A few weeks ago I started work on some GCR Parker stock... to briefly recap. The original donor vehicle is a Triang 'Caledonian' carriage that was a good 50mm too long, had the wrong detail at both ends and the wrong roof profile. The windows and the compartments can be worked with but the windows require attention as they're too small. I cut the carriage sides up and rearranged them to get the window layout I needed, then used a file to widen the windows to something approaching the right size. I then had to leave off the project for want of 0.5mm styrene strip to form the beading.

And now we can pick up again! The aforementioned styrene strip having arrived I've been able to make a start on the beading. This I anticipate to be something of a chore; it takes quite a while, the strip has to be cut accurately, when it gets picked up it has a tendancy to ping out of the tweezers, and it is so fine that the glue tends more to melt it than anything else. So last night I did the lower half of the corridor side and then called it a night. I'm debating how to go about the upper half, as there is less beading there but rather more panelling. It may become a partial overlay of 0.5mm styrene sheet more than anything else...

To get a better idea of what I am building, I decided to give the carriage side a coat of primer. Previous to this I was laying white plastic on top of maroon plastic, which had been painted first red, then green, then a mucky brown colour. Concentrating on it tended to send my eyes crossed.... now it is all one colour I can see more clearly what I am doing!