The Thomas Modeller: Flora the Steam Tram

Flora the Steam Tram has been a project that was started last year after the Twelfth Series had aired completely on Channel 5s' 'Milkshake' mornings, originally, i had originally planned to use the Hornby Toby body and re-model it, but, this proved to be quite complicated. So, as always ,my method for making Flora was to use plasticard to build the body and using a Hornby Toby chassis as the donor for this model.

The body was drawn onto the plasticard using a permanent marker, i used the Toby body as a base to draw the cabsides, front and rear facing ends. The plasticard ws then cut out and stcuk together. To make the body more sturdy, i cut extra side-walls and stcuk them to the inner sides of the main body, this has helped to make Flora extra sturdy on the rails.

The main problem was cutting out the little windows to make Flora's cab 'see-through', but the windows came out horribly, so i decided to print out some computer drawn windows and glue them onto some rectangle cut plasticard strips. These have come out better than the other windows, so once this was done, i then went on to re-prime the model as the colour before, was too dull in the sunlight.

After being left overnight to dry completely, i then bought some Humbrol 'Insignia Yellow' paint and masked off the lower half of the model all the way around, i did this as the model is painted yellow and red, (Yellow for the top half and Red for the bottom half). I painted two coats of Insignia Yellow onto the model and let each coat set thoroughly, before masking off the top half and painting the bottom half in Humbrol 'Scralet Red'. Once all the paint had dried, i bought some HMRS Green lining and lined the cabsides before adding Flora's nameplates.

The cab roof was them painted in a second coat of grey and left to dry, before the funnel was then painted in Humbrol 'Satin Black'. The 'Sodor Tramways' headboards were made using two more rectangle plasticard strips, with the banners being made on the computer and printed off before being cut and glued onto the plasticard. These were then gently placed onto the sides of the cab roof and glued into position, i used Romfords 'Screw-link' couplings on the front and rear of the model and the face mould comes from a Trackmaster Flora model, which i will be using to make some new moulds in plaster and latex later in the week.