Paul – thanks & you reminded me one of the craft stores in easy range had a bunch of lettering including some gold when I raided it last year. From the MS Word selection the nearest I can see to the Tram font is Bodoni MT (bold) although the former has extra serifs. Matthew – thanks & yes I’ve wondered that myself, certifiable’s another term probably due to mainly Yorkshire/Lancashire/Irish heritage so from your call-sign maybe you’d empathise. Thanks too for the Op Red Beard still, I did a double-take on the foreground car – it looked like those big compartment windows slid open but on reflection it all seems…wait for it…glazed. Don’t think I’ve seen that configuration before although Frenchy may prove me wrong.

What’s new - a scrappy week for various reasons including white-line fever (as in plastic strips) getting too much, so I detoxed by slavishly following the kit instructions for a few parts…



…before attempting Cab v2…



…with a more accurate front - slightly wider with shallower curves, slimmer side panels…



…and the front window mounted further forwards...



For another interlude the compartment benches looked easy & authentic until I looked more closely at an image ref (reproduced further down) so yet more white lines…



But pointless detailing any further, they’ll be mostly in shadow within the compartment with some passengers sat on them so they just a coat of generic wood colour and…and…











I just can’t help myself anymore. Maybe another couple of muting washes required for the wood and the over-black brackets. Looks like those under-seat panels at each end will be good practice for the exterior livery…

Hi Tim
Nice work on the cabs but I think the straps you've added to the benches should be flush with the longitudinals going by a close up of the original, but as you say, given the interior gloominess plus passengers they will look OK.
Paul

Thanks Paul – quite right my brackets wouldn’t be very comfortable to sit on but I didn’t fancy scraping across the slats 8 times to make them flush, I was still in sod-it mode at that point before having a change of heart about the colour(s) - hopefully fading the black will make them look less proud. MiniArt missed them out and seems to have assumed (from the paint code) that the legs were wooden, but I just noticed - duh - they're metal and part of the same frame those brackets form part of.

A couple more unifying washes done on the woodwork & metal – didn’t do much for recessing the brackets…





& let’s see how bright those livery panels look once installed inside the compartment behind glass. I masked/painted them not particularly well so I’ll be using pin-stripe decal lines for the exterior – a different kind of nightmare, I imagine, with double-stripe lengths up to around 6”. But for now the paintbrush is…mmm…benched

Hi Tim

I'm not 100% sure but the foreground car in the vidcap looks similar to this one (a 1908 model) :



H.P.

Thanks HP that’s the one alright, the previous year’s model to the ones I’m making. Didn’t see it in the Prague Tram museum virtual tour, runners presumably live elsewhere. Mercifully they simplified the side panel livery for the 1909’s…

Hi Tim,

This is looking great - construction and paintwork - wow! And your plan is to build a few more of these?!? Be brave! Just keep going....

Happy model building, cheers
Nick

Hi Tim

In fact, this August I was in Prague visiting among other things the church where the members of the anthropoid operation hid. Here some pictures



















Regards

Thanks Nick, long time no dio…? Miguel - thanks for the excellent photos for additional image references – the Sten, the spare bomb, the 1903 Colt, even a shoe! It must have been a moving experience visiting that Museum & knowing what happened right there. The briefcase label says it came from the Crypt but I wonder if that’s correct, it seems an unlikely item to take into hiding on the run? Kubis’ briefcase was recovered from the “crime” scene containing spare bomb detonators & Gabcik also used one to contain his dismantled Sten (assembled on site while they waited), it was abandoned there too. If this really was a third briefcase...they sure were equipped for important meetings.

OK all aboard, back to the Evergreen Strip joint…

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6NdOgPyMJDM



Note the scratchin’ in the background (dual-senses word-plays there, no extra charge) - I just like the groove because it carries me through the more tedious scratch-building faster, but doesn’t it also kinda sound like…? anyway here’s Cab v2 on the right, on its way to completion…



…& trial installation to measure how much the inner roof at the v2 end needs to be shortened…







Finally, that milestone where I can’t go much further without completing/painting all interior space, assembly/cement order being compartment, cabs, doors – which first means sorting out the compartment windows. Like the cab windows they need to be dropped in post-painting but this time from the inside & they do need to be mini-picture frames…





…which will need to be all wood-coloured on the inside…



...while the exterior frame needs to be white…



Masking all that was always going to be tricky with inevitable bleeds going over the frame edges either way, so by painting the inside wood first & then the outside white, any white-bleeds inside should be covered by the drop-in mini-frames. The two inner-roof halves then need to dry-fit snugly onto all the above and then the final showdown with the outer roof - MiniArt’s Euro/German version being very different to Prague’s - so mo’ striptease ahead before I go snow-blind

Very very nice work. Brilliant in fact and inspirational. I like the window solution in particular. I also recommend white glue for bonding instead of super glue. Dries clear and no clouding on the clear part either. Unless you coat th clear part with Future floor wax or an equivalent clear acrylic product. This will also prevent clouding the clear part. But you probably already know all this. Sorry,too much coffee this AM.
J

Thanks Jerry, have another cup for me it’s bedtime for Bonzo here right now. Actually the windows solution means no glue should be needed at all - if my eyesight holds up I can cut the mini-frames tight enough they’ll just wedge into the retaining frame, with the glass held in between. It also serves to remind me I’ll need to be able to knock some of them in easily & replace with shards post-explosion, probably on the 2nd driver-tram which will hopefully reflect all lessons learned from this one

Tim, I use Formula 560 for clear parts. It's a little more tacky than white glue and dries crystal clear. I've even used it in sandwiches of clear acrylic. If you can get the layer even and thin enough it can still cure between layers. It's great stuff.

Regards,

Eric

I know I'm just being silly , but I always cringe when I see a model in a vise .
I mean I know you know what you're doing , it's just that finger nails scritching on the blackboard for me .
Any hoo , nice conversion work all round , bons temps rouler , just very cool Tim !!!

Hi Eric, yes I’ve heard F560 is good - I suspect you posted before seeing my reply to JR saying that I was hoping to avoid using any glue. Having said that I previously tested the “glass” I’m using (K&S Clear plastic sheet 0.010”) when making the Mercedes windows & it seemed immune from cyano clouding anyway, but if I do need any fixing substance it’s more likely to be just PVA/Elmers.

Cheyenne - no not silly at all & you flatter me if you think I know what I’m doing…nothing could be further from the truth, I’m flying by the pants of my seat. The vi*e - yeah it’s like t*res you ex-colonials just can’t spel - was a last resort having knocked bits off resting the chassis on the bench too many times. I roughed up the gripping pads which helped minimise the pressure I needed to hold it in place, even so it’s so lightly held in place you could move it with a sneeze…something I’ve forgotten several times with nearly dire results

Thanks Carl/Maarten, so the 10 compartment windows depleted the styrene stocks & my patience more than expected…

















Dry-fitted & as intended no glue will be required & hey Cheyenne the vi*e got a new squeeze. The cab interior side-panels bugged me – no help from MiniArt on what material/colour they were so I took an exec decision & used some Evergreen (V-Groove 2080 I think, lost the i/d) to replicate wood panels…



Stock-take…



Chassis done, cabs done, compartment elements done, to the paint-cave - but not so fast there are 20 windows all up, each frame & glass individually cut & varying in dimensions by +/- 1mm. Not much but it means most wouldn’t fit in another’s place. So…



The flipped cobbled street-base serves as a holding pen & folded-over masking tape as benign/long-lasting adhesive to stop the panes & frames wandering around, each individually numbered to their place in the compartment sides & cabs.

I’ve been looking longingly at the Primer rattle-can but don’t fancy spraying into the corners of all those frames to ensure coverage…they’d probably end up looking circular. Besides this is the wood phase so a paintbrush lends itself to streaky effects replicating wood-grain. I was content with how the benches turned out so Humbrol 32 Flat dark gr*y as substitute primer again – often used in the past because it covers well & clings doggedly to all my self-mixed acrylic coats on top of it.

Tram Stop ahead - I’ve been keeping up a steady weekly pace on this project for months but there’s a Disturbance in the course. We’ll be shortly moving temporary home (again) before we can move back into our permanent home mid-next year, so maybe one more (colourful) update to come next week before Intermission & setting up shop again later this month…in Bondi

I would be making more comments here but my server keeps stopping me from getting on this website. Says there are privacy concerns.
So I take this opportunity to congratulate you on being a steely eyed model maker.
J

Hi Tim,
Excellent work as always, and a special tip-o-the xacto knife to you for your patience in keeping all of this squared up and precise - much easier said than done! A while back you mentioned my lack of recent dio work. I’ve been building trucks this summer over on the scratch building campaign - hence my clear appreciation for your effort on this build - wow - nice! I’m not sure what I’ll build next. Maybe another scratch project? A tank? Another dio? I really don’t know just yet. In the meantime, I’ll keep watching this!

Cheers
Nick

Thanks gents much appreciated although Jerry I’m feeling more like a glassy-eyed misaligned man right now while I’m packing all this away for the Move. Nick – yes the tyranny of the perfect right-angle & this tram’s fighting back hard because I must have 88° to 92° all over the place. Found your totally stunning MRV finished last month in the s/b Campaign, I should get out (of this forum) more!

Brace for another demo about painting wood effects using artists’ acrylics - not the only way & there’s doubtless superior ways but anything’s better than a pot of flat Brown. Image refs show how rich & varied the wood tones should be, so to begin a cream-consistency texturing orange using a medium-stiff brush over the flat grey enamel primer – two coats, not trying to cover uniformly…



2nd coat still drying (& still fading) here…



A brief crisis of confidence led to testing a variety of under/over glazes in different combos where they wouldn’t be visible. The one problem with artists’ acrylics is that they dry a couple of shades darker so they need to be mixed on the loud side…



Making sure the final effect (after washes) won’t be uniform here either…



Trailing bright yellow of uneven consistencies (from cream to milk) with a soft brush…



…I know, about as interesting as watching paint dry…



…& when completely dry a watery wash of very deep red (50/50 crimson & black) over it, seen below nearly dry. The uneven application of the thick orange leaves troughs for the dark wash to collect in where it “finds” or echoes the dark grey base beneath the orange to give some depth. That slightly 3D effect is more elusive in photos – maybe it shows in the big panel under (or rather over in the photo) the 3-bar window & a couple of the narrow panels. Wood-grain or just dirty smudges, take your pick…



The red component’s important because a straight black wash would kill too much of the orange & turn the yellow completely green…



If this was on the exterior I’d apply a succession of very thin mid-greyish washes to tone it down but it’s going to be in a shady interior, so yet another dry-fit session required to see how it looks in natural light…







…and then covered by a substitute roof, but only these 2 poor photos below are worth showing because the window reflections made focussing diabolical…





…but it answered the question, interior visibility will be fragmentary at best. Even so all the wood (including the benches) looks too raw in daylight so at least one muting wash to come plus a tidy-up all those slips of the brush that leap out of each photo. Anyhow as a representation of what was up to 30 year old public transport woodwork by 1942, it’s the best I can do.

Enough with the dry-fits I can finally start gluing/nailing/bludgeoning it all down…once I’ve mastered the two central vertical hold-onto poles, without the aid of a nano-lathe…



Nail-clippers & toothpicks, essential kit for the well-groomed scratch-building man-about-town.

So guys, it’s time to alight & stretch the legs for a couple of weeks while your driver moves home, drinks are available during Intermission such as…ah…Traminer Riesling...



No I didn’t make it myself & no association with the winery…



Not bad for a white & considering it’s done a complete orbit of the Earth according to the label…Na zdravi

The aged wood (and the wine) look very nice! Keep going!
Cheers
Matthew

Thanks Matthew - as my northern forebears might have said: “H’p’t’ f’t’ a’p’ t’ p’t’ brass”...after a few ales when they became more comprehensible

Exceptional work Tim,

And the wine just sets the moment.
The timber looks spot on.

Cheers
Michael

Thanks Michael, it’s a shame my refs don’t allow it but it would have been so cool to have your amazing Famo (lurkers – check it out on the Armor/AFV forum, last posting currently Oct 9) chugging past one of the trams. Some more work done mainly on the 4 double-doors but the packing boxes are yawning open next to the workbench, almost time to go dark.

Back on-line at last to find 70K views?! Humbled am I, thanks to all members/lurkers for your continued interest in this madcap adventure. The Move’s now complete although still living out of cartons, all project materials remain secured at a remote location under controlled environmental conditions i.e. a locked metal box 3 storeys underground, better than buried in the garden. No reason to check in on this thread again until maybe next weekend when hopefully there’ll be a bit of progress to post – but there’s some great work being posted here by others, not a tumbleweed in sight. May your problems always be braille-scale

All aboard & welcome back - a severe bout of Unpackingitis has prevented any progress this week but I found the camera yesterday & remembered I took these before packing up…



Ensuring a clean join…actually it was the only thing to hand of exactly the right height (with gentle pressure from the slightly depressed pump-action) to keep the fender glued to the cab body while it dried in the vi*e. The other end’s cab & the compartment panels are all fixed too. Prague doors (top right) ain’t like MiniArt’s Euro tram’s (top left)…



…so I got as far as this, drawing onto thin styrene the correct dimensions for the 2 pairs of doors at one end – the ones at the other end need to be a fraction wider due to the slightly more correct dimensions of the 2nd cab. Current thinking is to cut & glue the panels onto the (sanded flat) original doors & mask/paint them before installing…



…or rather paint them before gluing to the doors because the glass has to fit as meat in the sandwich. Literally & figuratively looking into the distance here’s one very important reason why we rented this particular temporary apartment for up to 12 months – here’s the view from the balcony looking north…



…and an uninterrupted sweep to the east…



The balcony being 10 x 3 metres & the sun’s trajectory (this being the southern hemisphere there’s a 3 hour window when it’s arcing in overhead = desirably short shadows) all make it ideal for photographing a 1.5m square diorama on a turntable. The only foreseeable problems are (a) I still have to build it (b) the flock of rainbow lorikeets already gathering for the Spring/Summer in that tree…they think scarecrows bear food & just need some regular whitewashing whatever, so they’re either really stupid or really smart depending on your view of avian psychology