Thanks, Florian. I'll be looking forward to the photos. This is a very nice photo.

I ♥ Muenchen. Although the time I visited the Nymphenburg Palace I rode with the U-Bahn.

I have been there several times and have ridden the Strassenbahnen

many times too. Cheers, Peter.

The undriven bogies came from the Vienna Düwag (C class and E class) trams. These are undriven models produced for the Vienna tramway museum in the 1980s and 1990s. They came with plastic wheels, but Halling has metal wheels for these axles.





The car bodies came with cast-on bellows. However, I prefered "real" working bellows. As one can see, the trailers of these P-class sets are also articulated.





The idea for making bellows of folded paper came from a small Eastern German firm calles Schicht, when they released their model of the articulated DR double-deck trainsets in the 1960s. Schicht has eventually been nationalized, its products then distributed by Piko. After 1990, it has been re-privatized as "Sachsenmodelle", to be finally taken over by Tillig. Unfortunately, these sets have been out of production for many years now, but you can get them via Ebay for good prices. They look very impressive and are an interesting addition for every collection.

In a German tram forum, I finally found a template for fitting tram bellows.



The cab shows a typical 1960s' design. Some may think that P-class trams are "strange-looking" streetcars: an articulated, but only for-axled set, with no Jacobs-type bogie. But the conecept of two sections with an own bogie for each is not that uncommon. Very similar cars had already been in use in Bremen before. The Eastern European Tatra KT4 trams use the design of a four-axled articulated tram car as well.

Class P was designed to handle the narrow curves of the Munich tram systems. Bavarian streetcar systems, however, traditionally use very narrow curves, which could not be handled by all of the standart trams which came in use in Western Germany and Austria in the postwar era. This frequently meant for Bavarian tram operators to design their own new models.

Regards,
Florian

Another picture of the chassis for the front section of the motor car.



The chassis of the motor car, assembled for the first time.

Still some more weight had to be added not only to stabilze and balance the car, but also for more traction power.

Regards,
Florian

Riding the 1:1 scale P-class trams, I got that idea of more detailing for the interior furnishing. So, should I really model details like the ticket vending machine, the grabpoles, or the ticket validators? I had never done that before. I just decided to do so.

But before I started with the additional detailing, I noticed that one would clearly see the bogie suspensions from outside, which would spoil the model. So I added coverings consisting of two layers of thick transparant blister packaging material. The layers had been glued together with Loctite instand adhesive.

Metal wire was used to model the grabpoles.

Finally, it was time for some paint.

Extensive test runs, however, showed a need for traction tires. So I ordered such wheels from Halling. But traction tires were still not enough. Still, some more weight had to be added. Extensive tests were necessary to find out how much ballast was needed, and how much ballast was too much.

I talked with experts in our club and got some usefull recommendations. Finally, the problems could be solved.

Regards,
Florian

It has been, so far, my first Resin kitbuilding project. It soon turned out that articulated trams of this axle configuration are generally a difficult matter. However I do not expect that any manufacturer will ever produce a model of these P-class trams, just because of the limited number of different versions. To add more weight, I used lead curtain weights.

The Halling chassis for the Vienna Düwag E-class tram came with two motors and two driven bogies. If you remove one motor, fit the remaining driven bogie with new which have traction tires, and add some weight, the remaining motor will have enough power to move the six-axled motor car and the four-axled trailer car.

That's what I did, just to transplant the removed second motor and the removed second driven bogie to the Munich P-class car.

http://www.halling.at/en...fertype=1&referid=73

Regards,
Florian

The car bodies had been given away to a fellow club member for to get paint. When they came back, the decals had already arrived, so I could start to fit the car bodies with the correct lettering. Luckily, I had taken more than enough photos to see where the different pictograms had to be placed.

The running numbers I have chosen are 2010 for the motor car and 3037 for the trailer car. So-called "die-hard Märkliners" might propably wonder about the running numbers of P-class trailer cars.

This set is running on line 17, as scheduled during the 2012/2013 timetable period. With the new timetable which became effective in December, 15th, the P-class cars have now been transfered to line 21.

Of course, the cars got the Munich city emblems (coat of arms), called the "Münchener Kindl", which means "Child of Munich". Originally, this figure had been a Capuchin monk. Nowadays, the figure is generally seen as a girl, and they choose a young lady every two years who than performs as the "Münchener Kindl" for this period of time, acting as some kind of representative for the city of Munich.

Finally, it was time for the first test runs of the completely assembled set.











Regards,
Florian

Hi Florian, Strassenbahn looks super! You did a great job with them. They really add such

a touch of realism to any German city model. Froehliche Weihnachten und ein gutes neues

Jahr. Peter

Excellent work!