Lugsdale Road - Tram Service Part 1

Entry posted by paulprice March 4, 2018

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I don't know how it happened, but I have managed to get a little modelling time over the last few days, so in a break away from producing endless buildings I thought I would work on my Tram idea.

My initial idea was to try an add a little more movement to the new layout other than just the trains, I know there are various systems available to produce moving vehicles, but they all seemed to complicated to a simple chap like me. So where did that leave me?, well thanks to a wining bid on Evil bay a fem months back I managed to obtain a couple of the old Tetley trams, produced a good few years back.

I thought even thought they are not really to scale, they were close to N gauge so I might be able to do something with them, I mean what could possibly go wrong?

Now the original model Tram was of the bogie variety, but as this was going to be a bit of a test project, and like most of my modelling not to be taken seriously I thought I would cheat and see if I could use a Kato chassis for tractions.

Again a couple more Evil bay purchases from a dealer in Japan, not only got me a couple of the chassis considerably cheaper than from UK based suppliers but believe it or not actually faster than some UK orders I have placed recently.

So as I had most of the basic components I needed, I popped to a local homeware store and came away with some of the most violent paint stripper know to man, and dropped two of the trams into it, so it could work its magic.

A couple of days later, I found that the layers of paint literally fell away from the trams, unfortunately so did a little of my skin on my left had, but it as I have a spare hand there was nothing to worry about.

So with a slightly chemically damaged left had, I thought that as luck was still on my side I would get my Mini-drill powered cutting discs to see if I could open up the bottom of the Trams to see if I could get the chassis to fit. Remarkably not only did I manage to survive with all my fingers still attached, but I also managed to cut two holes in the bottom of the trams to accommodate the chassis.

A little trimming of the chassis and a quick test fit shows that I may be correct in thinking it may be a possible working project, I know there will be other modellers out there who may have already gone down this route, but for me its "undiscovered country".

I still need to thin the chassis down a little to that the Tram body will sit lower but, as this will involve using my razor saw, I thought I would be prudent and put that off for another day, after all I'm kind of use to having all my fingers attached to the relevant hand, well for now at least.

So there it is, a little progress made on one of my little projects, but as I type this, I have just realised how much more I have to do on this so called quick project, at least I only have 1 tram to make...well maybe just a couple.

As ever until the next time Happy Modelling