Fuselage Cars for Boeing

[Blazeman]

Interesting modelling challenge for modern guys doing BNSF in PNW.

http://www.bizjournals.com/seattle/news/2013/02/11/bnsf-railway-adding-cars-to-meet.html?page=all

[Philip H]

I've actually seen those done in N scale as a set of modified 89 ft flats.  Essentially the fuselage rides on one, with the trailing flat both protecting the rear of the plane, and holding the clearance frame thingy.

[peteski]

I've actually seen those done in N scale as a set of modified 89 ft flats.  Essentially the fuselage rides on one, with the trailing flat both protecting the rear of the plane, and holding the clearance frame thingy.

I modeled the fuselage and the flat and my friend did the other cars (from LBF Skybox cars).  At the time I used a 1:200 scale 737 fuselage because 1:144 model was way too large clearance-wise.  Since that time I found a 1:180 737 model and one of these days I might re-do that model.  The 1:180 scale fuselage barely clears some tight areas on his layout.  I added some rudimentary "busy" details to the wing roots and to the stabilizer mounts. Decals were printed using an Alps printer.   I realize that the model is out of scale, but we did this project probably over 10 years ago and we were going for the visual effect of a unique train rather than overall accuracy.


Larger image http://imageshack.us/a/img131/8909/mrlboeingtrain2.jpg

[trainforfun]

Out of scale , maybe but it's not like a bus or a car , we don't see too often a plane near a train .
It's beautifull !!!

[ljudice]

Exceptionally nice, Peteski (I remember these photos from our discussion on the Atlas forum)...

I had thought of doing one in Shapeways, but the cost would probably be extremely high - and of course bear the unpredictable issues that come from that source.

Any further info on the 1/180 model? 

I did do a 1/144 and it does actually clear double stack tunnel clearances, but the 1/180 model sounds interesting...

[ljudice]

Hmmmm......   1/150 or so they say here!     

http://www.ebay.com/itm/PR-Delta-Airlines-Boeing-737-1-150-Scale-Detailed-Flying-Model-Mint-on-Card-/380418039812

[peteski]

Thanks guys!
Lou, that model you found looks promising. It might still be a bit large, but worth a try. It is also not the one I found.   The one I found is

At the time I was looking, there was a Chinese ebay seller in Australia (I'm not kidding) who supposedly sold plastic model kits of 1:160 scale Boeing 737s!  I bought couple and I got burned.  The model kit looked like a copy of another company's model of  a Boeing 777 (not sure of scale - maybe 1:350?) packaged with a decal made for a 737 (in 1:160). I guess that this combination would yield an airplane  with a length of a 1:160 737, but the shape of it was all wrong!  I still have those kits (they weren't very expensive so I kept them for some future project).

EDIT: I've read somewhere (maybe in that related thread on the A-board) that there was some modeler, who is a Boeing employee, who was supposed to make correctly scaled 737 resin bodies. Not sure whatever happened to that venture.

EDIT 2: I have feeling that the scale of all these models is very approximate.    But the Flight Miniatures model I have is larger than a 1:200 Hasegawa 737 kit and smaller than the Airfix 1:144 737 kit.  I'm talking about the fuselage diameter.

[Ike the BN Freak]

I got a minicraft 1/144 scale 737-300, gonna cut it apart once I build the fuselage like how Boeing used to ship the aircraft.

[ljudice]

There is a website with resin HO kits for most of this stuff, but if I recall, it wasn't that fantastic looking...