Blue EMU - Part Two

The driving trailer has now had three coats of lacquer, to compliment the refresh I also resprayed the roof, again using Halfords grey primer (two coats) followed by a quick dusting of matt lacquer. The transformation is pretty impressive - the lacquer coats have darkened the blue and enhanced the black markings of the doors...

I decided to go with all yellow for the cab fronts, sadly my skills don't extend to repairing the damage to the front and it would be daft / criminal / insane to refit the coach leaving the front panel with a chunk missing. So I've bitten the bullet and ordered new front end panels. This coach will remain in bits until the replacements arrive.

The motor coach also has a damaged front, it's been that way since I bought it and was the primary reason why it was cheap, so I may as well take the time and strip the motor coach. While I'm at it, I may as well change it to blue - these look pretty impressive and I'm impressed enough for this three car set to head up the front of the train. I'll keep looking for a reasonably priced three rail motor car or trailer, whichever is cheapest.

So with this in mind, I decided to start work on a centre coach. I had two to choose from, my most recent purchase was again quite cheap due to the amount of corrosion along one side - as my layout is viewed from the front I've been able to cheat and run the coach with the rusty side facing inwards but there was no way I could just fit my overlays to the coach body in its current state...

So after a lot of sanding, the metalwork was then primed ready for the overlays to be applied...  

I scanned the coach using the same technique as before. I had hoped that making the graphics for this coach would be a straightforward copy & pasting exercise but it turns out that the spacing between the windows is slightly different. I copied one door & window group and pasted this along the body, using the original scan as a guide.

I also noted that the centre coach design is different from the motor & trailer coaches, there is no top to the doors, the lines continue over the roof, my coach will have the same doors throughout but this made the process of lining up the stickers really easy...

And this is the final result - resprayed roof and side graphics fitted with three coats of lacquer...

Now for the motor coach...