Now that the H33 project is ready for painting, its time to move onto the next project – a pair of D95.

At the moment my plans are focused around putting together a 5 coach cross country rake consisting of A D95 BTK, ? FK, H33 RC, ? TK, D95 BTK. While the FK and TK are not yet decided, I was wondering if some conversions of Bachmann sunshine stock might be suitable (given that I have plenty of donor coaches already). I want to try and get a mixture of diagrams / coach types.

The D95 is following the same approach as the H33, starting with a pair of old Hornby D95s. I have a set of Comet sides for both the RH and LH versions, roof vents and corridor connectors. Bogies will be MJT / Bill Bedford (the plan being to leave on the BR1s until painted and then get the bogies). The underframe will be knocked up from bits of plasticard and my scrap box.

After stripping down the coach to remove the BR1 bogies and the ends, the first job was to remove the roof detail. Ignoring the Comet instructions (and using photos / a thread on RMweb) I have decided to model the coaches with the original roof arrangement (which only had two hand rails). The first step was to carefully carve off the moulded vents, filler and handrails with a chisel bladed knife, and new holes were drilled. When building the H33, I found a few of the roof vents ended up falling out while I was working on the sides, so this time they will be added once the coach is complete.

The next job was the removal of all raised detail on the sides (there’s a lot of it!), again this was carved off with the chisel blade (before attacking with a course file). The key area here is the 2mm section under the rain strip, which needs to be completely free of any trace of the old raised door lines in order to give a good fit for the new sides.