Unlike HERPA's Atego, the overhead wiring maintenance vehicle has got Trilex rims, and you can't buy an exact replica of those in 1/87 scale. So from the very beginning a huge portion of creativity was required; at least we were able to use some purchasable miniature wheels as a starting point.
The original vehicle is equipped with Trilex front and rear rims; each of those consists of three segments which are being held together by the 'wheel star'. This construction makes the use of tube tyres inevitable whose walls are slightly higher than the ones of HERPA's minature (tubeless) tyres.
After
thorough studies of all our photos of the Berlin vehicle we compared many different miniature wheels.
Eventually, we went for the accessories pack 'Trilexfelgen 11.5 mm' (Trilex
rims) by VK-MODELLE, a German manufacturer renowned for their
quality models and parts. As far as we know, at the moment (February 2014)
nobody else makes 1/87 scale Trilex rims as beautiful, detailed and realistic as
the ones by VK-MODELLE.
Our
photo on the left shows that they even managed to reproduce the 'balloon'
character of the original tube tyres. While the front wheels would only need
some paint, the rear rims caused us a lot of work - we actually used eight rims
to make the two rear Trilex wheels we needed for our vehicle!
And
off we went! Initially, our DREMEL WorkStation served as drill stand: We secured
two rims with the help of a toolmakers vice and bored through them with a 3 mm
drill.
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