Thanks Julian. The kit is a technical one, and needs to approached with that in mind. Don't expect it to be a quick build. These are kits designed to be savoured while under construction, and repay careful work. Unlike the way I did it! With the interior kits, and the bogies, each kit will have north of 2000 parts. You simply can't build that kind of kit quickly.
(This build has been protracted for obvious reasons, and the coach has spent most of the past two years lurking at the back of my bench. I purposely avoided putting it in a box and letting it become a shelf queen. I let it nag and chide me until I had worked out how to fix my c0ck-ups!)
Today I spent my time slowly going over the bodywork, repairing damage, refitting bits dislodged, and letting the final roof details stew away in my brain cell before I tackled them.
I had used Evergreen styrene strip for the corrosion strips. Handling and hot repairs had damaged some of the strips, so my first job was sort that out. While I was doing it I was checking and cleaning up odd spots of solder and glue.
I then cleaned up, applied low-melt solder into, and tidied up the corner joints. The bottom steps have always been very vulnerable, so I took them off. They'll be refitted after painting, I think.
Not seeing any particular reason not to, I fitted the lighting connectors. I've spent a good deal of time trying to get this corner of the roof to sit down nicely. It doesn't really want to, and you'll note the end of the coach has taken on a slight deformation. A little brute force, applied gently if that's even possible, has made the situation better. I think we'll only know if the slight gap can be solved once the roof has been finally attached.
As we all know, catering vehicles had ground level fillers for the kitchen area water supply. To differentiate them from the lavatory fillers, the ends of the pipes-cum-handrails were encased in a special block which prevented the wrong sort of hose being attached. These blocks had come adrift during the saga, so they've been reattached.
Now, the roof. I'd been working out how to fit the pipework so it could be detached and kept safely until final assembly. The idea had been to temporarily attach the fine brackets to the roof, form up the pipework along the roof and down the ends and fix it to the brackets by soldering, and then remove it all for later on.
I didn't think this plan would work. The pipes are held by L-shaped wire brackets halfway up the ends. You can see the hole in the end shots above. Some complex bends are needed, and feeding that lot through the brackets would not be trivial.
This is the easy end, for the lavatory fillers. What I decided to do was cheat by adding extra brackets at a point where I could conveniently split the wire. Mr P kindly adds spares on the fret. It's not prototypical, but it'll have to do. This way I have permanently fitted the main roof wire pipes, and can fit the bits up from the ends more easily later.
Here's the run for the catering fillers. While we are up on the roof, I've run some PVA into the rain strip slots. Although they still look open, they are now filled and should look right once painted. The plan now is to waft some primer over the roof and think about whether to add the weld lines across or not.
In fact, while I'm at it, I may as well get primer on the rest of the body.
I know. That shocked me as well.
