I've been considering the last few days how I can improve my Robinson stock. The main problem with these carriages is that the removal of the panelling on the donor coaches was patchy at best, and it began to irk me.

What I did was to see if it was possible to do on the upper body sides what I did with the lower, in the way of a paper overlay. I quickly decided that a one-piece overlay was going to be too tedious, so I chose to do it in slips instead. One long slip a cantrail level for the length of the carriage, and a seris of smaller slips of varying widths to suit the uprights between the doors and windows. These were glued in place by being saturated with PVA glue, much better than using UHU, which I find tends to leave trails everywhere.

I then gave the upper works the same paint treatment as I did the original carriage- two coats of mid-brown with a coat of dark brown drybrushed over the top, and then worked over further with brown chalk pastel.

The result? A much better, smoother, slab sided appearance I think.