Ken,
I tried that technique with the skirting for the car ends. Sometimes it worked, sometimes I screwed it up.
I haven't seen many of the ALW kits built up. You can put as much detail into them as you have the time and patience for, but they can certainly can be built to the level of detail as a brass car. A big problem is a lot of the detail parts are disappearing. I added a number of parts from Keil Line and other sources which are becoming very scarce.
If you do reproduce the kits, please consider making the interior seats. It took years to scrounge the seats in my coach and combine and now I'm out.
Ken
