Pimp my Guards Van: AG pt 2

A quick out-of-sequence shot below shows the scribed clear stuff used behind the windows to represent the glass protectors in AG 78's luggage compartments, and the split opening windows in the central module:

The guards duckets are some clear stuff with a bend in the middle, glued in place and a triangular top and bottom added with some paint lining to make it look like there are windows in there. The Head of Dandruff just reminded me to mention that I put a bunch of white into my bottle of Tamiya Sky Blue and shook it up so I can keep touching up bits of blue without getting a patchwork of different custom-mixed shades like I did on my Kiwirail DX. You might also note the thin strips of plastic at the base of the doors - these stand out a bit more in the pics below, taken before they got painted. Time travel is a confusing thing.

So, now that the bodies are coming together nicely, its time for a curved roof; or preferably, two. Plan A was to heat up some thin plasticard into a nice curve over a metal rod thus:

Sounded easy, but that didn't work (at all). I'm giving myself a B+ grade for planning and an F- for execution. It didn't curl nearly enough, and I would have had been left with a wavy bottom edge above the viewing compartments of AG 90 as there isn't much there to stick it's springiness to. Plan B: after a bit of rummaging around I bent some .010 brass sheet around a wooden dowel and cut it out to shape. As much as I was in a negative way about the complete and utter failure of plan A, I was equally but positively surprised how perfectly B worked out. Zen.A few ventilators for AG 78's roof:

As you can see from the marker marks, I was visited about this stage by a mouse from the Best Laid Plans Department and informed that I'd stuck the body sides on the wrong way and therefore the handrail/deck cutouts should really be at the other end. Oh well, nobody will know as long as I don't post it on the blog.

Right, so that's most of the heavy lifting done. Now for the hard stuff: end platform handrails. Etching would be nice, but in lieu of that I got out Beelzebub's soldering iron and taped down some .012 brass. This can only end in tears:Even more surprising than the roof episode - after filing off the (copious) mountains of solder, these actually came out ok:

You're mocking me (up), aren't you: