I think he has already decided to go the photoshop route.
It is most likely the best solution.
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I have, it is 
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Meanwhile I’ve been quietly building up a stash of new Figure sets over recent months & assembling a crowd of obsolete extras all the way back to my earliest dioramas in the mid 1990’s, all together there must be over 200 bodies available for duty. From them I need to make at least 50 new figures, mostly civilian. All of the extras are wearing the wrong clothes, and/or in the wrong poses, and/or with the wrong facial expressions. I’ve been looking at some new ideas for figure (re-)construction motivated by the need to have the main players appear in several poses during the narrative sequence but I’m not ready to reveal all yet.
Some are born great figure painters, others have great figure painting thrust upon them, and then there’s guys like me. However, in a brazen attempt at self-improvement I hereby blame my tools (acrylics) absolutely for all past deficiencies, and will revert to oils for the first time since um…1973. Thus re-inspired & brimming with confidence, I launched myself into…a bicycle.
Two very important bicycles. Agents Gabcik & Kubis pedalled to the Liben bend on the morning of 27 May 1942 on bikes borrowed from the courageous civilian families who’d been harbouring them for weeks, and who would all be betrayed in the weeks that followed. Gabcik’s ride was subsequently described in the German police reports as “Ladies’ bicycle, black rims, frame & forks red & ivory, handlebars red, handgrips black, saddle red-brown, tool bag brown, chainguard black”. Who could ask for more? Odd that the typically chromed parts (wheel rims, handlebars) were painted, perhaps an attempt to cover corrosion so maybe an older model. Kubis also rode a ladies’ bike, quite new and predominantly gloss black, now on display in the commemorative Museum in the crypt of St Cyril & St Methodius Church in Prague where seven of the fugitive agents died just three weeks after the attack…
To complete the story of both bikes, after the attack the wounded Kubis rode off on Gabcik’s red bike because it was parked against a lamp post closer to him. Gabcik escaped on foot, so Kubis’ black bike was left abandoned at the scene along with a briefcase containing spare grenades & fuzes. Here’s the black bike put on display in a central Prague store window by the German police, offering a big reward to anyone correctly identifying the owner of any of the found items…
Nobody came forward regarding that bike, but the story of the red bike is just too tragic. After pedalling fast a couple of kilometres south the bleeding Kubis left it outside a shop and walked the remaining two blocks to the Novak family’s apartment safe-house. Mrs Novak immediately sent her 14 year-old daughter to bring the bike home, but the girl was spotted by neighbours wiping blood off it along the way. The already big reward was soon doubled for information and proved too tempting for those neighbours. As a direct consequence the entire Novak family was executed at Mauthausen concentration camp five months later, on the same day as several hundred other arrested civilians involved (or suspected of involvement) in assisting Anthropoid agents - men, women, children, infants. That was a completely separate reprisal to the infamous Lidice & Lezaki wholesale massacres.
In Memoriam to the over-5,000 that died after/because of Anthropoid, not all those responsible ever met justice.
The superb Masterbox/NorthStar bikes came from their “Frau Müller” and “French soldier WW2 era” sets – the former obviously a ladies’ bike (a dead ringer) & I converted the latter from a gents bike by cutting the cross-bar & gluing it parallel with the forward lower bar. Gotta love those spokes, they looked like bears to install but provided the axles & wheel rims are gently scraped with a blade for a couple of revolutions the brass just drops into place…
Here’s the converted MB gent’s bike…
Here’s MB original gents’ bike in foreground, MB ladies’ bike conversion rear left, Tamiya’s 20+ year old German soldiers’ bike rear right…
Oops just realised the red bike still has a gentleman’s saddle…some putty can fix that, anyhow Father M. says they scale out OK but too bad there were no luggage racks on the originals…
If I’ve held your attention this far then you may have noticed I must have bought four bike kits in total. Quite so (the fourth was MB’s “German soldier bicyclist”) and all kits’ very useful accompanying figures will eventually appear in identities very different from as advertised, which is incidentally why I didn’t buy two Frau Müllers/ladies bikes
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Beauty job on the bikes Tim . I have a few of the Tamiya offerings , shame I’ll have to get pe spokes to make them passable .
Really love the bikes… One wonders how they got their stuff with them without racks…
The Nationals Solcialists (really?) excelled at realliation without discrimination. I you helped a “terrorist”, your baker, and the shoe maker of your baker would be considderer a terrorist too 
I put one of those excellent bike kits together recently as well. I did not have the idea of leaving the frame on the sprue whilst attaching the fiddly spoke parts though. Nice idea! It would helped a lot by stabilizing those flimsy thin parts. Not to mention offering a better handhold.
J
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Thanks guys, Glenn - I’d thought the Tamiya set DID have PE included when I ordered it (certainly by now, given the competition etc), maybe BNA was just clearing old stock…but they’ve got the three Masterbox sets I’ve mentioned for cheap prices, so seeing as you get a better bike, the PE spokes and bonus useful figures it might be better to do what I did. The Tamiya set’s only good for the riding figure (for my purposes) & the standing guy looks like he’s 7ft 6.
Jerry – don’t worry it only took me over 40 years to learn that trick too, from someone else of course…I thought it was you?
Erwin – there is some ambiguity about the racks, you’d expect every bike to have them fitted de rigueur especially in war-time when it was the only means of free/un-rationed transport for most people…even the typical wicker baskets on the handlebars were missing. I’m guessing maybe those accessories were deliberately removed before the agents used them, to make identification more difficult i.e. betraying neighbours recognising the bikes if seized. Or even if recognised maybe the alibi would be “Yes it looks a bit like my bike but it was stolen last week, and mine had racks/a basket etc. (which witnesses will confirm) so how can I/you be sure…?”
Whatever, somehow both agents attached briefcases to their bikes to get there, Gabcik’s containing the dismantled sten & Kubis’ containing the spare bombs/fuzes. I guess it’s just about possible to wrap the briefcase flap around the upper descending front frame bar & fasten it, but the pedals (and the front wheel when turning) would get very close to colliding with it. The only other option was around the handlebars but that would make steering dodgy. This original police photo seems to be showing…which?
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Hi Tim,
Great work on the bicycles, and I agree with Jerry about the useful tip for constructing/installing the spokes, clever idea, 
.
Cheers, 
,
G
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Hey Tim, just checkin in again, good to see you’ve figured out the wire system, sheeesh!
A lot has gone on since my last visit. I was still stuck on the trees when yall sprung the wire issue, lol. And yes, me too, metrically illiterate, HA! Using the old system in construction for so many years I speak in off terms like, 3 and 2, as in 3 &1/4". We count the 1/8th inches. Sheet rockers would understand that, right?
Monumental work, without a doubt! I’m checkin in more often, been missing way too much 
SHEETROCK !! … Slowly I turned , step by step , …
Horizontal not vertical runs … easier to mud …
Commercial : vertical , cuz of codes
Residential : horizontal , better to flow over bowed studs , if hung vertical and a seam fell on a bowed stud it would magnify the bow …
Sorry , it’s just that I hate hanging rock …
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Holy sheetrock the walls are a-closin’ in, wake up Glenn it was just a dream! Hey G & Ski thanks guys, good to see you’re back in da hood 
I’m gonna have to pop in more often!
Yes Glenn, Rockin Bby! It’s the tape and mud that bites, rock is eeeaaaasssssy!
It looks like the bag is hanging from the handlebars…
Yeah BroSki you’re right , hanging it is ok but mudding sucks …
Erwin – you’re probably right, in the “shop-window” photo above maybe it is one of the straps on one of those bags that’s visible stretched down/across from the handlebars…my problem is it looks way too long to be hanging down there. Anyhow I’ve only just managed to “read” the higher of the two dark lines coming from the region of the car’s right wing…the lower one’s a lamp-post shadow, the sun apparently low in the sky off to the left. The higher more acutely angled line is the kerb of a traffic island running down the middle of the street - for some time I kept trying to make it part of the bike’s handlebars but it was always too high. And the car’s shadow explains the other dark area behind the saddle 
I just looked at the bike and came to this conclusion:
Hmm here’s how I’m seeing it…
…but whatever it seems that bag’s handle must be hooked around the central handlebar joint, there’s no other explanation
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This is pretty much what I first saw. Seems like the bag may be hanging by its carry handle and not a long strap. Kinda makes sense; hop on a bike with a soft side brief case. Where would I put it? Hang it by the handle on the handlebar near the center and ride.
(And I think one of your blues is “cyan” whatever the ****? that is…)
Yeah, you’re right. I erroneously interpreted the wheel being a sling/strap. Still the bag/case is in the handlebar, no matter how risky it indeed is to drive with it…
Thanks gentlemen so it looks like we have a winner - it now seems clearer (to me anyway) that the bag was hanging close enough to the centre-joint to make steering easier, and by its own handle rather than a long strap. All I have to do now is replicate that