milli

Hey folks,

here's a sample Millimodell for those of you who'd like to try making one on their own.
For a 1/500 scale model, make sure that the downloaded pic has a size of 242x57 pixels. If you like, edit and improve it with paint, change the colors or do a b/w version to color by yourself.

You can also get a copy of the pic at www.millimodelle.de where I also put some text how and where to cut and fold.

Have fun and a nice day!
milli

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picture edited, should be correct now.

For a detailed explanation, how to do, please have a look below!

milli

hey, here's a more detailed explanation, how to do:

first, prepare the edges where to fold, indicated by dashed lines, slightly with a cutter (don't use the sharp side to avoid cutting where not intended!). This makes it easier to fold the side pieces of the bus as well as the engine cover and front parts.

The front part of the bus consists of seperate pieces: at the right side of the pic, there are the windscreen and the engine area below. To get a good result, make sure that you cut horizontally (pink line) below the windscreen, beginning left at the vertical line indicated by the pink dashed line.
Then, fold the upper part with the windscreen using the pink dashe lines and the lower part for the engine using the green dashed lines. For the engine cover (left side of the pic), cut vertically along the roof starting at the bottom where the black dashed line indicates it.

The horizontal black line indicates the roof top; have in mind, that the roof is not flat as the front and rear parts of the bus show. When cutting horizontally along the roof, don't cut the front and rear parts which are slightly higher!

Before you fold and glue the bus, cut horizontally just below the tyres. To get a better result, you can also try to cut just below the grey painted bottom of the vehicle, making the model look better.

By now, you should have the model cut and folded and proceed with the next step: gluing it together. But first, prepare the roof: wind it around a pencil, small round stick or something like that to get the rounded shape for the roof. You can later adjust the width by cutting, if it should be too high for the front and rear parts.

To achieve sufficient stability of the model, prepare two pieces of cardboard (approx. 1mm thick): one will be used for the bottom and be glued to the paper just above the tyres and the second one will make the top.

Figure out the length of the sides and width of front/rear parts at the bottom and cut the first piece of carboard. Then get the length for the piece use for the top, which should be slightly shorter (bottom piece covers also the engine area, top piece just goes from front to back of the roof).

Before glueing, try if the pieces fit well to the folded paper and adjust by cutting if necessary!

Prepare the top piece with some glue and glue the top of the bus to it, beginning with the rear part, followed by the sides. Don't glue the front part, yet. Next, you do the same with the cardboard for the bottom part. Make sure that it's as orthogonal as possible to give the bus a good shape (otherwise it'd look like it's bending to one side).

The last step is to finish the front part. Flip the windscreen and the engine cover parts and glue them to the cardboard or opposite pieces of paper.

That's it!

Don't be disappointed, if you fail at the first try - make copies of the pic and print a whole sheet of busses, you might need them...

If you encounter difficulties or the pieces don't seem to fit as desired, just edit the pic with e.g. MS Paint and add a few pixels or change the colors.

I hope, this explanation helps you. Have fun and let your schoolkids travel safely through your residential areas!

milli

Ok, to show you how they (could) look like when you do them, here a small compilation of pics from the ready-build school busses.

I am currently also working on some other designs - because old school busses are often sold to central and sout american countries as vehicles for public and local transport (you know those "chicken busses" ... ? I traveled on some in Guatemala and Ecuador, quite a great experience and adventure to get off alive...!! )

Maybe I can post some pics of them within the next days and if you built an airport using the South American Herpa Airport-Set, this might be a nice touch of genuine local transport for you...

c ya,
milli