Light Rail Products: model trolley projects: sparky

Hartland “Sparky” Locomotive continued

9. After knocking in all the rivet detail, check the “exterior” and see how it looks, did you miss any, some more needed in some areas. Did you rivet across the lower doors areas where you should not have?

10. Very carefully, using a metal straightedge and knife cut the four walls apart. Leave some extra material at the top edge. This will be trimmed later after gluing. Carefully fit the sheets to each cab wall, do they line up OK? Windows, not yet cut out, look OK? Rivet details is in the right places? Cut some small wooden strips, which will act as the lower parts of the cab wall (to fill in) where there is now no material other than the styrene. When measuring the amount of wooden spacer or filler needed, leave a little edge of styrene lower then the wooden piece. This can be trimmed later as needed.

11. Another decision was that one door should be “opened.” Very carefully cut one door out using a saw and exato knifes. Make this an open doorway as shown in the photo at left. Set the door aside, use some styrene and wood to increase the door height. Set aside as this detail will be glued on later.

12. If things look good, and line up well, smear glue onto one cab side, and lay on the styrene materials, clamp or add weights to insure a good strong bond between the cab and the styrene. Let this sit overnight at least (or say 10-12 hours). You’ll want the styrene to be well bonded to the body before moving it. Glue all four sides, and glue the lower wooden fill part. Make sure this wooden piece is parallel with the car sides.

13. After the glue is dry, carefully start to cut out the window areas. If you want, start to prime and paint the styrene as you go along.

14. For the “hoods” these needed to be widened. Carefully cut length wise, basically in halves. Measure how wide they need to be on your model. Add some heavy plastic pieces to the inside that will reach across to the other half of the hood. Glue the plastic to one side only first, and clamp. After gluing these together, let them sit and let the glue harden well.

After they were carefully glued together, some wooden filler pieces were added for strength and then some styrene (with rivet detail) was carefully added over the top and front side. Again leaving some extra materials to be trimmed off later.

15. The roof needs to be filled in with wood and modeling filler to make the roof skin smooth, and added some to the inside ceiling to make this smoother. Measure and cut small pieces of wood for trolley cleats and also cut some trolley boards to length. These were made to extend over the cab roof ends about 3/4" (18"scale inches). You can also start to paint the roof. We chose a reddish color, along with the boards.

16. For the main frame, cut off the rounded extension between the two-journal boxes at the lower edge of the frame to make this part straight (on each side).

17. The next photo shows the cab, cab door, main frame, roof. You can see the cleats have been sanded to fit the roof contour and glued in place.

One suggestion is to try to put the pieces of the model together from time to time, see how it all fits together (or doesn’t, in some cases)!. You’ll be able to cope with the smaller fixes and repairs now, rather than later when everything is painted. You will have a better chance of a successful kit bash. Remember, we all have to start somewhere, and skills take some time to develop. Ask your local hobby shop, or email LRP with your thoughts.

In Part Two, we will finish the cab, roof, and frame. We will add the trolley pole and base, trolley pole hooks, Kadee couplers, interior details, and paint and finish the model.

Click the forward icon below to continue with the Sparky model.

scroll down to see more photos