Detailing and Motorising the Corgi Blackpool 'Balloon' Tram

[CWJ]

To resolve the light bleed effect, I cut some black foam sheet into thin strips around the LEDs:

 

 

Both the foam and the PCB are now held in place with hot glue.  I used this because it set quickly while I held the PCB in position, but it's very messy.  Thankfully all this will be hidden by the cab floor and the dashboard/controller.

 

The two wires from the PCB are soldered to the copper strips underneath.  Just a brief touch from the iron to avoid melting the plastic floor!

 

Finally for today, I used Glue 'n' Glaze from Deluxe Materials to fill in the light openings.  This is just a trial really (it will need removing again when I paint the body anyway).  They still look like this at the moment, but when they're gone clear I'll pop the lights on and see how they look.  If they don't look convincing, I'll whittle up some solid lenses out of clear plastic rod.

 

Cheers,

 

Will

[CWJ]

A very brief update today:  the Glue 'n' Glaze in the headlights set over the weekend, and I actually topped it up as it shrinks and I wanted the lights to have flat fronts.  The tram was then transferred to the Low Light Photographic Test Facility (AKA a carboard box) to see what the lights look like.

 

 

 

I'm happy with that.  As usual, LEDs look a bit brighter in photos than they really are.  What you might not be able to see from the photos is that the lights are not as diffused as in RTR models, they're a bit more 'twinkly' like the real thing.  Even when switched off the lights now look more realistic than the silver-painted dots they replace.

 

Now please excuse me for a few days / weeks while I repeat the soldering and hot-gluing three more times for the remaining lights.

 

Cheers,

 

Will

[CWJ]

All the head and tail lights are now installed and working, so it's time for some proper modelling.

 

The etched central partitions/floor were glued in place, after soldering in a brass handrail on each side:

 

 

If you're interested in how I made these, please take a look at my 'Etching Brass On The Cheap' thread.

 

 

Next I prepared the cab bulkheads by using solder to repair some defects in my homebrewed etches:

 

 

I'll actually use these to conduct track voltage up to the interior lighting PCBs, hence the wires which will run through the floor to those copper tapes I installed earlier.

 

Poking the camera into the windscreen, here's a view of the lower deck, loosely assembled. Yes, those staircases are on the wonk:

 

 

To be continued...

[CWJ]

I soldered a short spring to the top of the bulkhead walls which will make contact with the lighting PCB above:

 

 

This protrudes through a hole in the glazing moulding, but I'll need to trim a bit more off the diecast body to prevent short circuits:

 

 

I think this pretty much completes the lower deck interior assembly, except for painting.

 

 

I'm still enjoying playing with the lights too...

 

 

Cheers,

 

Will

[CWJ]

A few more interior details...

 

On the left is the handbrake wheel and on the right is the top of the controller and the driver's side dashboars.  They're made up of brass etches, brass rod and a lump of styrene.

 

A passenger's eye view. I must remember to put a blob of paint on the end of the power handles to represent the knobs.

 

 

Although this detail is a bit fiddly, it will be very visible through the windscreen. This angle shows why I haven't bothered modelling anything on the can below waist height - it wouldn't be visible.

 

Cheers,

 

Will

[ianmianmianm]

I'm a rare visitor here and a hopeless modeller. But looking at this, as you are going hell for leather, is there any scope for replicating the seat moquette? Even if that means just printing some pattern shapes on paper and gluing them on the seats?? Thank you!

 

[CWJ]

Great minds think alike: I'm already on it!

 

I scoured the internet for a decent photo of the moquette in even lighting (it was actually on a bus) then extended the pattern like wallpaper to create the middle image below.  The green patch below is actually the same pattern shrunk to 4mm scale and repeated enough times to complete the Balloon.  

 

 

I'm thinking of giving my tram the type of seats in the LH photo, so I can paint round the edge of the transfers with dark green to represent the leather.  Otherwise my home-made transfers tend to have a scruffy edge.

 

I won't actually paint the interior until the body and chassis are all finished, then I can do all the messy painty stuff at the same time.

 

Cheers,

 

Will

[CWJ]

One more quick job to complete the downstairs interior: the staircases have been reinstated in their new positions closer to the side walls. I've also added handrails using 0.3mm brass wire and a back panel in black styrene as there was previously nothing under the stairs.

 

 

 

Probably my last update of 2023, so Merry Christmas! Let's see if I can finish this tram before the distractions of spring and summer.

 

Cheers,

 

Will

[NickBrad]

This is looking really impressive, I was wondering if it would be possible to turn my Grimsby trams into working models and now I have confidence that it can be achieved.

[CWJ]

Thank you for the encouraging comment, Nick.

 

My motor bogies will be a bit experimental so there will be plenty of opportunities for me to go wrong!  I'll give it a go, though, and if all else fails I can resort to a RTR or kit-built chassis.

 

Cheers,

 

Will

[CWJ]

Over the last week or so I've been working on the lower deck's lighting circuit board.

 

 

This is the underside, with seven surface-mount LEDs and their current-limiting resistors. The blue bits are pieces of insulation tape to keep the copper tracks electrically separate from the copper tape I had to run over the top. This technique is a bit experimental (AKA foolhardy!) but the board needs to be as thin as possible or the tram interior and body won't go together correctly.

 

If I make another tram I'll have a go at a custom PCB to make this neater and more robust.

 

 

The top looks a bit neater. Just a bridge  rectifier, a 3.3V regulator and a capacitor. The regulator keeps the LEDs a constant brightness at track voltages above 5V. The capacitor is supposed to prevent flicker, but currently doesn't. At first I thought I must have chosen one without enough capacitance but after some tinkering I suspect there's just a dodgy solder joint somewhere.

 

 

Into the high-tech test facility she goes, with the lighting board loosely plonked in position. As usual, the photos make the lights look a lot brighter than they are. With the room light turned on the tram's  interior lights would be invisible from this angle.

 

 

A couple of indulgent photos with the top deck on and some fake moonlight to replicate the romantic ambience of an evening on the Lancashire coast...

 

 

Anyway that's enough of playing with electronics. Back to modelling next time.

 

Cheers,

 

Will

[CWJ]

As I slowly work my way up the tram (excluding the bogies - they're in the too-difficult pile for now!), it's now the turn of the top deck.  I started by cutting away some seat bases to make room for the rectifier and voltage regulator beneath.

 

 

I then removed Corgi's incorrect bannister panels and replaced them with my own etches which actually allow the little folk to climb the stairs.

 

 

These will also conveniently make the capacitor virtually invisible.  It's the only physically large piece of electrickery that I couldn't hide anywhere but the stairwell.  The etched panel is fitted with some 0.5mm brass wire handrails which will also conduct said electrickery up to the ceiling for the top deck's lighting.

 

 

The upstairs interior being pretty much ready for painting, I moved on to the exterior.  The destination blinds are a bit 2-dimensional, so I'd like to have a go at glazing and illuminating them.  I started by marking out; the two existing holes are for positioning pegs on the destination box:

 

 

Then a rectangular hole was drilled and filed.  This is just to let the light through from the LEDs, it won't be visible later:

 

 

This area will be covered by the destination boxes, and they will need a somewhat neater hole in the front, so I included them in my etch:

 

 

To be continued...

[CWJ]

These were really awkward to hold and the file went deep into my thumb on at least one occasion!  A more intelligent modeller would have made some sort of jig to hold the piece still, or maybe glued it to the tram before filing.

 

 

Unfortunately one box broke when I was drilling the starting-hole for filing.  This die-casting metal is fairly flimsy, especially when a ham-fisted Yorkshireman is taking his cordless drill to it.  But it will all be glued to the tramcar and covered in filler anyway, so it's not the end of the world.

 

 

Viewed from behind, the hole in the box is slightly larger than the hole in the brass, which I hope will allow me to glaze it neatly.

 

 

...and from the front:

 

 

Finally, I rubbed the parts down ready for glueing and filling:

 

 

These bits have now been glued together with 2-part epoxy for maximum strength, but the glue is taking a long time to 'go off' so I hope I mixed it correctly.

 

In the next thrilling update I'll be attaching the pantograph and illuminating the destination blinds. 

 

Cheers,

 

Will

[CWJ]

Just to finish off yesterday's update, the destination boxes are now glued together and the joints have been filled and sanded.  This is important because on the real thing the box seems to be one pressing from sheet metal (or maybe a GRP moulding, but either way it's a one-piece item with no joins on the front).

 

 

I'll come back to those when I've built up the motivation to solder some more surface-mount LEDs.  For a more satisfying diversion, I decided to work on the pantograph. As supplied, this model is painted bright red, so I partly-disassembled it and gave it a bath in acetone (nail varnish remover):

 

 

After bring stripped and cleaned, here are the bits alongside an untreated pan:

 

 

I was then going to paint the parts a dirty black colour, but the blackened pan head gave me an idea.  According to the internet, steel can be blackened by heating it until dark red and then quenching in motor oil, so that's what I did.  No dramatic photos of me wielding the blowtorch, but hopefully you can see the difference:

 

 

It's a bit blotchy but I wanted the pan to look weathered anyway so that's fine.  One of the springs got damaged by the heat, I should really have been more careful or just left the springs unblackened.  Then, almost inevitably, I lost the other spring.  Thankfully I had a spare one from a different type of pantograph.
 

To be continued...

[CWJ]

All the blackened parts ready for reassembly...

 

 

...and after the three-dimensional puzzle of putting it back together.  It needs weathering, but it looks better for not being bright red!

 

 

Edited January 17 by CWJ

[CWJ]

What follows could be useful to anyone fitting a Corgi Balloon tram with a Sommerfeldt pantograph.

 

The tramcar roof comes with a hole which is larger than the fixing screw that comes with the pan.  I decided to use the base of Corgi's plastic pantograph as a kind of spacer, but fitted from the inside.  This is what it looks like:

 

 

On the inside of the roof, I had to cut down the diecast boss below the pan.  This and some other parts of the moulding were crudely attacked with a large drill bit, taking great care not to go through the roof!  I couldn't get a file in to tidy these up, so they'll remain a mess for ever more, but out of view so I don't care.

 

 

Poking the plastic pan base through from below, and trimming the round part a little, the screw is now in exactly the right place to fix the pan down.

 

[CWJ]

Here's the assembled pan, with plastic insulators clamped between the pan base and the roof, so no need for glue.  Strictly speaking the supplied insulators are probably a bit lavish for 600V DC, but they look neat and hold the pan at the right height.  Also, from the complete lack of clear photos online, I assume hardly anyone really knows what the real insulators actually look like.

 

 

By the way, this method insulates the pantograph from the metal bodyshell so it would be suitable for current collection; you'd just need to attach a wire to the screw head inside the tram.

 

 

It looks much more like the real thing with a pantograph on it, so that was a satisfying job.  Blackening the metal also means I don't have to worry about the moving parts getting clogged with paint.

 

Cheers,

 

Will