After a little more tiding up of filler and another coat of primer on 7804, last night I got back to work on the J12 sleeper.

The first thing to do was fix the chassis, unfortunately it had fallen on the floor and been ran over by my chair…..

Fortunately  being aluminium it was very easy to bend back into shape, and you cant clearly see the damage!

With this fixed I have got on with a few other small jobs.  First up the two gas tanks were assembled, rather than following the instructions using gum paper, I thinned the walls of some Evergreen tube to accept the end casting.   (These are now put to one side awaiting the trussing assembly fitting.)

This was followed by scratch building a rough approximation of the interior, the focus is on the corridor side as being a sleeper (and only running at night) I expect the curtains to be shut on the compartment side.

Finally it was back to the body, first for a little bit of rework around the ends, then for final roof detailing.  The latter consisted of adding the raised bands from masking tape, and rolling the aluminium plates for the access hatches before gluing in place.  The model is currently resting on a pair of B4 bogies intended for one of my modern TPOs while I wait for the Comet 6 wheel bogies intended for this project. 

The model now needs a coat of white primer over the sides and the body will be ready for painting.