Above: The front interior corridor with the "kitbashed" detailing. Parts from plastic model kits were randomly glued in place to create texture.

Detailing on these sections is fairly crude and comes from a variety of model ship and aircraft kits. Any sort of flat kit parts, bulkheads, instrument panels, decking etc, is simply stuck on with no attempt to blend or disguise them. One disappointment is that there's no doorway detailing at the end next to the passenger pod, just the  faint drawn-on outline of a hatch.
With the two halves pushed back together the kit parts on the top and bottom were gently tacked back into position and the unit was repainted using coats of grey and white primer followed by a bit of airbrushed weathering.
 

The kit parts were again removed to allow for the reinsertion of the section back into the repainted brass cages and then the parts were permanently glued back down. The two side shelves were now put back into position, apart from a little bit of cleaning I decided to leave them alone as I saw no reason to alter or repaint them. 

From the start I had decided to try and leave some parts of the model untouched to ensure that it didn't start to look like a replica, the idea was to repair major damage (large cracks, split frame etc) get rid of the terrible paintwork and return it to a decent condition but not to try and remove every single blemish. The models 29 years old and the knocks it has received are like scars tracing its history and make the model more interesting to look at, toning them down is fine but I didn't want to remove them completely. 

The Front cage had been easy with only a couple of breaks to fix up but the rear had a lot of damage and was in danger of falling apart in places .

The aluminium engine bells are just held in place by allen screws and during the first series could easily be removed (you can see one dropping off during the crash landing scene in The Last Sunset) but with the modifications for series two they are locked in place by the gas feeder tubes that pierce the sides near the base, however three of the connections are broken so these bells could be removed during the restoration process.

Splitting this section again began with the removal of all the kit parts on the top and bottom panels however the process was made more difficult by the gas feeder tubes which extend through the cages. These tubes begin with two small inlet valves connected to copper pipes that reside between the pipework of the spine. One tube extends straight back to the ring pipe, which encircles the base of the four engines, connecting at the top right side. The other works it's way downwards and connects to the ring at the lower left side with two further dummy pipes added (bottom right/top left) to balance out the design.

Very slowly the pieces came apart, progress was held up by the two side shelves that had a lot more detailing on them which jammed between the cage pipework and included connecting tubes to the central corridor section.

As a result I had to disassemble parts of the shelves before they would come out and stick those bits on more double sided tape on more bits of card covered in more diagrams. 

 There was a point when I began to wonder if it was all going to go back together again..........