Bus ready for departure (1/35)

My 1:35 scale version of the Opel bus from the Nystrup-Ubehage-Dimholt-Skovby route is now ready for departure. The route connected the towns of Nystrup and Skovby via a route through the dark and inhospitable woods around the small hamlets Ubehage and Dimholt.

The bus picking up a passenger on its way to Nystrup.

 In the last blog post on the bus I was getting ready to fit sides to the model. An operation I had read other modellers found rather difficult. Thanks to that knowledge I was well prepared and the actual process went smoother than expected.

Sides fitted to the chassis. The roof is only temporarily fitted.

With the sides fitted I finished the weathering of the interior and prepared the seats for instalment. The seats are placed extremely close to each other and there is very limited room for the model figures to be fitted as passengers later. Perhaps the bus was the inspiration for the design of the seat placing in Ryan Air commercial airliners?

Ready for fitting of the seats.

Seats fitted and all exterior details glued on. The bus is ready for primer and paint. I fitted turned brass width indicators on the front mud guards. The width indicators came from RB Models from Poland. I had to make a rear view mirror myself as I wasn't able to locate one among the kit parts.

When the primer was completely dry I started masking to begin air brushing. As orange has bad coverage over the blue colour I masked the areas to recieve blue and spayed orange on the window band directly on the primer. After drying I masked the orange area carefully and air brushed the blue colour. I used Vallejo 70911 'Light Orange' and Vallejo Air 71005 'Intermediate blue'. Mudguards were brush painted black. Details were also painted with a brush. The thin chrome band separating orange and blue areas was painted a day I felt I had a particularly steady hand. Decals were designed and ordered from 'Skilteskoven'.

The bus during detail painting. After painting I gave the complete model a layer of gloss varnish to prepare the surface for the decals.

I applied the decals with the use of decal softener and setter from Mr. Hobby. While I don't really know if the setter liquid does anything useful, the softener definately helps the decals to conform the model's surface. When satisfied with the decals I gave the bus a final layer of gloss varnish.

After fitting two passengers, a driver and fitting the windows I closed up the bus by gluing the roof in place (see the figures built and painted in this previous post). Originally I had planned to fit more passengers, but the seat spacing makes it difficult. Other modellers planning to build the bus could perhaps consider adjusting the spacing by leaving out a row of seats? On the roof rack I placed the spare wheel, a fuel canister and a suitcase tied down with EZ Line.

Crossing the viaduct over Nystrup Gravel's 600 mm. line. The bus is heading north towards Ubehage on its way to Skovby.

A rear view of the Opel Blitz bus. Made from a 1:35 scale kit from Ukrainian manufacturer Roden.

With the bus finally finished I can now move on to other tasks. More on those projects coming up soon.