wayouteast
Sr Member
After several years of procrastination due to feeling a bit daunted by the sheer scale of the project (as well as the fantastic final results that other people have accomplished) I've finally made a start on my Polar Lights 1/350 USS Enterprise kit. I've been incentivised by the recent release of their 1/350 USS Grissom, which I'm also working on.
With the Enterprise, I decided to work from the inside out, so I've spent the last couple of weeks building, detailing, assembling and lighting the main interiors that will be visible when the kit is finally put together - the arboretum, shuttle/cargo bay and the senior officers' lounge. I will probably also do the rec deck and maybe the lower saucer hatch, but these will be far less visible and consequently less detailed.
Work in progress pics. Apologies for the blurry nature of some of these - it's really hard to get decent depth of field with such small items!
Arboretum - with temporary lighting in place:
The plastic parts were enhanced with some photoetch detail from Paragrafix, painted and then detailed with flock and fine sand. Tiny 'rocks' were also added. The crew people are 1/350 resin naval figures from a French company called L'Arsenal and are a lot more realistic than the flat photoetch ones that you can get. I decided that my Enterprise is going to be the original 'no bloody A, B, C or D' ship, after the events of the Motion Picture but before its downgrading to a training vessel in The Wrath of Khan. The crew clothing has therefore changed from the rather bland jumpsuits of the first film to the more eye-catching uniforms of the later ones, and I painted the crew in three variants - enlisted crew in the red jumpsuits with the beige yoke, officers in the standard 'monster maroons (with different division colour collars) and engineering crew in the white/black protective suits. Very fine paintbrush and magnifying glasses required!

Senior officer's lounge:
The lighting for this small unit - probably a nano SMD above each of the two areas of the lounge - will be mounted in the main saucer itself. Other than painting and the addition of a couple of screens and/or paintings, the only additions to this part were the crew figures (as above) and some more realistic foliage. The 50 pence piece is for scale!

The cargo and shuttle decks - unassembled and with temporary lighting in place:
For the additional detailing on the shuttlebay and cargo deck I mostly used the Paragrafix photoetch set, with a few elements of the PNT photoetch set too - mainly the struts and braces on the walls, railings, perpendicular corridor walls and replacement window frames. I added more lighting along the walls and in the workbee bays with short lengths of fibre optic. These will hopefully transmit the main hull window lighting - which will be between the outer hull and the walls of the shuttlebay - and look a bit like spotlights. The bay itself is lit from above with LED strips mounted immediately above the supplied transparent parts of the kit. There are also nano-SMDs mounted at the tops and bases of the two turbolift shafts to illuminate them.
For the equipment and craft I used the supplied shuttles and workbees from the kit as well as some more accurate resin travel pods and cargo containers acquired from Pendragon/Don's Light and Magic some years ago before Don's sad passing. The travel pods come with some really nice detailed decals too. In the end I opted to use only the more modern Type 4 shuttles as the older 'wedge-shaped' shuttles take up a lot of room and wherever you end up placing them they tend to block the (very limited) view of the bay. I might display the unused vehicles on the base of the finished kit perhaps. I bought two kits originally (to use one as a 'test-bed' for the more complex paint or construction processes, so I ended up with four of each type of shuttle.
The photoetch kit comes with some manipulator arms for the workbee and a 'cargo train' grabber, so I used these to create a flying workbee with a cargo train in the rear cargo bay, simply glued to the back wall of the bay.
More crew on the walkways really bring the scene to life, and there are even crew behind the observation windows on either side of the main shuttle deck! I am waiting for another set of figures to arrive from France, and will add some maintenance and utility personnel in the cargo bay and on the main shuttle deck eventually.
These photos were taken before I matt-coated the floor and the walls are a bit dusty and needed a quick clean!

I experimented with lighting the cargo deck in red as a homage to the red-lit hangar you can see in Andrew Probert's original concept paintings. It made the lit turbolift shafts stand out nicely but was too dim to really see the detail at the back of the area, so in the end I opted for white light. In the final build, the windows of the viewing room above the main shuttle bay are still red-lit, though, as a small gesture towards the original art!

Lighting finalised and loose-fit test:
Once I'd settled on exactly how the two main internal elements were going to be lit I wired them up, ensuring that the lighting took as little space as possible - not only is the fit tight to begin with, but I also need to leave room in the hull for the various circuit boards that will run the timed spotlights, navigation lights and strobes, impulse to warp drive deflector and nacelle effects and phaser and photon torpedo effects. The main control board and sound module will hopefully be located in the base, along with all the control buttons.
Once the lighting was in place on the ceilings of the arboretum and the shuttlebay I finalised the placement of the various elements of the scene and fixed them in place. Then I did a quick loose-fit test to make sure that both internal structures fitted into the hull of the ship as I hoped. Of course, once the main hull is painted and assembled the only view of the interior will through the shuttlebay door, so you'll not be able to see the full layout as well as you can here!
It is an amazing piece of futuristic industrial design on Andrew Probert's part. I like that seeing it like this makes the shuttle hangar space on the deck under the shuttle bay itself obvious, and the function of the two lifts that convey the shuttles from storage to the main deck itself. Very clever, and something that the smaller, more closed-off shuttle bay in the later films loses. I also like seeing the relative locations of the arboretum and the cargo decks.
I couldn't resist taking a few pictures of this 'cutaway' view. Note that none of the external hull parts have been light blocked in any way so there's lots of bleed through from the arboretum.

With these completed, I'm going to hopefully finish up my (much simpler) Grissom in the next few days before gritting my teeth and starting the daunting task of assembling and painting the various components of the Enterprise itself! Here are a couple of pictures of the Grissom parts, painted and waiting for lighting to be installed and final assembly!

With the Enterprise, I decided to work from the inside out, so I've spent the last couple of weeks building, detailing, assembling and lighting the main interiors that will be visible when the kit is finally put together - the arboretum, shuttle/cargo bay and the senior officers' lounge. I will probably also do the rec deck and maybe the lower saucer hatch, but these will be far less visible and consequently less detailed.
Work in progress pics. Apologies for the blurry nature of some of these - it's really hard to get decent depth of field with such small items!
Arboretum - with temporary lighting in place:
The plastic parts were enhanced with some photoetch detail from Paragrafix, painted and then detailed with flock and fine sand. Tiny 'rocks' were also added. The crew people are 1/350 resin naval figures from a French company called L'Arsenal and are a lot more realistic than the flat photoetch ones that you can get. I decided that my Enterprise is going to be the original 'no bloody A, B, C or D' ship, after the events of the Motion Picture but before its downgrading to a training vessel in The Wrath of Khan. The crew clothing has therefore changed from the rather bland jumpsuits of the first film to the more eye-catching uniforms of the later ones, and I painted the crew in three variants - enlisted crew in the red jumpsuits with the beige yoke, officers in the standard 'monster maroons (with different division colour collars) and engineering crew in the white/black protective suits. Very fine paintbrush and magnifying glasses required!


Senior officer's lounge:
The lighting for this small unit - probably a nano SMD above each of the two areas of the lounge - will be mounted in the main saucer itself. Other than painting and the addition of a couple of screens and/or paintings, the only additions to this part were the crew figures (as above) and some more realistic foliage. The 50 pence piece is for scale!

The cargo and shuttle decks - unassembled and with temporary lighting in place:
For the additional detailing on the shuttlebay and cargo deck I mostly used the Paragrafix photoetch set, with a few elements of the PNT photoetch set too - mainly the struts and braces on the walls, railings, perpendicular corridor walls and replacement window frames. I added more lighting along the walls and in the workbee bays with short lengths of fibre optic. These will hopefully transmit the main hull window lighting - which will be between the outer hull and the walls of the shuttlebay - and look a bit like spotlights. The bay itself is lit from above with LED strips mounted immediately above the supplied transparent parts of the kit. There are also nano-SMDs mounted at the tops and bases of the two turbolift shafts to illuminate them.
For the equipment and craft I used the supplied shuttles and workbees from the kit as well as some more accurate resin travel pods and cargo containers acquired from Pendragon/Don's Light and Magic some years ago before Don's sad passing. The travel pods come with some really nice detailed decals too. In the end I opted to use only the more modern Type 4 shuttles as the older 'wedge-shaped' shuttles take up a lot of room and wherever you end up placing them they tend to block the (very limited) view of the bay. I might display the unused vehicles on the base of the finished kit perhaps. I bought two kits originally (to use one as a 'test-bed' for the more complex paint or construction processes, so I ended up with four of each type of shuttle.
The photoetch kit comes with some manipulator arms for the workbee and a 'cargo train' grabber, so I used these to create a flying workbee with a cargo train in the rear cargo bay, simply glued to the back wall of the bay.
More crew on the walkways really bring the scene to life, and there are even crew behind the observation windows on either side of the main shuttle deck! I am waiting for another set of figures to arrive from France, and will add some maintenance and utility personnel in the cargo bay and on the main shuttle deck eventually.
These photos were taken before I matt-coated the floor and the walls are a bit dusty and needed a quick clean!








I experimented with lighting the cargo deck in red as a homage to the red-lit hangar you can see in Andrew Probert's original concept paintings. It made the lit turbolift shafts stand out nicely but was too dim to really see the detail at the back of the area, so in the end I opted for white light. In the final build, the windows of the viewing room above the main shuttle bay are still red-lit, though, as a small gesture towards the original art!


Lighting finalised and loose-fit test:
Once I'd settled on exactly how the two main internal elements were going to be lit I wired them up, ensuring that the lighting took as little space as possible - not only is the fit tight to begin with, but I also need to leave room in the hull for the various circuit boards that will run the timed spotlights, navigation lights and strobes, impulse to warp drive deflector and nacelle effects and phaser and photon torpedo effects. The main control board and sound module will hopefully be located in the base, along with all the control buttons.
Once the lighting was in place on the ceilings of the arboretum and the shuttlebay I finalised the placement of the various elements of the scene and fixed them in place. Then I did a quick loose-fit test to make sure that both internal structures fitted into the hull of the ship as I hoped. Of course, once the main hull is painted and assembled the only view of the interior will through the shuttlebay door, so you'll not be able to see the full layout as well as you can here!
It is an amazing piece of futuristic industrial design on Andrew Probert's part. I like that seeing it like this makes the shuttle hangar space on the deck under the shuttle bay itself obvious, and the function of the two lifts that convey the shuttles from storage to the main deck itself. Very clever, and something that the smaller, more closed-off shuttle bay in the later films loses. I also like seeing the relative locations of the arboretum and the cargo decks.
I couldn't resist taking a few pictures of this 'cutaway' view. Note that none of the external hull parts have been light blocked in any way so there's lots of bleed through from the arboretum.






With these completed, I'm going to hopefully finish up my (much simpler) Grissom in the next few days before gritting my teeth and starting the daunting task of assembling and painting the various components of the Enterprise itself! Here are a couple of pictures of the Grissom parts, painted and waiting for lighting to be installed and final assembly!


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