A bit of progress has been made over the last week or so, although one of the coach bodies (the Brake Third) suffered fair bit of damage while I was trying to dismantle it, so this has now become a source of spares and will eventually become a tarpaulin-covered siding filler!

I'm now left with the Open First and Open Third which have had the paint stripped form the bodies (mostly) and are almost ready for their first undercoat. The roofs still require a bit of attention, as some of the torpedo vents have been knocked off and a bit of smoothing is required down the centreline where some file marks are very prominent.

I have also started the interiors, with the Open First being the most advanced in terms of progress. I have started with a false floor from thin plasticard, followed by partitions in the appropriate places using the instructions, diagrams in Historic Carriage Drawings (Campling) and the beading on the body sides to get them located correctly. The partitions in the First had to be scratch built as the only ones I had were for a centre-door and I needed offset ones, but this wasn't a great challenge, more a bit time consuming to get them to fit in with the curvature of the roof comfortably. The tables are from my spares (and quite probably the ones intended for the kits in the first place!) The next thing is to fit the seating, I have plenty of strips of seating to cut, but again that's a time consuming rather than difficult job (and finding the time isn't always easy!)

The false floors are a little curved at the moment, but once they are painted, they will be fitted to the floor of the coach to hold them nice and flat, although the coach roofs do press the partitions down which helps keep them flat anyhow.

So the next steps as mentioned are to tidy the roofs, undercoat the bodies and carry on with the interiors. That should keep me quiet for a bit!!

Cheers

J