Nowhere To Sit (Yet)

So having work on the workmen's open coach yesterday, the main body has come together very quickly. It's not that I spent a lot of time on it, but rather that what you see here is just six, fairly large, parts (plus the wheels) none of which required much cleaning up before assembly. It only took me as long as it did because the sides aren't symmetrical and I fitted the first one to the wrong side, and then there was a little filler needed at the joins between the four sides.

Normally I fully assemble a model before starting to paint it so that a) I don't mess up bits I've already painted, and b) so that I get a better feel for how I want the model to look. In this case though I've followed the suggestion in the instructions to paint the body and floor before fitting the seats.

The floor is meant to look as if it is made from wooden planks and currently is way too light. I'm intending to tone this down with some dry brushing and weathering powders to give an uneven wear look to the floor, but I think that will be done after I've fitted the seats so I know which bits will have had more wear. As well as the seats there is the rest of the brake assembly to fit to the underframe before I then try and make up some couplings, which actually looks like it might be more complex than building the rest of the coach.

One problem I did encounter (and that others building the same kit might) is that the wheels were extremely difficult to fit. Usually on a kit like this either the axle boxes and supports are slightly flexible allowing the wheels to be pushed in with a little bit of force to bend the supports, or the two sides of the underframe are glued together trapping the wheels in place. This kit takes the first approach, but unfortunately the plastic isn't at all flexible. This made it very difficult to get the wheels in place. In fact when trying to apply enough pressure I managed to slide one of the wheels out of position on the axle. I've pushed it back roughly into position (using my digital callipers to try and check the back to back measurement), but I need to get hold of a proper back to back gauge to be sure. I was going to ask if anyone knew where I could get one from as a quick web search hadn't been helpful, but then Paul left a comment on yesterdays post mentioning that Markits do a nice back to back gauge, so that's that problem solved!