Another blue EMU - continued

Having finished work previously on the motor and centre coaches (including the destination blind and headcode) of my spare green remnants of SR EMUs, I was in need of another, non-motorised driving trailer coach.

This one, in need of some cosmetic attention, ticked all the boxes and was snapped up at a reasonable price:

The roof had been repainted and there was rust in the sides. Nothing I haven't tackled before!

First job was to rub down and remove all traces of rust, going back to bare metal. This was by far the worst rust patch:

With all traces of rust removed, I primed the body:

Two coats of primer, just to be sure!

The same process of applying the vinyl, cutting the windows using a scalpel, getting small blue rectangles stuck everywhere etc. After several coats of lacquer, we're getting nearer to a gloss finish. As this is matt vinyl, this takes a few layers but hopefully also gives some extra protection:

Cab front was primed and painted yellow. The graphics were printed when the other bodies were produced, so it was just a matter of cutting these off the sheet and applying them over the clear plastic window. It's a rear coach so no headcode required:

After more lacquer, the roof is glued back into position and the body refitted to the chassis:

As stated during the last post, I found that running this unit motorised with the other two SR EMUs presented a few problems. The original set was more than capable of pulling a nine car rake, so I removed the motor assembly from the driving coach (other end) and fitted the body to a standard HD coach chassis.

So this means that I have a spare motorised chassis...

And we can't leave it like that now, can we?

What I need is a project to see me through the next two months until the next show...

This should do the trick:

This little lot has yet to arrive but judging by the pictures, this is one seriously knackered set of EMU bodies. Very rusty sides, more cracks in the roofs than I have ever had to repair before and damaged cab fronts, one melted and one chipped. 

As these are all driver & trailer coach ends, I will only need two of the three (for now!) and one of them looks to be in far better condition than the rest (the Ebay listing does verify this) I'll still need a centre coach IF I can successfully restore these.

Then of course there's the other slight issue that I now have 3 x three car EMUs in BR blue. Do I need another three in the same colour or do I try something different? - After all, the class 501 did survive well into the 1980s and the BR blue / grey era. If HD had survived, would we have seen these liveries appear?

So, in anticipation, and these bodies are clearly going to need a fair bit of TLC before I get anywhere near a completed model, I started designing:

The blue is darkened and the grey, with white border is created using the rounded rectangle shapes found in MS Publisher. The carriage numbers have been enlarged, I think they were too small on the previous all-blue versions. The guard and BR signs remain unchanged.

And that led to printing:

Change of vinyl this time, gloss - will be interesting to see how easy this is to work with:

Biggest issue with the gloss I used last time was that the ink smudged, given that it's going to take a while to fix up these bodies, these should be totally dry by the time I'm ready to apply them.

Watch this space...