I've been comparing photos of the trolley used on Ottawa's Central Experimental Farm with an old Tyco trolley shell I bought at a swap meet a few years ago. To me it looks like that with a few relatively simple modifications I can transform the shell into a trolley that looks fairly close to the one used on the farm.
The biggest modification will be cutting it down from an 8 window body to a 6.
Also, I'm not sure if I'll equip it with a standard gauge 4 wheel truck, or go with an N gauge one so it'll be an HO9 vehicle like the Hong Kong tram. Much to my surprise the Tyco body is only slightly wider than the double-decker tram, so it could work in HO9. I'll have to give this some thought.
The molding is quite decent once the crudely applied factory paint job has been removed. There's a bit of clean up with sanding sticks to do, but overall it's not bad.
See that X below the two windows on the right? That's the section that'll be cut out to turn this into a 6 window job.
Stay tuned!
Nice job removing the paint. On that cut-out section, should it be staggered where the sides and the roof/clerestory cuts aren't over top each other? Or can the large left section be butted to the remainder of the right side with one clean joint? I'll be enjoying your journey through this conversion.
ReplyDeleteLast night I did the cutting and made two cuts straight though the shell on either side of the X. I've started on the long job of sanding, filling, and filing to get things to look nice and square. I'll post some photos soon. Also, I've decided to make this an HO9 vehicle as it'll be a vehicle on a new little HO9 diorama I want to build over the winter.
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