Stripes are slimming

They are also a pain in the butt to put on. I've often thought while toiling at the workbench that whoever designed and built the prototype really had no consideration for people 50 years later who were actually going to make a model of it.

Tonight I have put the stripes on the railcar while stone cold sober (what does one have of an evening if not a refreshing beer after a hard day sitting on ones butt in the office?). This may have been a mistake. After consulting the instruction sheet, which BTW has no mention of decals anywhere (so at least was quick), I consulted a stack of pictures, and tried to sort out in my head how to do this.


The decals come on a sheet that has a layer of carrier film the whole way across. This means that the decals must be cut out carefully and as close to the edge as you can manage. I also discovered that the nose stripes are about 1/2mm thinner than the side stripes. I found this the hard way after cutting the first set to length. The solution is to have them meet at a corner of a door frame (on the outside edge as shown). You can cut the excess back later when its dry.


The main problem is getting everything on and parallel to the edges. I made some small pencil marks 6mm from the bottom edge which I judged from photo's to be about right. I also made sure that the stripes at least lined up between the cars.

The kit comes with 3 numbers. Rm109 (Christchurch based), 125 (Auckland based) and 131 (Auckland based). I have gone with 125 as its at least possible that it would have passed through the Kapiti region

Another thing I've just noticed is that the red in the photo's is actually a hell of a lot lighter than it is in real life, which is probably why the rest of you think I've taken leave of my senses in picking this colour.It will get a bit darker after the next weathering step. I also have to paint over some edges of the decal film to tidy it up a bit.