Metro train 81-717: my conversion from a Technopark toy

This page is about my conversion of a "Technopark" metro toy into a 81-717 metro train model. The toy model was just introduced on the marked and costed me about 12 euro per car at a toy shop in Kiev. The toy is made in china and represents a russian metro waggon. The picture on the box shows a E* unit, but contains a 81-717 head waggon.

The toy has a metal top and a plastic bottom. One door can be slided open. When that happens various typical metro announcements are played by a built in speaker. Simultaneously the front headlights are flashing with red(!) lights.

Top view of one packed and unpacked metro car. the scale of the train is unclear, it is close to H0, yet is is slightly smaller (but larger then TT).

Front of the metro. Notice the unusual front color scheme.

Three cars lined up. Note the nice detailed metal top body parts and painting. The obvious drawbacks are:

3rd door is cut out. In the openening a plastic door without window openings is placed.
The boogies are not movable and are located too high.
Front coupling is just a big ring, back coupling is a hook, which makes it only possible to couple multiple cars in one way.
The front of the train is painted blue and silver. A very irregular color scheme for this type of metro.
4 of the 6 headlights actually are made as holes while the remainig 2 are just painted.
At the back end of the metro 2 back windows are missing. These appear to be just welded shut.

The metal top can be easily separated from the plastic bottom. It is hold together by a set of small screws.

The metal top as seen from the inside. Driver cabin is separated from the rest by a plastic holder.

The first problem I tried to solve was the plastic 3rd door which stands out from the rest.

The door is not glued to the body, but it fits almost perfectly in the opening.

When looked at separately the door has also a plastic staircase connected to it on the right side. On the left side there is a part of a mechanism that activates the speaker and lights when the door was opening.

I made the window openings in these plastic doors and glued it back into the waggon bodies.

Plastic bottom part of the toy. The wheels and the floor are made as one whole. The speaker and batteries are also inside this part. The bogies can not move and have plastic car wheels instead of railroad wheels.

In the next step I cut out the bogies from the metro bottom part. I added plastic to the parts where the bogies were located.

The bogie sides are made with quite some details, so these can now be reused when making new bogies.

Since I want my model to be operational I used a Japanese electric motor boogie with combination of these sides. Most important part was to choose a motor bogie with correct axle distance.

And here is the resulting bogie, ready to be used.

Other, non motorized boogies I made from styrene plastic parts.

Now the bogies are rolled under the modified bottom part and screwed back onto the top part.

Detailed view of the motorized bogie under the metro.

In order to couple metro cars together I have used a Fleishmann short-coupler, with its base shortened. The couplers can not rotate, but are a good connection.