This coach has been kicking around for a long time, having started the build a week after the birth of my first daughter in January 2014!
I am determined to get this model finished before the end of May!

The first job (completed last night) was to glaze the coach and then fit the seats. The latter had been painted previously (using the maroon colour for LNER wheels followed by heavy weathering). The aim was to get a finish which looked heavy faded and abused, right at the end of its useful life.

Thanks to the design of the kit, the body / floor is one assembly with a separate roof. This is compounded by the fact that I have found the roof moulding very susceptible to bowing out of shape (the original that came with the kit is now in the bin and a replacement sourced from Coopercraft at Wells last year.) As such this will be glued to the body once the interior is fitted and the windows glazed.

The glazing used the thin plastic supplied by Slaters, cut into strips and then glued into position. My first attempt used superglue (along with Klear to get rid of the frosting when it appeared.) The reason for this was that I wanted to try and ensure that the windows were as firmly glued on as possible as access to fix a window which falls out at a later date will be nigh on impossible. Unfortunately as i went on more and more windows were failing due to glue on the glass, so I switched to good old PVA. The heat in the garden last night certainly helped it cure quickly, and soon all windows were in place. A few spots where glue seeped out were carefully fixed with a cocktail stick a couple of hours later.

With the windows fitted, the next job was to glue the seats into position (again using PVA as i didnt want to risk frosting the windows)

So now it is ready for the next step this afternoon, build the new roof / clerestory unit, then prime and paint it.

The body and bogies also still need the black areas painting (I should have masked them off when I sprayed the brown over the black under coat!), then finally the brass fittings for grab rails / door handles etc can be added to finish the coach off.

Once that is complete, I really need to find a suitable coach to run with it as per my thread here