Finally, the Centenary restaurant car is done - or nearly so. Still some work on the interior (boring!) as well as handrails, doorknobs and some general tidying up, but the hard work is over. I fixed the incorrect door, as mentioned in my earlier post, by gluing a thin blanking piece of plastikard over the offending area, then locally repainting and re-lining. In the process some more lining came adrift elsewhere, and then the whole thing nearly turned into a disaster when I (stupidly) sprayed acrylic varnish over enamel - big mistake! Fortunately it was thin mist, not a full-on blast, and I spotted that the paint layers were beginning to react before proceeding further. Rather than risk making things worse with remedial action, I put the coach aside and came back a few hours later. The paint had "settled down", barring some rippling under the lining, so I redid the worst of the lining and then resprayed - as I should have done the first time - with enamel varnish. Definitely not a mistake to make twice...

I still need to tidy up the brown cantrail strip, as well as replace one or two windows where the clear material gained a few blemishes during application. Other than that, I am pleased to see the light at the end of the tunnel with this project - it's taken a year, although admittedly it hasn't been sitting on the workbench all that time.

I have now started work on the restaurant third, which I expect to go much more smoothly. Apart from being a simpler project - there's much less needing to be done to the RTR coach shell and chassis - I've learned a few dos and donts from the first build, which will speed matters.

Also on the worknbench this week, a Chivers 6-wheel LMS fish van. Very satisfying kit, this one - the parts went together very well, and (with a decent amount of weight to add trackholding) the end product has a satisfyingly sturdy quality.

I decided to have a bash at adding all three axles, rather than using the dummy wheels supplied in the kit. This turned out to be a doddle, so I've included an underside shot for anyone interested in a similarly low-tech, bodge-orientated approach. Nothing original - I just built a plastikard mounting block for the central axle, allowing it plenty of lateral movement. The wheels are Bachmann coach wheels. I didn't even bother removing the conical axle-ends from the central wheelset - it simply slides in and out of the bearing holes as required. The result is 100% reliable through Peco curved turnouts, which have a limiting radius of 30" - although I'd imagine it could tolerate somewhat tighter curves without difficulty - maybe down to 24"?