Fourth article in a series

Photos by the Author

This month, the Tractor Cabin. Following construction of the tractor frame and suspension, construction moves to the cabin and its interior. This is an area where some of the vagueness of the instructions is apparent as the printed instructions and diagrams leave some of the construction details unclear. You will probably want some additional reference materials to help fill in the details. There are several publications on the M25 available, and I have included the URL for a web site that has interior reference photos and drawings.


Following completion of the frame, the next step is to start the cabin interior by building the engine housing assembly and shift console. The engine housing skin (part 64) is printed as one large piece but I cut it into two parts. I decided it would be easier to fit if I separated the portion of the skin that folds over the stepped rear of the assembly. The radiator hose (parts 76-76d) did not fit properly. I wound up scanning these parts and fabricating an additional elbow section to get it to fit. The instructions suggest that you may want to make the hose out of some other material entirely. With the engine housing completed and mounted to the cabin floor I added the wheel wells (parts 68-68a and 69-69a) and moved on to the cabin shell before completing the interior details.



I started the cabin shell by building most of the interior components first. Since several of the jerry cans were needed for the cabin interior, I built them at this time. At ten parts each (parts 100a-100h), the jerry cans are little models in themselves. I actually assembled most of the of the interior details at this time before moving on to the cabin skins.



The cabin shell consists of a large one-piece outer skin (part 105) to which is glued an interior skin consisting of five pieces (parts 105a-105d). The interior skins are to be backed with 0.5mm cardboard before gluing to the exterior skin. Since the cabin sides are angled, some allowance has to be made to allow the sides to bend. To allow for this, I cut the backed interior skins at the bend lines. I then beveled each edge of the cut lines to accommodate the direction of the bend. This left enough play to allow the cabin sides to bend easily and once the cabin sides were folded together the beveled edges sealed themselves.


Once the interior and exterior skins were glued together, I cut out the window and door openings. I also painted over all of the white location indicators for the interior parts. I have been using Testors Acryl brand Olive Drab for painting the cut edges. It has a different reflectance then the paper inks and so shows up noticeably in the model photos but it actually is a very good match to the printed models color when viewed in natural light. According to my references the fire extinguishers are the wrong color. They should have been red not the yellow they are printed in.


After gluing the cabin skins together I attached all of the interior details. As I mentioned, you will probably want some additional references for completing this. The gray tube on the rear cabin wall is a spare 50cal machine gun barrel. This is not clearly indicated in the assembly instructions and no parts are provided. I made mine by scanning the kit barrel parts. The bolt cutters on the ceiling are also not a part of the kit but were present in my reference photos. I scanned these out of a GPM Panzer kit. Brackets 123a are provided that attach to the cabin ceiling beams but I could not find part 123. This would have been signal flags in a canvas sack. I made this from wire and paper painted Olive Drab.


With all the cabin interior details and the ribs in place the sides can be folded together to form the cabin shell. Despite some shortcomings the cabin interior is actually very well detailed, and given the size of the model there is ample opportunity to add additional details if desired. Parts 129 represent canvas machine gun covers. These attach to the 50cal ammo cans (parts 128) located on each of the cabin sidewalls. I did not think the kit parts looked much like sacks so I scanned them onto lightweight paper that I then crumpled to give the impression of a loose sack and glued this over a cardboard machine gun form. The forward firewalls (parts 66 and 67) are somewhat tricky. You will need to carefully dry fit them before actually gluing them into place. You may have to trim the cutout in part 66 to get it to fit over the steering gear box (parts 84-87).



With the cabin shell complete I finished building the seats and drivers controls. Each seat back and cushion is a single piece. I did not particularly care for they way they fit, so I cut them into separate pieces. I also made spacers from strips of card stock to make sure the sides of each cushion remained aligned. I ran a strip of thin paper around the rim of each cushion to smooth the edges and then painted the cushions gray



Here is the cabin interior before adding the cabin shell. The instructions suggest installing the shell and then gluing the steering wheel in place through a window but I decided it would be easier to have it glued in place already. The interior details conform very well to my reference material.


Once the cabin has been completed you can start applying the outer details, and there are a lot of them. Completing the exterior details will be continued into the next installment. The first details to be done are the window covers and doors. I attached them in the same manner as the model photos with the doors closed and the window covers open. You may want to consider attaching one, or both, of the cabin doors in an open position to provide a slightly better view of the interior details. Since I want to spray the completed cabin with matt varnish and the front windows are glazed I decided to wait until I complete the rest of the cabin exterior before attaching them. As you can see in the photo I have completed the front cabin details. Everything went together well with no fit problems. Next I will be completing the roof details including the 50cal machine gun.



In the next article, I will continue with the exterior cabin details.

References:

This URL links to a pair of pages containing reference drawings and photos of the cabin interior.
http://www.chars-francais.net/kithobbyist/dragwag1.htm

This URL links to a pages containing exterior reference photos of a M-25 tractor and trailer.
http://tanxheaven.com/m26dr/m26.htm

Summary:

Model:	Nr. 189 M25 "Dragon Wagon"
Publisher:	GPM
Scale:	1/25
Difficulty:	Rated 3 on a scale of 3
Number of Parts:	2350
Instructions:	Polish, English, German
Diagrams:	7 pages
Fit:	Very Good
Coloring and Artwork:	Coloring Very Good Artwork Excellent
Printing:	Excellent