in one load got it out Put it in the dryer in one load got it out. That was about an hour whilst I did that I took my car to the car wash. I vacuumed it I didn't wash the outside because it obviously snowed last night and you don't know what the weather's gonna do But I did vacuum it.  It was pretty dirty So it needed a vacuum. I got my clothes washed. I got my car vacuumed I put my clothes back in all folded up ready for this week and then The coolest thing about the whole day happened The coolest thing I Will say that getting my washing done probably was the best vibe It probably was the best feeling to be fair because I really wanted to do that And I'm the fucking OCD freak with that kind of thing And so this this fan for this for this van situation to be successful I have to have it in somewhat of an order so Today was about getting it back in order and so Physically having my surroundings in order also helps me to mentally be in order And so that is how I'm feeling today now The final part of the day, which just happened before it's about 8 30 at night right now at 5 30 I went to Industrial fitness and fight club, which is a boxing slash kickboxing gym with Weights and cardio equipment yoga classes high-intensity interval training classes But predominantly around fighting So I went down today on a Friday Lo and behold it was a Friday. It could have been a Monday could have been a Sunday. It was a Friday and I walked into Their Friday boxing sparring session now. I knew I wasn't gonna get involved I wanted to go down and watch and this was the perfect perfect perfect time the perfect opportunity for me to go down So that is why it's it's it's just the biggest icing on the top of the cake for the day because I went down there not only did I Again like I said at snap fitness introduced myself to the head boxing coach who owns the place I introduced myself to the receptionist. I I got a workout in I saw some sparring and I had about a five to ten Minute conversation with the head coach Which I desperately wanted I desperately needed and So I basically said to a man, you know what for these for years. I've been looking for someone To coach me. I've been looking for a head for a coach. I've been looking for it for a gym for a fight Jim, you know, I went to Thailand earlier this year. I actually came to Christchurch in February March I tried to join the boxing. Sorry the the Wolfson boxing club.  He made a good one on me I hope I make it made a good one on him.  Obviously whoever you're going up against You're gonna want to be going pretty equally as far as you know banging and clanging Whatever they call it whatever the terminology is I'm sure I'll get it But yeah, there was a few hits to the head obviously the wearing headgear.    How could I say that either of their birthday? Okay, either of their date of births was better than the other I can't so they're an equal first, right?    So I'm feeling good. I Just went to pack and save I got some food for dinner I've got coffee for the morning. I've got loads of water I've got a charged battery. I went to McDonald's today to got three vlogs edited and uploaded Started editing the reactions from this morning ran out of time had to get to the the boxing class So I close my laptop Put it in the car and went but what I got out of that and this is another cheap thrill, bro This is this is happiness.  And that's what I I'm a youtuber, bro. I'm a youtuber. I'm sick to death of trying to deny it I'm sick to death of feeling embarrassed about saying I'm a youtuber.  I'm telling you or else I'd die inside so All the best to all you guys out there. It is two weeks away from Christmas I'm almost about to send my Christmas presents across to Australia to my kids. I will be spending Christmas in Christchurch I think But basically like I said at the start of this video, there's no need for me to continue There's no need for me to continue these vlogs to let you guys know exactly what I'm doing on a day-to-day basis You know, I just told you exactly what I'm going to be doing. I'm going to be going to snap fitness to use the shower I'm going to be using the laundromat to Keep myself clean keep my clothes clean. I am going to continue to stock my eski with ice every second day To keep my food cold.    I am gonna write about it.  It means It means a lot man, and you know what? I'm a youtuber now, right? Effectively until I get my next full-time job So your support really does mean the world your support is my fuel you you are the fuel to my fire Viewership on YouTube is what we do this for okay. I don't do these videos to watch them myself In fact, I never watch my own videos. I do it for you guys. So thank you so much for being here. Thank you so much it's been a pleasure and That's enough from me In Queenstown signing out Who knows who knows guys I may even I may even stay for a while I mean, I've I've got two gym memberships that I can use like I've said, you know Do I need to say it again? No, I don't this is the van life my style And I welcome you to it peace out guys.


This paper proposes a new methodology for analyzing neural activity data collected using two-photon calcium imaging. The authors show that their approach can accurately estimate signal and noise correlations in the data without requiring intermediate steps such as spike decondition. This makes it more efficient than other approaches and provides better accuracy. They also provide theoretical guarantees on the performance of their estimator and demonstrate its utility with simulations and experiments. The article was authored by Anuthara Rupasing, Nicholas Francis, G.U., and others.


Welcome to yet another session of our NPTEL on nonlinear and adaptive control. I am Srikanth Sukumar from Systems and Control IIT Bombay. So, we are well into the 8-week lectures of this course and we are already looking into several algorithm design methods through which we can actually control autonomous systems such as the SpaceX satellite that we see in the background hovering the earth. Now, what we were doing last time was essentially the beginning of the generalization of the adaptive integrator backstepping method. So, this was the method that we had sort of looked at in the week 7 lectures, if you remember. So, this was essentially the unmatched technique. So, this was sort of what we had done in the week number 7 where we had the parameter which was actually unmatched with the control. So, and we had essentially devised how to use the backstepping method in order to design an adaptive controller for such cases. Now, what we have started already to look at in lecture 8.3 is how to extend it to the general case because here everything was a scalar.  So, now we are looking at the general case of a system where you have an x which is an Rn, you have an unknown parameter which is also an Rp, a control which is an Rm. And then, of course, there's an extended state psi which is also the same dimension as the control and therefore is in Rm. So, how did we start the setup of this system was that we said that we have this form for the system. We are now used to this form for the adaptive integrator backstepping for the general case. I hope all of you remember that. Here, there is one term which is corresponding to the drift. The second term which contains the unknown parameter which appears linearly. And the third which contains the control which also appears linearly. So, what we assume is that for such a system where of course the dimensions are stated and the functions are sufficiently smooth, there exists an adaptive controller which means that there exists a u and there exists a theta tilde dot such that the system has bounded states and some nice thing happens to the theta typically to the error states, the x states. So, this is codified in terms of the existence of a smooth function v. In this case of x and theta tilde such that its derivative is negative semi-definite at least. And from this negative semi-definiteness, we can actually conclude more often than not that this function w x theta tilde which is what you have on the right hand side goes to 0 as t goes to infinity. This is exactly what we had here. You had this sort of a system and the assumption was that you had a function v in this case the function v is something like this, this v1 function and the derivative of v1 after taking some theta hat dot which is essentially the same as having a theta tilde dot came out to be this quantity which is what is the minus w quantity. And we could prove that this goes to 0. And because this goes to 0, of course, we could prove that something nice happens to be x. I mean, I'm sorry, there is no x to state yet. So, of course, we can prove this goes to 0 which means that x1 goes to 0. So, that's exactly what we also claim here. Remember again that we are looking at the tracking problem, sorry, the stabilization problem but the tracking problem would have been exactly identical not there wouldn't be any significant difference in the tracking problem either. So, now if we add an integrator state that is when the u gets replaced by the state psi, which is Rn, you of course add this i dot equal to u sort of a thing here. Then what we claim is that this sort of a Lyapunov function v bar now, which is essentially the previous v with an added backstipping error term which is norm z squared and a new parameter error term because if you remember there was a over parameterization because of the unmet states that is the new parameter estimate is called theta bar the old parameter estimate was called theta hat. And so with the quadratic term in the new parameter error you can actually show negative semi-definite v bar for the new system that is the system with an integrator now. Now, as you would imagine because there was a nice adaptive law for the original system we define a backstipping error state z which is the psi minus the alpha because although psi is not the actual control of the system we want it to follow the alpha because we know that is the good control so we try to sort of push this towards zero. So, that's what we do now since everything is vector now instead of scalars that is z squared and theta squared and theta tilde squared we have norms that's the only difference. So now I have z transpose z which is norm z squared which is essentially this quantity and then you have sort of a norm squared here but with a scaling with this scaling is simply the adaptation gain that we already know about. In the scalar case also we had an adaptation gain even in the matrix case and now also in the vector case. So, this is the modified v bar which will work and this is again not very different and because v bar if you remember was the original function here and so we take our overall Lyapunov function and it's just this guy added with this which is exactly what we are talking about now because this is the backstipping error term squared and then there's a square in the new parameter error. So, square in the new parameter error and the backstipping error squared. All right, that's it. So, it's essentially very similar to the scalar case just taking into account the fact that we are now dealing with vectors. So, a lot of norms appear in place of simple squares. All right, great. So, now this is it. So, we essentially use this and now we simply started taking derivatives that's what we had stopped. So, I'm going to mark my lecture right here. So, we start our lecture 8.4 right here. Also remember again that we are looking at the v9 nodes. We're not going to worry about it. The purpose of the v markings is simply to sort of help align the homeworks. So, let's not worry too much about this. So, let's take the derivatives for this v bar in order to prove that this in fact helps us claim that our w goes to 0 and our psi goes to alpha and all that nice stuff. So, this is the dynamic. So, what we do is we now start to write our dynamic in terms of the new variable psi. Sorry, in terms of the new variable z, which is the backstipping error. So, x dot was fx plus capital fx theta plus gx psi and the psi is simply z plus alpha. That's what we do. And now, we also write the dynamics of the second state which is psi minus alpha. So, psi dot is just the control and the derivative of alpha has two pieces because it is depending on two different quantities and two different quantities. So, this is u minus del alpha del x u and this del alpha del x times x dot which is essentially this guy plugged in and del alpha del theta cap theta cap dot and so that is this with a plus sign. So, that's what you have here. That's what we verify here because theta cap dot is minus theta tilde dot and that is gives me the plus sign and that's what we have. So, now, when I write v bar dot, I get, again, two pieces from this partial which is del v del x times this plus del v del x times a gamma, let's see, it's not del v del x. This is, so I need to check the signs here. So, this is actually equal to, so v is a function, v was a function of x and theta cap. So, this term is not this but it has to be del v del theta cap theta cap dot. So, this is minus gamma x theta cap. Yeah, so that's what you have. The second term will be minus del v del theta cap gamma x theta cap. I'm simply taking the derivative of v which is a function of both x and theta cap and remember that theta tilde dot was declared as gamma and theta cap dot and theta tilde dot are related by just the negative sign. Okay, let's just remember that much and that's all we are doing. The second term is not del v del x again. It is del v del theta cap times negative of gamma x theta and then the second term is, the derivative of the second term is just you know this guy. So, it's z transpose z dot and we already have written z dot here. So, z transpose z dot is this entire thing. This guy getting plugged in here and the final term is this. So, I have theta minus theta bar transpose. So, I change the s gamma to s because we already have used gamma. So, you have theta minus theta bar transpose s inverse theta bar dot. So, I get the negative sign because theta bar has a negative sign here. So, therefore, I get a negative sign here. All right. So, that's it. So, it looks messy but honestly, we are just doing careful bookkeeping. Okay, just careful bookkeeping. Now, look at this expression for the v carefully right here. If you look at this carefully, I already know a few things. I know that v dot from the previous case when there was no integrator has del v del x fx plus cap fx theta plus gx alpha and del v del theta theta I see. So, here it is written as a function of theta theta. I'm sorry. This is gotten messy. This is actually v was a function of x and theta tilde. So, this was a mistake here. I apologize. This was a mistake here. So, this is fine. So, v was a function of theta tilde. In fact, so that is okay. All right. That was okay. So, then the second variable, second partial is in fact with respect to theta tilde. And then this is theta tilde dot which is just gamma. Okay. So, if you look at this expression, this guy is actually available here right. If you look at this, there is del v del x fx plus cap fx theta plus gx alpha plus del v del theta tilde gamma. Right. So, this entire thing is available and so this entire thing can be written as minus w. Right. And that's what we do. And then we pull this piece out. This piece is the only thing that's remain. Right. So, if I take this out, I have a z transpose and that shows up here. Okay. So, this piece is the only thing that's remaining is this piece and that becomes this guy. All right. This is z transpose g transpose and del v del x transpose but del v del x being this del v del x will be since v is symmetric. So, there is no need to transpose it but if you want you can just use the transpose here. No problem. Okay. That's not a problem. Let's just use the transpose here. Okay. So, so let's look at this. You have the rest of the terms as this. Right. u minus del alpha del x times x dot minus del alpha del the cap gamma. Sorry. The signs have to be corrected here. This is a plus sign again and this is a plus sign again. Correct. And so, that's correct. And then that's it. This additional term comes in from here. Right. So, that's it. We have this additional term and everything else is accounted for and then this entire term goes out. I mean, it's just reproduced here as it is. All right. Great.  Yeah, because because if you see effects theta which is the unknown theta is the unknown has appeared once again. Okay. In the along with the U. Okay. And if we do not have another handle here I would be in trouble. Okay. I would be in some trouble. So, what do we do? We as usual cancel as much as we can. We we can get rid of this all of this. Great. This guy also and this guy also and then we introduce a good term which is the minus k then for this term I have to introduce another cancelling term which is not again which is again not the true value of the parameters since it's not known but it is an estimate and a new one. Right. That's what we do. And once we do that what would we be left with all everything else cancelled out. Right. Except for this guy. Yeah. Corresponding to which I will have a theta minus theta bar type term. Okay. And that's what is this guy. Yeah. So again I need to be careful about the sign here because this was a plus. This has to be a minus sign. Okay. And so this term yields this guy and this is as it is of course with the S inverse instead of the gamma inverse and similarly the S inverse instead of the gamma inverse alright. So good things happen as we expect. Right. We have a nice negative term in the Z. We have a nice negative term W which we know has to be a nice negative term. And then we are left with these guys which we know how to cancel. Right. And how do we do that? We simply use this quantity to cancel this. Right. And how do we do that? So we take theta minus theta bar common and then therefore we have an expression here. Right. And in this case it will be S times F transpose del alpha del trans del X transpose times Z. Right. Basically it will be the transpose of this whole guy pre-multiplied by S. Yeah. So that's what it is. You have the transpose of that whole quantity pre-multiplied by S which is the adaptation game. Right. So this is the adaptation game. All right. So I hope that is the steps are clear. See all we did was very careful bookkeeping and carefully clubbing terms and canceling terms. Yeah. It's not very different from the scalar case at all. Yeah. So the purpose was to show that this method in fact has a very nice vector extension also and also to show that dealing with vector states is not significantly different from the scalar counterparts. All right. Great. So so we have this nice expression now after we have used theta bar dot in order to cancel this guy in order to cancel all the unwanted parameter terms that appear in the V bar dot. We do get this nice V bar dot expression. Right. And therefore we can show very easily that W and Z to go to zero as T goes to infinity and this is of course standard signal chasing plus bar balance lemma. Yeah. Notice that for a long time now we have in fact stopped showing these arguments because now we have assumed pretty much that all of your experts in this since we did it quite a few times and the steps were very, very standard and therefore we find no further need to keep repeating these steps. Yeah. So what so what sort of is a little bit of philosophical not really philosophical but actually an implementation concern is the fact that we have two different estimates. Yeah. Which is theta bar and also theta hat. Right. Also the theta hat here. Yeah. In order to you know estimate the same parameter theta. Yeah. And as the number of unknowns keep increasing which is you know RP in this case you will of course see that a number of excess unknown parameterizations unknown parameter estimates also keeps increasing. Yeah. And this is of course not a convenient situation to be in. Yeah. I mean eventually these are all going to be implemented in a micro controller and you definitely do not want to load your real time control system by adding more and more states. All right. So that's a really one of the critical concerns here and we seek to address it of course. But anyway the important thing is even for the unmatched case we are able to design very nice adaptive control loss. Right. And which actually help us to you know deal with unknowns that are not mapped with the control. Remember this is the way it's set up right now it currently works only when there is the unknown parameter one step above the control. Yeah. So if you have a system like this it's fine right because the control is one step below one integrator below if you may from the unknown parameter. Yeah. So this method can also be generalized to the you know sort of the more complicated situation where you have unknowns you know appear you know in several levels above the control. Yeah. And then the way you would do it is to do it sequentially of course. Right. I mean this is essentially what is called the parametric strict feedback form and the idea here is that you would think of like X3 as the control and work with X1 X2 and then so on and so I mean you move forward further down until you reach XN being the control and then you finally have you as the control itself. Okay. So this is of course these details are available in the KKK book which is the Kenal Agopolis Kokotowicz-Kristik adaptive control book which is one of the important key references for this back stepping base adaptive control design. In fact the book has significantly more details and significantly more methods and examples of what we do in this lectures I would in fact strongly recommend that all of you do look at that later all right. Now as I already mentioned one of the big issues is the requirement for extra parameters extra parameter estimates right and this is a you know significant constraint when we talk about real implementation yeah typically if you have a hundred parameters for example yeah I mean a typical engineering system may have even 500 unknown parameters right and if you're talking about such large numbers of unknown parameters and you have double the number of states required to be estimated so if you have 500 parameters you actually estimated using thousand states then you can imagine that this is a real concern yeah you can imagine this is a real concern so that is the idea that of extended matching design yeah is how to overcome this you know sort of over parameterization so I will not do it I will not start it now in this lecture but the system that we consider is almost exactly identical right that is you have this kind of a setup again we go back to the scalar case because everything is easier in the scalar case although it's the same it's just a lot more bookkeeping and it becomes more complicated to explain things yeah so otherwise everything is exactly the same what we will try to do is do one vector example also at a later point yeah so let's not worry about that too much but the system is again the same scalar system that we saw in week 7 I mean let me go back and sort of try to match it so this is the exact same system that we see these two look exactly identical right and now we want to do extended matching design which means that we do not want to have multiple parameter estimates anymore and just one and that's what you will see in the subsequent lecture right great so what did we look at today we had started the application of the back stepping design last time right now until the week number 7 lectures we had looked at the back stepping method for the matched case that is when the uncertainty appeared in the control dynamics and also had looked at the in which the control was present ok now of course the case when the uncertainty appears in the control it can be easily generalized to the vector case it's not a big deal yeah although we did not do that again we can try to do all of this at a slightly later stage now the point is that here we that is when the uncertainty appears one level one integrator level above the control and we want to look at vector states vector controls and vector unknown parameters and that's what we did in today's lecture and also the previous one so we completed the proof we started with the assumption that the first layer integrator has a nice adaptive controller along with stabilizing Lyapunov candidate construction and what we can actually show is the construction of the complete candidate Lyapunov function for the system when integrator layer is added to this and we can also show that you know our back stepping error goes to zero and you can also show that whatever your W that is this negative semi-definite function we had from the first layer will also go to zero so this is what we have been able to show until today and in the subsequent lecture we will look at what is called the extended matching design alright great so I really hope that all of you are with me I know that the bookkeeping part does make things look rather complicated but I hope you understand those the following what's going on and not really any big innovation in terms of theory and so you know I hope that all of you enjoyed these lectures and you are able to follow what we are doing here in these lectures yeah great so this is where we will stop today and I'll see you again soon thank you


Thank you very much, and I want to congratulate everybody who's in this room, because the reason why all of you work here is because you want to see a cleaner, better future for all of us and for everybody and for generations to come. I think it's important for me to point out that I'm one of the few engineers in the lab office. I'm actually an electrical engineer, and I'm very, very proud of that. So because of that, I've been in August for 17 years. My colleagues always throw me in the front line when it comes to energy issues. And I'm very, very glad to do that. When I was a council member for 10 years through the city of Los Angeles, I helped and made sure that I drove the largest electrical and water tower district in the country to have a renewable portfolio standard. And we were horribly dependent on the least cleanest energy in the world. And now we have a little drastically into a much cleaner energy. And it's really important for us to understand that it's really the public that demanded that. And luckily for me, I had first of four tables, and I was able to do that on the side of our state and the country. And now that I'm in Congress, this is not only an actual issue, it's a global issue. But with all the respect, one thing that we should understand is American citizens. Even in the worst of the times, we are the consumer jargon on the map. Which means that if every other country does business with us, every other country looks at us, every other country tries to emulate us, and every other country wants to sell us. But the thing that we have still in this country, like no other country on the planet, is we are still the big capital of the world. And therefore when it comes to clean energy, again, it takes in our democracy of people to demand cleaner and cleaner energy. And please continue to do that. But it's important that we have elected officials to understand how important that is. One of the things that I want to point out to you is that this elected official understands that I understand that the cleanest energy is the energy that we don't use. So it's important for us to understand that we are going to be the driver. The United States of America is going to be the driver for innovation, going to be the driver for products, going to be the driver for consumption, between our energy. Yet at the same time, we also need to be the drivers of making sure that we use less and less energy per capita. Very proud to say that the city of Los Angeles over the last 20 years of the day we're using the same amount of megawatts today as we did 20 years ago, even though we had many more people, many more physicists, and much more activity but we're not getting the same time per capita basis for consuming less energy. But yet that should be also on our mind as well as making sure that we create cleaner energy and that we drive the technology so that we can invite industry, as was mentioned earlier, to invest, to invest in cleaner energy. One of the things that I'd also like to say when it comes to this particular caucus and members of Congress by partisan is that this is, in my opinion, what a Sierra Club means to the Chamber of Commerce and they walk toward each other, not in animus, but in friendship and collaboration and shake hands and say, on this one, brothers and sisters, we are together. So congratulations to all of you for being part of this. Thank you very much.


The FFT works by taking a sampled signal and dividing those samples into smaller and smaller groups until there are only two samples per group. It then calculates a discrete Fourier transform for each group by multiplying the second sample by a twiddle factor, then adding the two samples together to produce the first result and subtracting them to produce the second result. The same calculation is repeated on each group's results again and again as the algorithm advances. This core process is therefore repeated many times and can be visualized using a butterfly diagram. A single butterfly, also known as an inner butterfly, will be repeated again and again, interleaving with other butterflies until the FFT for the entire signal has been calculated. To find out more, check out my series of books on how the Fourier transform works by going to howthetransformworks.com slash books.