There's a pretty masthead for a blogger, eh!

1547 was i.d-theived yesterday, the method for mechanical removal of Bachmann's tampo printing is now pretty efficient, extending to the headcode glazing. I really like the side view of this livery, it is prototypical and looks plain wrong. In the sense that compared to two-tone green it's plain, and in location of all the decals it's so wrong compared to the standard blue of December 1968 on... You can imagine it in the drawing office after Beeching's edict of corporate inflexibility: 'Yes, the numbers have gotta be squashed right up there by the TOPS panel, those double-arrows, well there have to be four - push them up as close to the doors as you can get them.'

1547 was allocated to D05 (Stoke Divn: Crewe) at this time and was probably a familiar sight on the WCML and through to Edinburgh either via Carstairs or the Waverley Route.

What we are hoping to achieve here is the ambience of the prototype (I reckon) as pictured at Melrose on my Waverley photo image links thread. She's got a completely blank headcode in that picture, posing a whole new challenge. As yet the mod to correct the bogies remains outstanding.

Once the headcodes are done, the pair's bodies are going back on for light weathering and correction of boiler-port details.

EDIT: the grey showing through bodyside windows wasn't sitting happily, so permanent marker on the chassis block has taken care of that on 1547, compare with 1536 in this photo:

While we're inside here let's show the readers where the chassis block gets blacked, and also our guilty secret for i.d-ing the chassis itself:

The decision Dynamis vs NCE Powercab is still unmade, so these two won't be chipped for now. In an unusual move, possibly triggered by Hornby's announcement to release the Lima 40 in the Railroad Range, a random specimen has appeared on the W/B where she sits tremulous about what might happen next....