Well, here's is a sneak peak at another of my current projects. In an effort to maximise the crossover of stock between my two layouts, I decided that once EWS lost the mail by rail contract, Scotswood Bridge depot would have passed to the hands of GNER for small-scale maintenance jobs. This provided a wonderful excuse to try and build a loco I've always had a soft spot for: 89001. I'm working from the 1998 article in Railway Modeller which is based on heavy kitbashing of Hornby HST bodies and a class 58 chassis. I believe DC Kits once did a resin bodyshell, but I think it was a limited run and would probably be quite pricey now, even if I could find one. So - a trip down to Rolling Stock at North Shields turned up two HST bodies for £2. I figured I'd give it a go the RM way first. This project is a lot more complex than anything I've tackled before, so it's going to have a bit of a learning curve to it. I'm pleased with the results so far however.

So, here goes.

The initial cut and shut:

Ready for it's nose job:

The bare bones. The new section has since been refined, gaps filled, and a plasticard panel fixed on to cover the large gap in the front:

EDIT: now that blog uploads are fixed, the pics should be a more sensible size