Styrodur is perfect for stone work/bricks/ cobbles and all that

https://nl.pinterest.com/pin/857232110297239366/

https://www.google.nl/search?rlz=1C1PRFG_nlNL749NL749&biw=1911&bih=877&tbm=isch&sa=1&ei=KGV9W-GVK4nawALCn7fgAQ&q=styrodur+blue++australia&oq=styrodur+blue++australia&gs_l=img.3...46498.48285.0.49285.6.6.0.0.0.0.66.363.6.6.0....0...1c.1.64.img..0.0.0....0.owgtyn-BwmE#imgrc=RID0bh3eOXOVQM:

Ps
they come in different colors (has to do with density)

And the reason you don’t hear from me much Tim, is the music videos you link to. I wind up way down the utube list listening to the Killdares do “Whiskey in the Jar” or The Who, live, doing “Won’t Get Fooled Again” and I forget to come back and comment on your amazing mechanical plastic Frankenmobiles. Thanks for the show and
Wack for ma daddyo

Thanks Phil & apologies, that’s the inexorable YouTube tractor-beam programmed to pull us down ever deeper to look at more ads. But there's a sure-fire way to break loose – just type in The Birdie Song by The Tweets and you’ll be a free man again in seconds

While away this week I dredged up 45 year-old fragmentary memories of school Tech Drawing classes & then got nervous about the tram’s dimensions. MiniArt’s European version seems to have been generic to Germany & Belgium mostly between the wars, and does bear a close resemblance to the 1909 Prague model being represented. However “close” is a relative term…the sketch below shows the 1:1 kit chassis on top in plan - the upper left cab quarter shows the Euro’s front doors/windows arrangement & the lower left cab quarter shows the Prague arrangement as best as I can draw it from image references. The lower drawing of a side view for the Prague modifications revealed that in the absence of an easier fix, I’ll have to chop out a 11mm slice (as represented by the diagonal hatching) from each end of both driver-trams...



This will reduce the length by 0.75 metres scaled-up, which happens to get close to my guesstimate that the Prague tram was approx. 8.75 metres long whereas the Euro scales to 9.8 metres. A comparison…



It’ll require some unwelcome surgery but I noticed some evidence that I’d be making the right cuts – Prague trams had their leaf-springs centred over the axles, while the Euro’s leaf-springs are positioned way off the axles towards the ends - a stretch-tram. Re-positioning them should be easy enough & I’m not too bothered if some/all the invisible underside metalwork doesn’t take kindly to shortening.

The Prague’s 5-window configuration along the main compartment should look OK in terms of each window looking nearly square, once I’ve tweaked the dimensions of the dividing frames. The Prague’s double-doors were wider than Euro’s & it should also be easy to make the cab’s big Prague front window. But I’m in trouble with the cab’s side windows diagonally across the corners…



As I recall this used to be called an Isometric Projection...so Old School. The diagonal window is cramped/not at 45°/leaves an awkward corner triangle in the frame because the Euro’s cab tapers towards each end, whereas the Prague’s doesn’t appear to do that, or if it does only slightly. So in other words the Euro cab isn’t wide enough & the solution’s to widen the cab front, which will help make the curve around to the sides less acute, and the cab section’s going to be almost as wide as the main compartment…



Using that front panel with the sprue-damaged window frame for test purposes, trying out Evergreen half-round & alternative strips to widen the cab. The headlight needs to be relocated about 1 cm lower but to avoid destroying/re-making it I’ll try cutting a central vertical strip containing the light fitting out & gluing it back together upside down.



The consequence of cab-widening/shortening is of course that the roof(s) will need to follow the new lines too, meaning fillets/fillers/putty/sanding/sweat/blood/global catastrophe/hearing the first bar of the Birdie Song again.

Next time: Tram trauma

Nice to see someone else that gets way way down in the weeds concerning detail,etc. At this point,you are looking UP at the weeds.
Nice,
J

Tim, I am thoroughly entertained by this most incredible project. I really enjoy the blow-by-blow explanations as you go. ... Let no detail remain unturned! This is weed-whacking at its best!🌿

Cheers!🍺
—mike

Details.....weed......hmmm......

So much for light relief. To the Operating Table then, excising the first of two 11mm sections from the chassis which involved removal of some braces/brackets & the leaf springs before the scalpel went about its grim work…



I decided not to do the other end in parallel yet because of the high probability of (a) screwing something up & learning the hard way how to do it right, and (b) slight variability of measurements. As for the headlight issue…



…duh - all I needed to do was turn the whole panel upside down because the window frames had to come off anyway. The beading & light-collar details are relatively easy to amend…



Below shows the shortened chassis vs. an original version, & in the background the next victims lined up for the blade. It’s always worth trying to preserve as much as possible e.g. panel C4’s left-hand edge has hinge brackets on both sides so slicing that vertical strip & re-using saved scratching ‘em...



Mostly a glue-free zone held together with masking tape & held breath, with test-fits to establish the exact width of the gap created at the front panel – I didn’t trust my drawings for this…





…and the fillets…





…followed by Milliput, left side sanded & right side next…



Botched nose-job! In the image below I’d totally forgotten that the large square front window frame & support needs to rest on the top of the driver’s console which therefore needs to be much deeper. I blame the glue fumes, I’m sure they cause short term memory loss. And the other problem is I’m sure the glue fumes cause short term memory loss. I’d cut off the console’s locating tabs, filled in their holes in the floor just in front of the last wooden floor-slat & glued it to the back of the front panel. The need for a deeper console-top meant that the original kit position was exactly where the console should go & I had to march it back from this too-far-forward position. So predictable that it was the ONLY item I’d dared to cement in place…



Here’s the big front window frame made from Evergreen “L”-angle (0.6”/1.5mm) while the tray steadily accumulates debris from the slash-fest…



All the cab windows will need secondary wood-coloured frames within them (as seen in the 2nd image of this post) made in slim sandwiches, painted, then the glass filling inserted & probably some of the very last items to be installed.





Above more test-fits, after cutting the standard 11 mm section out of the inner-roof shell. There’s an outer roof shell to cut later too & I’m glad I didn’t do it now because I’ve just realised tonight that the cut should only have been 6mm because the cab’s been moved forward. I’d refer to the Anger Management for Dummies manual but I threw it out the window last week.
The lip round the top of the front panel was made of a single piece of L-angle persuaded round the corners with glue & optimism. The cab went askew during photography but didn’t matter, I just needed to see if/how the window frame engaged with the roof underside… it doesn’t, but now I know how/by how much I need to modify the roof line before its lip is attached. Also visible is the long port-side compartment panel stripped of its pillars, and the external beading like so…



Doing that brought back dark memories of my first & last experience of making a lino-cut when my fingers holding the lino plate down were idiotically one inch in front of the “U”-bladed knife, which with great force suddenly deflected out of the channel being cut. That involuntary surgery is lurking throughout this phase in wafts of déjà vu

Hi Tim - great scratch work going on. Yes, the challenges are many, what the plan is and then remembering all those crucial little bits you solved in your head before you boldly begin cutting and gluing - and if you skip over one of those little steps, it can be like leaving that cake of yours out in the rain!! Lol - nice work going on here!

Nick

Hi Tim – Mad surgical skills! 🔪

Trama lama ding dong Tim [ apologies to Otis Day and The Nights the Boppers , the Edsels , the Platters or anyone else who used that riff ] .
Fascinating butchery man , looking good Tim !!!

Above and beyond the call of duty.
J

Tim - This is just incredible, outstanding work man, thanks for sharing your mad skills and ideas w/ us here.
Love the way you work and how you discuss the process of what's goin' on.

Cheers Brah
Dave

Thanks for the positive feedback gents, it really does make a/the difference particularly in those times when exasperation takes over – or when that voice goes off in my head…”WHAT are you DOING?!” Two of you used the word “mad” but truly…

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5IvxnK3xZtg

(DJ Cheyenne – cute, & on the other turntable “…with Trams like us, baby we were born to ruuuuuuuun”)

I came to a grinding halt early in the week having got into a loop over assembly priorities. The only way out was to suspend parallel work on the 2nd driver tram, & also the first cab due to uncertainty about the size of the front window & how the modified cab will fit - intractable without the roof fixed in place & a heap of stuff must happen before that.

So I corrected the inner-roof shell - having wrongly chopped out 11mm instead of 6mm I broke the two parts apart to lengthen it & took the opportunity to give it more rigidity, because the plastic’s so soft the front end was sagging…



The outer roof shell doesn’t reach the outer sides of the inner so partial filling required…



Next the compartment walls, starting with the new windows - five regular ones down both sides. Seemed simple enough until I started measuring it out & finding the top-side frame of the compartment, freed of its original pillars, was flexing & sagging so I had to be dead accurate cutting the 4 new pillars - the first quartet, made from 2 x 26.0001 mm strips of “L”-angle glued back to back to make “T” sections…



…and in position, weighted down while they dried to minimise frame warpage. I swear the two end windows look wider but it’s an illusion painting should eliminate…



After doing the other side I added retaining strips round all the bare edges so the panes will engage on all sides…









The top frames are still slightly wavy (laterally) but bonding them to the roof should straighten them out so apart from some final sanding, painting & glazing, hopefully job done. However, during diorama photography I’ll need to knock out some of the window panes from the driver/trailer trams nearest Heydrich’s car & replace with broken ones, so they’ll need to be held in place with PVA/Elmers to make them easy to replace. Which leads to one of the reasons for getting into a loop - glue the roof down or not? I don’t want to, so that glass replacement will be easy…but I must, because it’s the only way to secure the cab sections & compartment sides rigidly. I guess the windows are big enough I can punch them in & use 2 pairs of long-arm tweezers & blu-tac to get ‘em out & reach through to install replacements. And move the passengers around…easier than ships in bottles anyway.

So having distanced myself from assembly dilemmas for a day or two I suddenly came up with a totally new & radical idea – why not follow the kit instructions? After recovering from that astounding revelation I blew the dust off the shortened half of #1 chassis, chopped the other end down to match, stuck it all together, experimented with a pivot for the coupling arm…



…re-positioned the springs over the axles…



…and tried out my Prague-type pedestrian fenders…



Hard to believe this received a dark (flat) grey primer slathering looking at that photo, or this…



Those paper sheets beneath it really are blackish black. Uncertainty Principle also applies regarding the final coat, modern photos of those trams indicate the entire chassis should be semi-gloss black while the Reconstruction images are indistinct. I usually run a mile from painting anything “black” because it’s hard to convincingly vary the tone without throwing dirt at it. So I tried a deliberately unevenly brushed satin black wash and…



…it’s subtle…



…very subtle…



As I feared, a dead black. But hey the weathering’s started without me, I have no idea how this happened & no I wasn’t on location on Bondi beach…



Maybe I’ll try retro & dry-brush some variations but it’s not worth spending much more time on, it’ll hardly be the centre of attention. The kit instructions call for rusty leaf springs - on one hand this tram would have been up to 30 years old in 1942 so plausible, but on the other hand they seemed to slather heavy black rust-prevention over the entire undercarriage, so maybe not plausible.

For the record, before & after surgery…



I told you I was getting better - not a Fifty Shades of Gray quip in sight, probably because I was too tied up.

Looks good Tim , every change looks like it belongs , nice .

"Back in Black" seems to work.
J

Tim the mystery skritches look like they belong also .
Soooooo not so much Back In Black , more of a Ebony and Ivory , sorry Jerry but you started it , ....... which is always fun .

Thanks guys maybe it is OK - besides there’s plenty of time for mo’ slatherin' if it still bugs me, never tried a patchy gloss black wash before…

There has been an internal Skritch Investigation without result – it looks like sand in the photo but it’s more like fine sawdust under a magnifying glass. If there be termites around I should enlist them (especially if they’re undermining the workbench), might come in handy

Time to get back on schedule & tackle the most difficult area, the cab. Doing the compartment windows was useful prep although confidence was not exactly high mainly because I knew the modified cab was various parts of a millimetre (or more) out in places already. Doesn’t sound a lot but if the starting point is asymmetry without identifying it (& understanding why), building on it becomes a house of cards that inevitably ends in tears. The widened cab isn’t symmetrical because I slipped up during the filleting/puttying stage so all measurements thereafter have had to be adjusted depending on which side I was on. That’s also the reason I’m going as far as possible without gluing anything because it can give me advanced warning of consequential mis-alignments.

The story so far…



Despite those issues the gap between cab fascia & doors says it’s level & it’s the same on other side – crucial for what’s coming.



The inner roof’s out of whack only because it’s slightly warped, it does line up when sworn at. The prototype front window frame (subsequently ditched) is skewed for a different reason – the dashboard support, & I’m beginning to think I’m slightly dyslexic with rulers.

After boosting Evergreen strips/angles/beams/channels stocks I spent a couple of days trying different combinations for making the cab window frames. Trial & Error all the way (“It’s scratch-building Jim, but not as we know it”) I’m quite strong on imagining how to do something + the result, but weak on imagining how to actually construct so I have to make it in 3D to discover the pros & cons…and share some pain around of course. No longer trusting my ability to correctly add, oh let’s say 2.4 + 3.7 (5.1 right?) I abandoned the ruler & went for a more direct measurement of the cab, tracing the outline onto a paper strip…



…cutting & gluing together channel-strips directly onto that outline…



The result barely held together because the gluing points were tiny, so for rigidity I glued it straight onto a sheet of plastic card & cut around it…



Much stronger. To make the other one (these being the top & bottom supports for the frames) I just traced the outline onto the sheet etc. Yes they’re not quite identical but we’ve been through that already…



…trust me, it was a necessary adjusting thing. Now glued in position I was glad I trusted my instinct to spare the original frame’s top bar on each side from amputation…





As mentioned the roof will line up OK eventually, it’ll need a tailored surround constructed on the underside to receive the upper support frame…



For the window frames, after failing to find a viable alternative I returned to the original idea of gluing two L-angle strips together to make T-section strips, with 2 changes. I’d imagined making each frame like a separate mini-picture frame, but noticed that the top/bottom support channels could actually also serve as the tops & bottoms of the frames themselves, meaning I only had to make the vertical posts. The second change was to reverse the posts so that the recesses faced outwards instead of inwards, so that dropping in the glazed (wood coloured) inner frames can be done after all painting is completed – what a bonus, no masking of the outer & inner frames required. Those who’ve been following closely will have guessed that this also resolved the similar dilemma as with the compartment, namely I can glue the roof down as soon as the interiors are completed/painted and glue the cab down at the same time to ensure it all fits together.



The side & diagonal window posts installed and symmetrical within 0.5 mm which is as good as it’ll get. Test fitting the sub-assembly…





Some final tidy-ups still to do frames, tonight I just dry-fitted some trial inner frames for the sake of glimpsing the end result – glass at last…



I felt quite good about surmounting this ultra-tedious hurdle for at least 30 seconds until I remembered there are 5 more of these suckers to build, but the hardest work’s done – now I know (a) how to do it (b) how to do it better. This prototype cab is just that, there are a few accuracy issues (if you’re a tram aficionado) which I can only fix on the other 5 so this one will probably never be seen again, it’ll always be the rear end in any of the final photographs…so apt, it’s been a real horse’s ass.

Next time - I think I’ve earned some fun detailing & painting the compartment before making the other end’s cab.

Very cool Tim , well planned and executed !!!

That’s some fine scratch-factory work there, Tim! ... Now we, the “peanut gallery” can relax just a bit... Until the next installment, then!🍿🍺

—mike

Excellent plastic surgery !
Gives it a total different look .....closer to the original.

Thanks guys, one day I should post a bunch of bloopers i.e. scratch fails, but when I get irked the last thing I feel like doing is reaching for the camera.

Meanwhile I’m looking ahead to livery, so if anyone out there is a Font expert could you let me know what the numbering on the front of the tram might be? – 4th image up in my last post & Frenchy’s images on earlier pages. I’ve waded through my stocks of 30+y.o. Letraset but haven’t got anything close to it & too busy/lazy to wade through the Word catalogue.

Hi Tim
The numbers on the tram front read 2272 and although I'm not too savvy on fonts they do look rather like Gothic. From my late night surfing it looks like Woodland Scenics may have the right type or some online craft stores seem to still have more Letraset than you do.Still amazed at your skill
Paul

Awesome work going on in this thread. I really don't know where you find the patience and perseverance...

I was watching a documentary on youtube, and there was brief clip of footage of Germany marching into Prague in March 1939, and there were trams! Here is a cribbed image from the video..



Cheers

Matthew