On Thursday I took a trip to East Somerset Models to collect my dummy 67026. I also picked up four blue-grey mk2s and some seating strips too, allowing me to throw together a representation of the Cardiff - Taunton (or Paignton) service operated by FGW. The 67s that I have (006 and 026) haven't worked together on this working (indeed 026 hasn't at all IIRC) and the mk2s aren't the right variant of aircon, but it's as near a representation as I'll get with RTR stock, and I wanted it to be a quickie project.

Having not had a chance to get out to the garage and spray the crane due to it being full of the old kitchen, work started today on detailing up the mk2s and 67. The loco end of the BSO and one of the TSOs have/will have wire handrails and lampirons, TPM gangway and BHE brass buffers fitted to improve their appearance. I'm not bothering with the inner connections, as it's less noticable without the gap by the loco. BR Lines seating inserts have been painted up (blue seats) and look good inside the coach. The real thing still has Virgin XC seats, but through the tinted windows, and in the darkness of an N gauge carriage, the colour looks fine. The BSO has had a bulkead added at the midpoint of the coach. Now need to dig out the plastic people!

The next stage is to get the roofs looking a bit like these mk1s and add the cantrail stripe

I'm trying to got to town with the end of 67026 - it'll be getting a tail lamp, full body mounted baffle plate, swing head coupler and cut lever and full ETH gubbins on the baffle plate. Basically, the ETH recepticle is a small piece of plastic strip, and the cable is the Dapol head, fitted with a piece of wire going through a hole in the baffle plate, just like the real ones! All these details can be seen in this shot of Royal 67006 at Pilning

I'll stick some photos of the models up once we have daylight so I can take them, hopefully tomorrow