After some snags with the gear-meshing, the Bird is now running nice and freely and I've began priming and tidying up the bodywork ready for painting.

This is after several applications of Games Workshop Chaos Black, which is a very good flat black and excellent for priming and general painting. I found that the bodywork had acquired a lot of scratches and gouges from the process of removing the surface detail, little of which was obvious in the bare plastic state. I seem to remember going through a long process of this with the City as well. However, now that it's nearly ready for the final coat of green, I'm starting to have naughty thoughts about the too-short smokebox. For the Bird, it should be about 2mm longer than the City, and this (I think) will go a long way to making it look right... ish, since that pronounced front overhang of the smokebox is quite a distinctive feature of the Birds.  I'll have a think about it, but the plan would either be to splice in a lamination of plastic card and then file it down to the right diameter, or to buy a second Dapol City kit and use the smokebox from that one to add a bit to this one. Wasteful, you might say, but in an exciting twist of fate, I also have need of a pair of outside bogie frames for a Dean single project, and the City ones could be adapted to suit.  It's a bit of a pain in that the handrails will need to be removed and redone, but I suspect it'll annoy me if I don't tackle it.

One bonus of doing the Bird, is that the Branchlines kit contains a few extra bits for the City I never got around to fixing. These are the wheel balance weights (correct ones for a Bird are also included) and the small wheel covers or splashers that go over the front bogie wheels. The weights and splashers needed some careful fitting to avoid clearance issue (there's precious little clearance around the main drivers, so the weights had to be exactly flush to the wheels) and the bogie clearance is critical, but after an evening of fiddling, all came good. The addition of the bogie splashers really helps with the look of the front-end, although they're barely evident in this shot. 

While I had the City on the bench I touched up some paint damage here and there and added a bit of bling in the form of the polished splasher rims, which I think helps lift the rather plain unlined livery. One thing to note - and which I didn't spot until I was doing the Bird - is that I missed out some beading on the tender, along the lower side of the flared portion. I haven't fixed it now, but it should be feasible without a complete repaint. Fortunately the Railmatch green I've got in a pot is still an exact match to the shade I sprayed onto the City about 12 years ago.

Cheers, all.