Having completed the shortening of the sides for the first coach yesterday, the first job after getting home from work (and putting the baby down for the night) was to repeat the process on the other 3 ends. This time I thought to try and save a little time I would use a fine saw blade and cut the majority of the excess off the coach end, before filing back to the side. To assist with this the end of the plastic side was coloured black with a marker pen so that you could easily see if the file was touching the plastic.

Once this was done it was back to work on the LH coach’s corridor side.

As the corridor side’s etch was being fitted to the compartment side of the donor coach, there is an additional window on the van end which is only on the corridor side. After using the etch to mark the rough position, I chain drilled around the line and then opened up with a scalpel blade. (Shown in blue on the below drawing)

Next up was the van doors / centre window. For these it was a simple case of removing 1mm around the edge of the centre window, and 2mm around the edge of the door windows (the latter is to provide clearance for the drop lights and was only needed on the LH etch). (Shown in green)

Finally was the main corridor windows, I started by scoring across the tops of the plastic between each window. Next the left most window towards the van end had 1mm removed from van end edge. I then cut through a line the length of the corridor windows about 2mm below the bottom of the frames, before using the Duron cutters to chop the tops of the windows out. Once the section had been removed it was a simple case of tidying up with a file / chisel blade checking against the etch to ensure clearance (shown in red).

Once complete I gave the model a final once over with a course file, and scraped the upper 3mm of the side with some scrap etch to ensure a crisp joint under the rain strip. Lines were marked on in line with the door gaps, to assist with the alignment of the new side. The coach was then covered with Evostick (with a line on the etched side along the top and ends), and the side was fitted to the coach. This time I left the interior out, which resulted in a much closer fit (as a result of being able to better apply pressure.

I also made a start on the LH interior, flipping the Hornby interior through 180 degrees and removing one compartment. It now needs the toilet, guard’s compartment and van wall adding from plasticard. Out of interest what does the inside of the guard’s compartment look like?