After a trip to Duxford for a flight in a 1940s Harvard, last night I managed a little work on the 20/3, I have been trying a technique I have used previously for paint repairs. applying a very thick layer of paint, then cutting back with wet & dry to get a smooth finish with the surrounding paint, before applying a thin top coat and varnish to blend together. It worked very well on previous projects which have had paint issues such as my Virgin mk3, so hopefully it will work well here (I will see tonight)!

With that drying the next job was to start work painting the red buffer beams, this will need several coats (especially as I am brush painting rather than spraying), I need to do the buffer beams on 37196 and 612 at the same time. Coat 2 will be applied tonight, depending on the weather I will also try and get the roof sprayed grey.

The final job will be replacing the wipacs onto the ends, This of course involves finding them!

37612 needs a fair bit more work, one side is almost complete (although it will eventually need the DRS bodyside logo replaced with the version that has no website). the other side is in a much more sorry state, again it suffered with poor paint adhesion (in part I suspect driven by my use of Railmatch rather than my usual Phoenix for the DRS blue) This should be a minor touch up.
A bigger problem is the lack of doors, at some point after spraying the doors were removed from the body shell. I have found one pair, but cannot find the other two. in fact I am sure I found 3 but have not relost one of them.....

I have not yet decided on a way forward for this, but I suspect plasticard & the silhouette cuter will be the answer.

Finally the ends, having sold the WIPAC ends I had previously converted, I now need to convert a conventional pair of ends. This needs the recess for the multiple working socket, along with the jumper cables either side. Another job to tick off this evening.