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MiniArt 1:35 scale European Tramcar with lights


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Hi everyone.
I'm back once again with yet another project that involved adding lighting to and this time I picked the MiniArt European Tramcar in 1:35 scale. 
I liked the idea of being able to create a small diorama with the included base and figures and was going to build it right out of the box. But once I looked closely as the instructions and then the actual parts I thought there was the potential to add some lighting and so it all began.
The kit itself is quite well made with very little to no flashing and the level of details throughout is excellent. Some of the tiny parts are hard to cut from the sprues and the rails have far too many sprue joins to hold them in place. Why do you need about 6 joins to hold a thin rail that is about a half inch long? Other than that everything seemed to fit very well and I only had to make a few mod changes to incorporate the lighting. I don't pretend to be a pro and know very little about electronics and I may have used a little poetic justice with this build but I hope I have created a scene with many 'stories' within it depicting life in  1940's Germany. The German soldiers were a late addition to use up some of the spare space on the base and to give it some atmosphere. 

Anyway, on with the pics. I hope you enjoy them and thanks for looking. More pics can be found HERE

 

Tram01 Tram02 Tram2b Tram03 Tram04 Tram05 Tram09 Tram13 Tram14 Tram20 Tram15

 

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What a nice scenery! Very atmospheric with the lights on. You built this superb model and the historical figures with a lot of attention to detail.

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I love the MiniArt tram and accessories and seeing one made up at Telford inspired me to visit the Tram Museum in Vienna in 2019. Your build is smashing and has a lot of atmosphere in it. Well done. 👍

 

Dave

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I like the idea of lights. It is so large that it benefits from it. The headlight should only be lighted i the direction it is travelling and dark in the other end though.

I don't build much in this scale anymore but this got me attempted to build the tram.

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On 7/3/2021 at 4:50 PM, Toryu said:

What a nice scenery! Very atmospheric with the lights on. You build this superb model and the historical figures with a lot of attention to detail.

Thanks for your kind comment and I'm glad you appreciate what I was trying to create. 
I usually only get an hour or so most days with building but that gives me time to reflect and think about the next stages. I now have magnifying glasses and they have helped greatly with painting the details.

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18 hours ago, davecov said:

I love the MiniArt tram and accessories and seeing one made up at Telford inspired me to visit the Tram Museum in Vienna in 2019. Your build is smashing and has a lot of atmosphere in it. Well done. 👍

 

Dave

Thanks, Dave. I really appreciate your kind comment.
I bet the tram museum was amazing to visit and very interesting. When I was gathering information regarding this build I was surprised about the many different variations there were of this model and others. Like the way this model inspired you to visit the museum, it inspired me to create a scene that could have been quite common back in the old days.

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18 hours ago, Orso said:

I like the idea of lights. It is so large that it benefits from it. The headlight should only be lighted i the direction it is travelling and dark in the other end though.

I don't build much in this scale anymore but this got me attempted to build the tram.

Thanks for the information about the lights. I had both lights lit for when you view it from either direction and for the photographs. I wasn't planning on adding lights at the beginning but as I started building the undercarriage I saw the potential for them and thought they would create a nice atmosphere.  This was a great model to build and 1:35 scale is about my limit now as I struggle with anything smaller.

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  • 6 months later...

Hello Kevin,

I am currently in the process of building the excellent 1:35 scale MiniArt European Tram Car, and even before seeing your very helpful post on Britmodeller, I was already thinking that I want to have working lighting on this model. I have ordered a couple of LED & Fibre Optic kits from a seller on Ebay, which should be arriving during the next couple of days . . . . . In my head I do have a sort of idea where I might locate the PP3 battery and also thoughts about how to route the wires and the fibre optic tubes, but do you have any previous information about how you went about this yourself?

Please don't go to any trouble over this Kevin, but I would be interested to know how you approached the lighting setup for this tram.

Many thanks,

David Watson

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22 hours ago, hooper1958 said:

Hello Kevin,

I am currently in the process of building the excellent 1:35 scale MiniArt European Tram Car, and even before seeing your very helpful post on Britmodeller, I was already thinking that I want to have working lighting on this model. I have ordered a couple of LED & Fibre Optic kits from a seller on Ebay, which should be arriving during the next couple of days . . . . . In my head I do have a sort of idea where I might locate the PP3 battery and also thoughts about how to route the wires and the fibre optic tubes, but do you have any previous information about how you went about this yourself?

Please don't go to any trouble over this Kevin, but I would be interested to know how you approached the lighting setup for this tram.

Many thanks,

David Watson

Hi David
 

I'm always glad to hear from anyone who wants to take their model building to another level by adding lighting and having a kind of plan in your mind is exactly how I approached this build so 
I have uploaded some more pictures which may help to guide you and the link to that is below. Sorry this is short but I have a lot on at present but I will come back to you as soon as I can with any other info I feel may help.
Good luck, enjoy and you will be happy with the result.

https://flic.kr/s/aHsmX9y8wm

 

Kind regards

 

Kevin

 

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On 1/11/2022 at 2:55 PM, Lazy Modeller said:

Now that's a very lovely diorama! What a marvelous scenery!

Cheers

LM

Thanks LM

 

I'm not usually into diorama's but I didn't want to leave the large base half empty so I came up with this idea and was surprised how it turned out.

Regards

 

Kevin

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  • 3 weeks later...
On 1/11/2022 at 4:42 PM, hooper1958 said:

Thank you very much Kevin, and I will not bother you while you are busy.

 

David

Hi David

Sorry not to get back to you sooner but I was wondering how you were getting on? 
Following on from my previous conversation, I have played around with fibre optics but couldn't get on with it, especially trying to bend it around corners - I know it can be done carefully- but by using small LED's and very thin wiring I managed to achieve what I wanted. 
I will say that I was surprised at how easy it was to light the tram although the side lights by the doors were the hardest to do.  For the front side lights I used 1.8mm red LED's and all I did was to drill the holes to fit them and connected the live wire from one to the other and then the negative one to the other light. By doing this I only had 2 wires running to the centre of the body. Then I did the same with the other end of the tram and connected everything up under the bogie as there was enough room if you keep everything flat. So it wasn't visible from the sides I just cut a thin piece of plastic and mounted that in front of the wiring. For wire I used Kynar wire as it is very flexible and quite thin so it could be well hidden.
For the internal lights I used warm white LED's as they are the correct brightness for that time. For those I just mounted about 5 LED's onto a narrow strip and attached that to each end of the roof. Done correctly they are well hidden. I hope this is of some help for you.
Regards

Kevin

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