One thing I tried to do on this blog is document the cock-ups as well as the triumphs, so in the spirit of honesty, here's what happened with the 70 footer this week. Rest assured, it's back on track now, but it's definitely been one of the more trying episodes...

As mentioned last time, I had primer on and over last weekend I went on to apply GWR cream, which went on very successfully. I then allowed the cream to harden over a couple of days before carefully and laboriously masking up the sides (and interior) for application of the chocolate. Almost immediately things went badly wrong, with the brown drying to a horrible gritty, speckly finish, quite unlike the satin lustre of the cream. I tried a rescue job but by the evening the painful truth was settling in - it was going to have be a total respray job. So the model was stripped of paint in two sessions, and along the way - as I'd feared - quite a lot of the plastic detailing came adrift, including a lot of the door hinges and roof ribs. Then, to cap it all, the roof parted company with the sides, and various other bits fell off! By then it was looking very sad indeed.

But undaunted I cleaned up the sides and roof and refixed them, this time using araldite instead of superglue, and ended up with a somewhat tighter and neater fit than before, and which ought to be stronger. I then reattached the hinges, made new roof ribs, and finally applied a test coat of primer. Which brings us back to tonight, with the coach at least looking slightly less sad than it did an evening or two ago.

I'm still not sure what happened with the brown - possibly I was flogging a too-old can of aerosol and something had happened to the paint constituency. So next time, I'll use a fresh tin (luckily I stocked up at the Bristol show) or perhaps dig out the airbrush for a more controlled application.