Wills you cill love me 2moro?

I'm trying to build this as closely as possible to design without repetition or deviation. The lintels are just about OK. The soldier rows however are not. For some reason  don't get the 'stick on top' game surely they should be flush. That would mean cutting in, or at the very least using a thinner material. Though the Will bits aren't really a lot thicker than the Slaters equivalent. Case for scribing the whole lot? The cills are quite puzzling too.

Chains

Chain drilling - it's an absolute joy. your heart just sings while you grind out endless 1.5mm holes in soft plastic. This is though the best way of doing this, cutting is a no no, so it's drill and file all the way... nearly there.
The  missing Wills windows have arrived in the post hotfoot from Devon. I haven't opened the pack yet, but I may have extras. This, the the news that it may be a good time to buy a secondhand diesel VW and the fact that the Bay City Rollers are re-forming means that my life is surely complete.

Art of Compromise messy bit.

It's that time again.I haven't forgotten the Art of Compromise - it just got sidelined for a bit. Mr. Hill nudged me into doing something last week and the coal dock and the final road section were installed. The bit I love is the messy bit with the paper-mache. Usual technique of bog paper and knocked down PVA over card formers packed with what's in the waste bin. It's all delightfully lo-tech which is just how I like things. This project above all is very much rooted in the 70's, so I don't feel too guilty using techniques that would have been familiar to the modellers of the day. Though of course having said that I realise how many modern materials are included: the Peco track and bog paper are old, but MDF, Wills sheet? Surely post 70's. Talking of Wills. The phone call was made and I was assured that replacement parts would be posted. We'll see. I'm still cutting walls out so it doesn't matter that much for a day or two.

Lack of will(s)

I thought, once that I'd got a couple of walls cut out on the station kit and filed in the the mortar courses on the reveals, that I could add a few window parts in. Wrong... A fastidious search through all the sprues found nothing  - no windows save  a couple of large arched ones. Both window sprues missing. This pissed me off greatly, probably more than it should have done, as in all the years that I've been putting kits together, I've never had bits missing. Plus it was Saturday so the Wills/Ratio missing part hotline was closed. Project ground to a halt.
 Now I have got Wills window bits in the general parts box, but why should I? A phonecall Monday morning me thinks.

Wills

Long term readers will recall my 'road to Damascus' moment a couple of years back with Wills sheet. I was given a cottage Craftsman Kit and built it up with a few mods for Tal coed. What that tipped up was my change of heart in using the thick Wills sheet as a modelling material, something I'd turned my nose up at before. Now having used it on book number one I'm doing the same with two. The station kit is a natural as it lends itself to a Southern-type building.
The kit instruction (ha!) state that this is their 'most complex kit yet'. I agree - and a kit it ain't. The box is broken into and you are faced with.... well think of grabbing a random selection of Wills packs off the model shop shelf and dumping the whole lot into an ice cream tub, then getting an old Vivian Thompson drawing from 1972, photocopying it and putting the two side by side on the bench. This is what I'm faced with - plastic bits... drawing... turn this into that. I reckon I'll be at this for a month. This could be another Airfix Spitfire blog session.

Plywood

 Well I did warn you. This is the last of the Southern wagonary to be built... probably. Basic Ratio ply van with a couple of tweeks, mainly on the underside. It shows the problems of using waterslide transfers clearly - a problem I've been having since I was 10 and have yet to overcome. The weathering came out OK though. I wanted something that looked like it smelt of damp wood.

A question. I need one of these. In case you didn't spot it straight away it's a Bachmann analogue 08. I'm not fussy about livery as it's to be chopped about. A while back they were piled high at shows for about thirty quid when all the kids abandoned them for DCC versions.
Now that I want one .... tumbleweed....

Cov-car

The only modelling I'm getting done at the moment is shed-loads of Southern stuff. Maybe my heart's not really in it, or maybe because the project has no easy route through it, I don't know. It just seems to be taking a long time to get any momentum going. Last week I managed to get the Parkside kit for the post war CC T done. More basic than I expected and even though I didn't add all the possible brake linkages, it still needed a fair bit of extra parts to make it work visually. The window bars are a case in point. No parts are included, but without them it looks pants. A foot or so of microstrip painted grey and lashed from one end of the van to the other does the trick.

Below the real deal in it's pre-war planked version at the Bluebell a couple of weeks back.