The return of the Ore Carrier

We've been introducing our son to Blakes 7 and, just like recently with Battlestar Galactica, when i get back into a show, the modeller in me starts to think what can be built from it.
So i'm having a think when we get to the episode "Killer" which features a 600 year-old Wanderer Class spaceship (Pic 1).
"Hmmm..." thinks i, "that looks pretty easy - the bulk of it looks to be mainly Airfix Space Shuttle external tanks".
After doing a bit of research, that proved to be correct - four external tanks, some EMA shapes and parts from the Saturn V and Lunar Module also in evidence.
Already having the last two. and it looking to be a nice simple build, i thought i'd go for it and started buying up cheap Shuttle kits.
But, when i'd gotten two, i laid the halves out, one above the other the correct distance apart to gauge the diameter of EMA tube i'd be needing for the main hull.
And that's when it hit me - not only was the original model long, it was tall and bulky too. Too big and bulky to share space on my ever decreasing shelves.
So, talking of shelves, i shelved that idea.
But, that left me with two Shuttle kits that i'd bought for no reason.
Then the lightbulb went on - i'd started another studio scale Blakes 7 model five years ago, that used the two external tanks i now had sat there doing nothing.
I'd given up on that one about halfway through, but i still had parts needed for it, as well as these new parts, so why not try again?
Pic 2 is the ship i'm on about, it uses Shuttle parts, EMA shapes, X-Wing parts, R2D2 parts, plus bits of some, maybe all of these kits here in Pic 3.
I say maybe as there's still a huge amount of conjecture as to what was used in a lot of places, especially around the ball things and the underside, but that's what i like about this type of project - the detective work that goes into indentifying, or finding substitutes for, various parts.
So this will see me retracing what i've done before and i've already noticed a difference - looking back on what i posted here five years ago, my approach is quite different, i don't know whether i'm more keen now or if i'm just more of a river counter, but i feel the need to make things more accurate thatn last time.
Case in point, the girder affair in the middle as seen in Pic 2.
It is definetly the cage you get from EMA that encloses a ladder - but the ladder is wrong, its far too skinny.
Pic 4 is how last time i just went ahead and used it.
Its niggling me this time now that its not right, it needs a louvre effect to it and i think Mat Irvine didn't use a ladder but a set of stairs.
Pics 5 and 6 is what i've done to correct it. Put in PLasticard strips angled down to replicate it.
And that's where i am today.