scoopey

I had to try and make the process repeatable. After the railcoach and Balloon it's the next tram I remember so I might have needed more than one.

Next we need the vinyl roof pieces. Attach to 0.020" (0.5mm) plasticard. Cut out. Attach the three same sized squares together to form a triple thickness piece. Attach two panel pieces to each other to make double thickness pieces. Attach the two panels to the model. These should end up flush with the front edges. Try to line up the top edges of the panels with the top of the sides. Also important is to ensure the sides upper sides are at the same angle. Check the smaller square fits inside the top edges before attaching centrally to the triple thickness roof piece. Glue in place. Any gaps can be filled later on. Using a fine roughly smooth the top edge of the roof into a curve. This can be finished off later on.

Take one of the sides and attach it to the model. The inner lines on the base plate represent the door opening so be careful to line the side up with these marks. The lower side are should be flush with the top of the side pieces already attached to the model. Add the second side. Add the two small inner side pieces that sit below the door area. The result is a double thickness inside area. Next add the two door pieces to the model. Should you choose to customise the model with a dropped floor you can cut these in half, else leave them as one piece. Note: The scoring was a bit deep hence the top side area has started to bend over. If that happens try to stop it breaking off as it will make the next stages a bit trickier. The door pieces should slide into place, but might need some trimming for a good fit. This bit is optional Attach the roof gauge vinyl to 0.040" (1mm) or thicker plasticard and cut out. Take the upper sides left over from the inner pieces and attach them in place. The gauges can help set the correct angle but are not glued to anything. Once the sides have been put in place there may be some slight alignment issues. Just trim any excess flush.

Well i intend to give away the patterns at the end so this will be the diy guide lol!

Next we start to add the mid layer side panels. As before cut out the vinyl and attach to 0.020" (0.5mm) plasticard. Cut out the door ways before cutting from the sheet. Separate from the sheet. Drill the hand rail holes at both sides of the doors. Cut the hand rail notches in the top edges and score the upper sides level with the top of the lower section. Carefully remove the vinyl to finish the preparations.

Cut out the vinyl four entrance partitions and attach to 0 040" (1mm plasticard) Attach the interior of the model so that the line up with the outer pair of parallel lines highlighted on red This is the final result. Also shown here is the remaining interior parts that cannot be added until later. This includes by redesign doors which differ from the parts seen earlier. The vinyl piece left over is for use with 0.010" and will sit on the inside of the doors.

Thanks. I think if it was a one off my work would have been easier, but as I wanted to make more than one i had ro figure out a way of building that was repeatable...

Next prepare the sides to fit the base by forming curves to fit the base. If cold forming start with big diameters of round former and progress smaller. The curved section is between the vertical straight line and dotted line. Starting with a non door side attach to the front on a level surface. The edge should meet the centre line marked in red. Now stick the rest of the long side. Now attach the other side. Glue the front edges. A chamfer may help. Use super Glue in the curved corners and hold until dry to stop the corners ballooning outwards. Note the centre apex should pull in very slightly but due to the slight angle it might not be very noticeable. Repeat at the other end. If everything is done right the inner edges should end between the two parallel lines on the base. Once dry remove the vinyl. Here we see both the main class and lower side prototype.

The next stage can be done now or later and involves marking the inside of the cab door.... As I'm building both models I've cut out two of each type of door template. The door has been cut out. Next attach the template to the appropriate sides. Then scribe around the inside to mark the door edge. Lastly peel off the vinyl to leave the outline.

Time to build the inner layer, using the template on printable vinyl All the 0.020" (0.5mm) parts stick to plasticard. Cut out all the tricky parts and drill pilot holes for the headlights. The notches in the top of the doors are for handrail location later Finally cut out the parts ***it was a later stage I discovered I couldn't count and only made half the number of doors so I redesigned them so the pictures are slightly wrong!!!***

Not easy to see but the lines are scribes on. The vinyl is taken off. Two 14cm sole bars made from Evergreen 264 u-,channel And then stuck to the underside with the plain edges facing outwards To get them straight and square it can be easy to place them on the edge of a shelf.

Here we go...printed the base plates on vinyl And then let's stick it to 0.040'" (1mm plasticard) Drill the holes to mark the bogie centres and scribe through the markings such as centre lines ... Then finally cut out bases ..

Perfecting my trolley tower design on the prototype before doing the "proper" build....

Before getting underway I revisited my prototype to see if I could make a trolley tower. There is a photo etch one out there but it's not perfect and it will cost £6.50. I decided to make a jig and produced four panels Its not perfect and needs some tweaking but it is possible ...

BTW - this model, unlike my card variant will be "destined" to be a running tram. As such it will not have a drop floor entrance area.

Patterns printed on vinyl (subject to change) Brilliant stuff this. You can stick it to plasticard....peel it off. Unlike labels which can shred it stays as one and is infinitely better than gluing a pattern. The base sheet can do 4 trams and the other sheets are one of each prototype/main class.

Minor update tonight - retweaked my printable patterns. Can finally start to build tomorrow - and yes if you follow the build my patterns will be available at the end (in case other adjustments are needed). Then you to can also have a Boat tram, albeit you'll need to buy some add on detailing items!

Well there is no build stages here as this is a prototype and I needed to know what tweaks I needed. It's built in 3 layers, 2 x 0.5mm plasticard and an outer 0.25 "skim" layer. The middle layer needs some adjusting namely outputs for handrails are a bit tight on the door. The skim layer also needs a tweak, namely the nose ridge needs some excess material adding. Joining was harder than in card where i made it an exact size. Next time the joint ridge will stick out further and then be cut back.

TBH I have used printable vinyl to do "stickers" before. in fact I wanted to do some banners to cover over the Atlas "Bruce Forsyth" banner as an option to use some of the many Balloon trams out there, but could not find a source for a graphic for 60's 70's tram adverts for Blackpool. In this instance the vinyl acts as a stick on template without cutting around paper and glueing it on - very useful!

Well I have the card one already done with instructions! Its an 8 Meg email though lol! Ironically the card model gave me a solution to the nose ridge and the secret of my build - printable vinyl. You can print out all the parts, stick it to plasticard and then cut and drill where required and then peel it off afterwards!

Well I've not posted any pictures yet as I forgot to get do them for two early stages - however I'm going to build more than one so have actually got previous stages available. Significantly the assembly instructions will allow anyone to follow me and I'm doing a parts cut out plan. All you'd need is 1mm, 0.5mm, and 0.25mm plasticard and numerous bits of plastruct or similar...not decided on which - held back on the parts plans as I may need to tweak them! Unfortunately I can't post my actual plans as the are copyright of Blackpool Transport and they told me I can't distrubute them, Steve C

As a suggestion, I decided to formally throw my hat in the ring with a 1/76 Open Boat Tram model. Since (on a whim) I decided to build a model tramway on a 6ft shelf, having settled on Blackpool one of the trams I really wanted to have was one of the open topped single decker trams I remember from Seaside trips. Originally called luxury toastracks they quickly became called "Open Boats" since they resembled, well an open boat! Alas my dream was rocked when I discovered that these days you cannot get hold of a model. Hadfield's used to make a model and I bailed when one appeared on eBay last year and went past £60 . There was a conversion kit - that too is gone. I did cheekily write to the heritage people at blackpool on the "other enquiries" email adress and got a "photo" of plans for a concept open boat advertisisng livery that was not done. It did provide the general outline of the tram and dimension albeit the "photos" needed tweaking to get rid of distortions meaning by the time I finished by 4mm scale drawings are not 100% perfect but will be good enough. I also had to be careful that there are two variants and my plan was based on the prototype which had slightly lower sides than the rest of the fleet. Here I was helped by someone who had one of the kits and measured the sides so I knew there was a 2mm height difference. This led me to creating a card model (see around these forums) to establish any tweaks when I make them in plasticard....onwards with the plastic model.

BTW folks if anyone wants a copy of this model then just message me as I've done a full set of photo instructions as well....all 24 pages!!

Well I'm probably not going to win anything with card vs resin lol so I'll just stick this here. Blackpool Open Boat Tram 600, "Little Willy" in 1/76. I intend to scratchbuild in plastic and ended up developing it as a full card model first. Everything from the bogies to the trolley pole is card....three pieces of 160gsm A4 all to my own design. Since the plastic kit and conversion kits are long gone I want an open boat even more. Now I'm half way there!

Ok I thought I'd show some of my space card models 1/144 Space Shuttle on boosters Mars and Venus Express European Space Observatory Solar Observatory