I do like the centenary diner BT.I built the Comet full kit a few years ago myself.

I'm still building up the nerve to try a full Comet kit.

I'm still building up the nerve to try a full Comet kit.

The body goes together quite quickly its the detailing and interior that takes time.The centenaries are lovely coaches.They ran with two diners in the rake, a first class and third too.

Gwrrob: yeah, I've got the other one to do. I thought I'd tackle this one first as it looked a bit harder, and therefore I'd get the difficult one out the way first. I bought the sides at the Comet stand at Warley four years ago - another one of my stalled projects, not helped by me nearly sitting on one of the etches - thankfully it didn't buckle. I don't plan on doing a full rake of Centenaries this way, but at least the two dining cars will break the uniformity of the rake a bit.

Cheers, Rovex - it was seeing your Centenaries in crimson and cream that encouraged me to pull my finger out!

Lovely work BT. It's quite striking how the Centenary you've built has so much more realistic bulk and mass than the Airfix/Hornby donors. Quite apart from the excellent detail!

Hmmm... had a bit of shock tonight. I've been gradually readying the Centenary for its varnish coat, before final finishing and installation of glazing, when I decided I needed to refer back to the reference photos to check for the correct treatment of the drop window frames. I spent last week doing the interior (tedious! I One thing I learned, if I didn't already know it after doing some Slaters kits, is that I didn't get into this hobby to do coach interiors!). Anyway, tonight I looked at the prototype photos again and had a bit of a facepalm moment: there shouldn't be a door on the left side of the coach as seen in the top picture - just a plain panel where the body tapers back to the ends.

Eek! How I didn't spot this before I don't know, but now I'm unsure what to do. It's no fault of the Comet parts, of course, just my failure to pay due attention when applying them to the Airfix mouldings. I think I can correct the error without damaging the rest of the paintwork, only requiring local repainting, but I'm going to sleep on it first.

It's not the first time I've referred back to a photo only to see something I'd missed a million times before, but it's always a bit of a shocker when it happens, especially this late in a modelling project.

Woke up this morning, decided I couldn't live with it - so out with the knives and the plastikard! Rather than attempt to fill the window recess, I'm simply fixing a rectangle of thin sheeting over the entire door area. Once this is blended with the existing profile, and painted and lined, it should look of a piece with the rest of the model. Some lining came adrift with handling, so that's another thing to fix...

Ah well, I'm getting there and this was always going to be a slow one. I can't wait to see it finished and running in a rake - and then I'll crack on with the diner.