Progress has slowed somewhat on the D11... I managed to get as far as building the tender and adding Romford bearings, and bulking out the frames around the tender axles to stop the wheelsets falling out. I have a tender now that actually wants to move....

... But then I remembered that even before starting my L1 I had a Mainline LMS 57' brake third on the workbench. I've posted somewhere on the boards about my conversions of ex-Mainline (now Bachmann) LMS stock into something that looks GC-ish. The process, for those that haven't read the thread, is quite simple. You take apart the donor carriage to its components and leave them in paint stripper for a few days. After drying the body off you have to remove, either with dremel or sandpaper or a scalpel, all of the beading, and the roof ventilators. Then you have to make the matchboarding, a simple but fairly mind-numbing process of taking a 10mm strip of paper, marking vertical lines on it at 1mm intervals, and then measuring up each lower panel of the carriage and cutting a corresponding length of the strip. Then you have to score into the paper on each vertical line using a scalpel, roll it up and roll it back out again (this whole process is to make the matchboarding effect more noticeable), then glue it (I used UHU) onto the carriage body.

You end up with something that might look a bit of a mess (all photos are of the first carriage I converted):

Now the next stage is to paint it. For the teak I use a double coat of Humbrol #118 and then drybrush some Humbrol #10 over it. On the interior I use one coat of Humrol #118, and for the upholstery and floor I use either Oxford Blue (Humbrol #115, I think?) for first class or Wine (Humbrol #73) for third. In third class as well I paint the compartment walls with Humbrol #60 to give a creamy finish (this inspired by the internal finishing of an GNR compartment carriage preserved on the Severn Valley Railway).

The roof and toilet windows are painted matt white.

I then re-assemble the carriage and paint the solebars and footboards with Humbrol #118. Once transfers and varnish are added I work the teak over with some artists' chalks (generally the browns), which brings the teak up to a nice lustre. At the same time I work some greys and black over the roof and dirty browns over the underframe. Eventually I end up with something like this:

It's not 100% right but it certainly has the look of GC rolling stock. I've two more to convert after the one I'm working on...

....not to mention the trio of Ratio Midland carriages I've decided to rebuild, the seven Hornby clerestories I'm going to work up, the Ratio carriage that arrived in the post this morning and the pair of Ian Kirk kits I ordered last night- a buffet car and a 7 1/2 compartment composite. And my old Hornby teaks....