Things have been coming on quite nicely of late;

The Baby Deltic bogies have had the white-metal sideframes grafted on to the nylon/plastic cradles with Araldite and are now ready to go back into the chassis.

The chassis frame has been fettled to fit snugly into the body, which has been receiving the first round of panel/vent/louvre details:

Unfortunately there have been a couple of “grrr” moments along the way. Going back and re-checking the reference materials proves that the centre roof panel is too narrow. Also it’s also .5mm skew which although may not be that noticeable, it’s got to come off anyway.

Also, I’ve made one side vent the wrong size and put it in the wrong position. Better to notice now rather than after things have been painted…

The vans have been serving their purpose as fiddle mitigation. Buffers and couplings are fitted and they’ve had a coat of primer.

Couplings. These generate as much impassioned discussion in 3 mil as in any other scale, I have dabbled with Spratt & Winkle and Kadee, but I decided a good while ago that all my built stock needs to be operationally backwards-compatible with my original Tri-ang tension-lock coupling stock. So I use Bachmann OO gauge couplings as they are less obtrusive, un/couple well and with 3 different shaft/housing variations they can be stuck on to just about anything.