Making good use of a warm bank holiday Monday I have got on with some painting,

First up, my DRS Class 37 (Which will be 37612). Black roof was sprayed, masking removed (thankfully with no damage) all looking good. This just needs the light clusters painting black along with detail painting the grills (and cantrail stripes) + transfers & Shawplan windows and it will be finished. Most annoyingly I have now found out that its completely out of period for the layout. While '612 was in DRS in 1998, I have modelled it in 2004 condition (ie Wipacs, reinforced windscreen and centre headlight) along with a Shawplan roof grill. In 1998 it should have standard ends (with the DRS recessed nose mounted multiple working socket), and should have standard windscreen frames. This is rather annoying given that I havent seen many (any?) DRS 37s finished with the correct windscreens, and if I hadnt bothered to do them on mine it would be a simple case now of just finding new noses.....

I guess another DRS respray will be needed at some point in the future then...

Next was a Great Western Trains Class 47, (which will be 47813 "SS Great Britain") This has been resprayed from a Vi Trains Intercity liveried model, the end was modified to fill the holes from the body mounted ETH (moved to the chassis) and it has been fitted with Shawplan roof grills. The aim was just to strip the sides and keep the factory finish on the roof/ends however as paint stripper got onto the yellow ends they will also need a respray (I am undecided if I will spray this on Wednesday or wait and use an aerosol (that I find gives better coverage) when I can get some. The green has come out really well (I have found before when I sprayed my Heljan model of 47830 in the same livery). I did find that the masking tape lifted slightly over the no2 end roof and some primer has got through which will need tidying up. Hopefully Brian will have some of the new 47 glazing available at Scaleforum to finish it off... Given I move to Bristol on Friday SS Great Britain seems a rather appropriate name...

Finally another Vi 47, this time it is 47817 "IMechE" in Virgin, Again this been prepared for the Shawplan roof grills and has been fitted with Shawplan boiler port detail to convert to the prototype's boiler variant. This, along with the renumbering (Vi Trains use Lima style printing thats next to impossible to shift) has left a fair bit to be resprayed. The Shawplan grills were deliberately left off to protect them through the paint process (they will be hand painted after fitting.) The plan was to respray the roof panel containing the boiler detail, along with the two cab sides, given that on a lot of previous Vi releases people had commented that the colour pretty much matched the available paint offerings I was expecting an easy job. However as can be seen in the photo below, either Vi Trains have got the grey much too dark or Phoenix have got it much too light. Either way, the model is a complete mess and will either require respraying those areas a second time with a better colour match to the Vi paint, or respraying all the grey with the phoenix colour. Either way, my plan to have this loco completed for Scaleforum to complement the other two 47s that I am bringing is over (that was pretty much the last of my Virgin Grey paint, and by the time I receive any more it will be time to move to Bristol.)