Your getting ahead of me James... and you boosted me by an order of magnitude ;-) All looking very good. I was almost reaching for the modelstrip this evening. After a chat with Brian at the weekend, I did wonder about polishing the body with T-cut rather than varnish... I tried some precision gloss... but I'm not getting the finish I want... the t-cut finish is interesting - hardly even, but gives the look of recently cleaned... but then left to get dirty again.. which will do! Trouble is the t-cut started to leave lots of residue despite copious wash offs---- but eventually I begun to win, with some very clean white spirit and eventually a light wash of blue over the worst bits - now looking ok. I'm now catching up again, with lower ETS units in orange and buffers and steps painted.... and fire pulls and door handles. My kick plates are all over blue - not left shiny like yours - but I will dig out the TOPS numbers this week and we'll see where we go with that. The race is on eh James... enjoy the final straight.

Oh... and glad that work's ok now!

Thanks Jon, at least im still employed for a while even with a a final warning! ( curse my own stupidity) i should have more progress this week but hate to call it a race as all iv done is copy the easy bits from your blogs! Theres still alot of work to do with mine, the finish from the railmatch aerosoles to me are brilliant, couldnt recomend them enough, i have tried precision paints but i cant get on with them. Ill get a cote of satin humbrol spray on soon (much recomended) just leaves a nice almost care worn sheen, before i do i may take the numbers off and go tops but ill have a look in day light tommorow lunch time before i commit to it. Next job is to sort out the headcode boxes need to build them up internally and get some 'glass' in them.

Just need nameplate& builders plates and brake levers and jobs a guddun!

Really enjoying this litle project, SWD sound is well worth the expense! (must be the most expesive job iv done so far all included!)

Keep up the good work Jon, cant wait to see yours in its entirety, glad i can give you a 'boost' with mine.

Cheers

James

PS, only a couple of weeks till the east lancs '55 fest'!

Nearly reached for the modelstrip again last night! Some tinkering with thin blue paint and thinners allowed me to calw back from the brink. Finish not as good as preferred but I'll go for a winter 73/74 look to mine so plenty of dirt to be had, just like this http://www.flickr.com/photos/tutenkhamunsleeping/5523048466/

ETS modules now fitted and painted... horns on (with air supply pipes) decals on on one side... and plates. Whose transfers did you use - mine are all waterslide - big arrows by modelmaster, numbers by fox and TOPS plate with FP from Precision.

Oh... and just looked yours up... St Paddy was TOPS'd on my 5th Birthday!