Flora/Behind the Scenes

Behind the Scenes

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This is a behind the scenes subpage for Flora. This subpage contains all behind the scenes material relating to said article.

Background information[]

Television Series[]

Flora is a fictional standard gauge tram engine created by Sharon Miller and John Lee.

In 2008, Flora made her debut in the twelfth series episode, Tram Trouble. This episode was her first and only appearance.

Flora has not been seen in the series since 2008.

She was the last character of the model era before the series transitioned into full CGI.

According to the Official Website, Flora is based on a 1904 Moseley Road Tramway steam tram from Birmingham, rebuilt into standard gauge from 3ft 6in gauge. Instead of buffers, she has three couplings upon her front and rear bufferbeam. Several different types of trams were supplied to the tramway and Flora appears to be a hybrid of a Falcon and a Kitson tram, though her build date would make her a Kitson tram. All Moseley Road steam trams were withdrawn on 31st December 1906 in favour of electric trams, with none surviving into preservation.

Behind the Scenes[]

Gauge 1 model[]

Flora's model was scratch built to run on gauge 1 track by model maker, John Payne ^[1]. The model was made out of brass, whilst her wheels and chassis were constructed from CNC.

Three different facial expressions were sculpted for Flora, though one, a shocked face was left unused. The faces were first sculpted in clay and from that resin casts were made using a silicone mould. The faces were designed by John Lee, and sculpted by Clare Kinross.

The eye mechanism had two servos, one for up and down movement and one for left and right movement. The up/down servo was attached to the body. The left/right servo had a rod attached to the arm, which connected to a bracket. The eyeballs were coupled to the bracket and locked in by the face-plate, so whenever the servos were powered, the eyeballs would move however the crew member desired.

The twelfth series marked the beginning of the show's transition into CGI and the characters' faces were animated through CGI with the aid of motion-capture animation. The physical models' moulded faces were replaced by white targets with triangles to fix a computer-animated face in post-production. Flora's resin faces were only used in background shots.