With the bogies and chassis more or less done, work turns to the body sides. There's nothing particularly tricky here, it's just 

all a bit time-consuming and I split the work below across two evenings.

Here are the two etches for the sides, with the lower etch showing the droplight windows soldered into position. I don't have

any magic solutions for this job, which is a bit tedious! The droplights must be positioned looking at the coach from the outside,

or else they can end up a bit off-centered or askew. Once positioned, they need to be soldered in from the other side, which entails

turning the etch over and keeping the dropliight from moving around in the process. I tin the area where the droplight will go,

position it, flip over, hold the droplight in place with some convenient tool such as a  wooden peg, apply flux and a dab more solder

and go for it! Then rinse and repeat for all the other droplights, on both sides. Of course if a droplight ends up seriously out of

register, it must be unsoldered and repositioned. I usually model one or two per coach in lowered position, which helps add a touch

of life to the finished model.

With the droplights attended to, the next job is to solder the ventilators onto the front of the coach side - a slightly easier job as at least you don't have to solder in from behind. Again, I tin the area and aim to apply flux  (and possibly a tiny amount of additional solder) to sweat the  ventilator into position. I've seen much neater work than my own but it can be cleaned up quite satisfactorily. The main thing is to keep the vents nice and horizontal. A peg is too large to hold them in place and allow the iron to get in, so I position them with the tip of a fine file. It's a small enough contact area not to result in any loss of heat.

Incidentally I've found that if I solder in the vents first, then do the droplights, there's a tendency for the vents to un-solder. So now I prefer to do t.e droplights first, then the finer work of adding the vents.

Next we move onto forming the coach profile.

A right angle fold needs to be made along the lower edge of the side, and the instructions suggest making this after forming the tumblehome. My preference is to begin forming this fold, as shown below, then attend to the tumblehole, then complete the fold. For some reason I seem to get a crisper result that way. Again this is made with the Hold and Fold tool.

Now onto the tumblehome, which is not pronounced on these coaches. I've had some goes with rolling bars, but for these models (perhaps because of the horizontal waist panelling) I find I'm very comfortable just forming the curve with gentle finger and thumb pressure, working along the side gently and making only small tweaks. Use the end etches as a reference for when you're getting near the desired profile. It doesn't need to be spot-on as soldering the side to the ends will take care of any minor deviations in the curve..

And here's the finished side, with the tumblehome formed, the lower fold completed, and another fold made in the top of the etch.

The profile is just about visible here:

That's it for now. There are still some details to be added - door hinges and commode handles - but these can be attended to after the sides are assembled onto the ends.

Cheers!