(New Member writes!)
Hi,
I've also just built one of these coaches - the way I did the roof was to put a 10mm strip of 15 thou plasticard on top of each end and over the middle strut, then a complete roof of 15 thou on top of that. I then laminated the thicker plasticard as supplied in the kit onto the 15 thou, using a thin coating of UHU plus a few dabs of superglue. In order to do this I also needed to put a curve into the kit roof by bending it by hand until I had rolled it into a fairly right tube.
I once used this laminated method for the roof of a JD Models GVT coach and that roof has lasted 15 years without coming apart. Worth a try perhaps?
I also made the 15 thou pieces to the same length as the top of the plywood end piece, rather than to the full width of the coach. This helped fill the gap in the corners which is caused by the sides being the same height as the edges of the ends.
The solebars as supplied were not cut square and were of slightly different lengths (!?), so I junked them in favour of some 12mm square wood. However, I was able to use some of the solebar material to make a second inner buffer beam. The floor is only held onto the coach by the buffers, so that if I take them out the whole chassis comes away and I can get at the interior.
I am pleased with the resulting coach (even if it looks as though it was painted by Smurfs!) though some of the castings were rather rough and one wheelset is a tiny bit eccentric.
The second photo also features my PPS Janet, Portmeirion Village and Minffordd Jn. Railway No.6 (unofficial name Patrick, rather appropriately its No. 6 plates keep falling off). One thing in particular that made me buy the coach was its modest height, which fits in well with the rest of my stock.
Hope that's of interest to somebody!!!
Cheers,
Mat
Although what glue did you try to use for fixing the original roof? I found only a good quality superglue would do, epoxy didn't work at all on SLRmidge's V of R brake van
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