The Coaches do look grand.
The coaches look wonderful. fantastic job.
Their magnificent, Heather.
Thanks chaps! They look great from normal viewing distances. Closer in, you can begin to see the artful bodgery that’s had to take place.
Case in point: plastic strip roofs.
You can see how I failed to match the curve of the coach end when constructing the roofs from plastic. I think there’s also a degree of settling and twisting as the materials have had time to, shall we say, mature on the shelf. It’s not so much a twist or a bend, since the roof seems to be mostly as flat as when I built it. If anything, it’s pulled itself inwards along the long edges, where the clerestory fits.
Anyway, what to do about it. No amount of persuasion was going to pull the centre section down and keep it there. I pondered.
It struck me it would be helpful to make a curved "blind" which attached to the roof but outside the coach end. It would look like part of the bodywork beading. The question arose how to make the correct shape to fit, and I dredged up an idea of how to create a simple template. Plain copier paper, with a frilly bit cut into it, and carefully pushed into the roof/body angle.
Rough and ready, but sketching in the line and trimming off the excess gave me something to approximate the roof curve. This could then be transferred to some thin styrene sheet.
I chose black material. It won’t shine brightly if the paint is chipped off. Dividers gave me the optimum width of the blind.
With some additional reinforcing strips, but before painting to make good, this is how it looks. A terrible bodge, and I hate it, but at least it avoids having to completely rebuild the entire roof.