So this week has been spent carrying on with the train ferry getting copious layers of paint on to try and get a decent finish. Having already applied the blue (4 coats) I then started with the white. This took 5 coats of paint to fully cover the ply, balsa, and blue paint over spill. The moment of truth came when removing the masking tape. Had all that resin prep been worth while and were there any bleeds of paint under the tape? 

Pleased to report it all went pretty well with only a few minor bleeds which were touched up with a bit of extra white and a steady hand. 

Next on the todo list was the funnels which had a big red stripe on them in the livery I'm following (this was applied between 1990 to 1996 whilst Nord pas de Calais was still carrying train freight.)

After some more careful measuring and masking the first coat of red was applied. This was followed by 3 more to completely cover the white paint underneath. 

Whilst waiting for this to dry I made a start on the upper vehicle deck painting. Mixing a bit of white and black together the result was a bit too dark when compared to prototype. So a lot more white paint was added to lighten it. I didn't mix it thoroughly as I wanted that mix of lighter and dark greys that you get on the prototype 

(final coat of lighter greyish smudgy colour with the final coat of red going on) 

After waiting overnight for that all to dry the masking tape could come off. Again breath held for signs of bleeding. 

(again all came out nicely) 

Just the top of the funnel to do in black but the red was still feeling a bit tacky in places so I thought best to leave it for 24hrs to thoroughly dry as I didn't want to put masking on it and accidently rip some of it off. 

Whilst biding my time with the funnel I decided to give the lining and weathering of the vehicle deck a go. 

As can be seen in the prototype photo there are loads of tyre marks over yellow lines to denote parking bays with tying down points for the vehicles in rough weather along the lines. 

I had bought some acrylic pens off amazon to do road lining so thought this would be a good chance to try them out. I managed to get a cheap pack of a dozen coloured pens off amazon as I didn't feel like stumping up £10 for a woodland scenics pen. To be honest I was pretty pleased with the result. Lining is never desperately neat or consistent so the quality of the pen wasnt a particular problem! 

(lines marked out with lorry positioned to get spacing correct) 

Whilst I liked the mixed grey colour I had achieved I still wanted the tyre marks so out with my thinnest paint brush and watering down some black paint I just made lots of little watery black brush marks over my lining. I even replicated where the yard tractors were doing 'donuts' to pick up unaccompanied semi-trailers off the ferry. I made sure where the linkspan met the ferry there was a lot more tyre markings to replicate where the deck would take the most punishment. Once happy with that I then used the black paint pen to mark the holding down points on a grid along the yellow lines. 

(vehicle deck with tyre marks) 

(and now with holding down points) 

The next job will be to mask and paint the tops of the funnels black and then I will be onto printing my own waterbased transfers for the ship logos and side stripes. That may have to wait for the weekend! 

Thanks for reading