Removing a Heljan Park Royal railbus body

Alan asks:

For several weeks I have be trying to find out how to remove the body shell from my new 00 Gauge Park Royal Railbus to insert a 21 Pin decoder and to plant a driver and some passengers.

Sadly, their website is in Danish and I only speak English and German.

It mentions 21pin DCC in a round circle but they forgot to say whether it is 21 pin DCC ready, or 21 pin DCC fitted; so I bought a 21 pin decoder just in case. I have located four body clips, two on each side, and inserted strips of an old bank card across them to enable me to slide the body off. That does not release the body. It seems to be very tight at the front and rear ends and I am loathe to use force.

I have visited YouTube Videos but the one they detail for body removal, has screws in the roof, accessed by removing plugs at the front and rear of the roof and, removing the side door handles. Mine is definitely not one of those.

I would appreciate your assistance to track down information leading to the removal the body shell.

Interesting problem. When looking at my 4mm scale Railbus, I realised that I've never actually removed the lid. 

There's certainly no screws in the roof, but looking underneath I could see some indentations which I guessed must hold clips. Sliding a blade down each eased the body away from the chassis but you need at least 2 pairs of hands to do all of them at the same time.

 

Cutting some 0.5mm thick plastic sheet with scissors, I made 4 strips that could be slid down behind each indentation. Then I carefully grabbed a diecast bit of the chassis and pulled gently. It took a little more force than expected but suddenly the body slid free. 

 

You can now see the little clips moulded inside the sides. Obviously the trick is to push these away from the chassis block - the job my plastic spacers do - and it slides clear. 

Once free, you can get at the DCC sockets and stuff which are up in the roof.

If you don't want to make plastic spacers, although they are a handy tool, Andy York did the same job with business cards. 

A word of warning, the railcar body is flexible but won't take levering with screwdrivers. You only need to move it a couple of millimetres or less. Be careful or you could break your model. Having said this, these are designed to come apart so hopefully these notes help.