Does anyone have an airport on their layout. If so, I would love to see pics and hear your ideas. I think the end of a runway with tiny blue lights would suggest an airport in some unused flat portion of a layout.
I might be wrong, but I think blue lights would indicate a taxiway. Runways would be outlined in white lights.
Tom
On the San Diego Model Railroad Club’s layout, I remember a scene, maybe not with an airport, but it had a plane flying out of the back drop, cut in two. I thought that would be a great idea for an airport if you had it against the backdrop.
Or a plane hanging from a very small thread(s).
An airport could take up a lot of real estate.
As for the lights, sounds like a job for small LED’s.
As already stated an airport would take up a lot of real estate. Consider this:
How about the approach lights and just the tip of the runway. Make the rest, if of course you’re an artist, on the painted backdrop. If you’ve ever been to Disneyland in LA you can see that illustrated in real life and it’s almost spooky.
You’re on the street and this goes for about a block and a half but then the painted backdrop starts and it looks spooky. When you get close enough you realize there is no depth preception and the trompe l’oiel street extension is really convincing.
This is definately a job for building flats and selective compression. I would say your best bet would be to model the front buildings of the airport and leave the runways and such as photos on a backdrop. I considered modelling one ages ago but at the time couldn’t find any decent kits. Although now IHC has a small airfield control tower and hangar. Faller also has a control tower as part of their military series.
I always have a plane from the era I’m modelling hanging over my layout - on very fine clear fishing line…
As for an airport. Like others have said, that would take up a lot of space. However, you might consider a small rural type airport that only caters to small single engine or twin engine planes that has a landing strip, a refueling station, a becon on a tower, couple of hangers and a cafe’.
Tracklayer
I have an airport on both of my current layouts, one of which is a small rural airport that I am getting ready to redo, and the other is an army airstrip. I wish I could post pics, but one of my layouts with the army base is 200 miles away from home, and the other is a mess. I might try to post a pic or two of my rural tomorrow, but its nearly bedtime here and I can’t do so right now. Sorry about the inconvience.
-beegle55
A small airport or private crop duster strip could be worked in without much real estate taken up.
I am a private pilot myself and have a small airport in mind for my layout, and there are several HO scale model planes available. I have a couple of DC-3’s now in HO scale.
Runways have white lights, taxiways have blue lights
Ed
Yeah, airports take up a lot of real estate. It might be good to model a general aviation airstrip as mentioned before or model the edge of an airport where there’s planes along the tracks.
Also, 1:87 or 1:160 airplanes are very rare. Airplane models are generally manufactured in 1:72, 1:200, 1:400 or 1:500 scales. I personally plan to buy a 1:500 scale Boeing 737 suspended by transparent thread hanging from the ceiling above my N scale layout.
Though if you have an outdoor G scale layout, and have an airstrip with actual model R/C airplanes that take off and land, you rule.
I am in the process of building an AIRPORT and have two Mooneys HO scale, DC-3 1/90 scale and an A-320 but that is 1/125 scale & have the idea of using Christmas Lights wired in for the (White-Runway) (Blue-Taxiway)…(also would like intermittent Approach lights)…I have a 20 x 12 foot space I’m using in the Garage (Wifes car gets the other half) and in the process I am working on two levels. (41" & 60") The airport will come out about 4 feet (half an airport) from the wall and be about 2 feet wide-(2nd level is 16-18" wide so it does not overlap to much). I am making just one runway and that of course will be cut down in size with a taxiway (mirrors should work to make runway extended) and yes I do have a small passenger station for the train as it comes by. I am still in the process and have not done anything in a month since it takes to long to warm up the Garage and I am Cold out there…I do like the idea of suspending the airplanes as they are taking off or landing…would be quite the effect…
I did find some 1/100 scale & 1/125 scale A/C models on Ebay which is where I got the A-320 from.
Hope some of this helps…Cary
I have an airport in 1:500 scale which is the same size as my main layout in N which is around 4X3. My advice is DON"T do it unless you got tons of space. In real life, trains and planes are in direct competition so I don’t think you will find them in close vasinity to each other anyway except those ICE (Inter City Express Trains)and unless that’s what you had in mind or some rural or regional airports. They simply take up too much space. I did model an aeronautical museum on my very first layout though where I had a outdoor museum housing a DC-3 and C-47 transport plane near a small town with trains passing through nearby. I know it’s cool but not easy. If you really want it, Herpa has airport lighting kits where you get all he lights you need for an airport including the animated runway approach lights.
As a long-time inhabitant of Air Force flight lines, I consider airports to be in the same family as maritime container facilities - huge, complex and seldom served directly by rail. That translates as, “Okay as a backdrop photo mural, but a total waste of valuable bench-top real estate.”
Even the minimalist facilities of a small general aviation airport would take up more space than most of us allow for the buildings of a small town. A 1200 foot runway with minimal overruns would be longer than a prototypically correct Amtrak passenger train!
If you absolutely, positively must have an air facility on your layout, an emergency helipad is about the size of an Atlas turntable - with 1/2 circle roundhouse!
Of course, if you have a full-size hangar to house your model empire…[:-^]
Chuck (modeling Central Japan in September, 1964 - with too little flat land for an airport)
Gisborn - a small provincial city in New Zealand - has the main Railway line actually cross the end of the runway. Has a nice set of lights to keep aircraft and trains separate. Small airport - single line. Always something in real life to keep you happy.
I can think of many examples where railroad tracks are in close vicinity to an airport…Off the top of my head, Los Angeles Inernational, Burbank Airport, Lindbergh Field in San Diego, Chicago O’Hare (there’s a large yard just south of the runways), Newark International…just to name a few, all have tracks running alongside or very near the limits of airport property.
But yes, it’s not practical at all to model an airport, even a small regional one, in its entirety. Unless you plan to show actual planes taking off and landing, there’s no real reason to. I do think it’s possible to model a hangar and a few planes parked next to it and a small section of taxiway. That’s more than enough to suggest to the viewer, “This is an airport.”
I had an airport on an N scale layout in the early 70’s. (70’s N scale is why I went back to HO) I had planes, a hanger, a control tower, and a runway that went off the end of the layout into space. I can;t remember who made it, but the planes & buildings were in 1 plastic kit. In HO, Walthers had a DC3 and a WWII fighter, and IHC made gliders & small single engine planes a few years ago. 1/72 planes are usable as long as they are not too close to HO stuff.[^]
As stated airports take up lots of real estate…
Blue lights for the taxiways. White for the runways. Don’t forget the green (when landing) and red (when taking off) lights marking the threshold.
Also there’s the tower lights (IIRC).
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Flashing Green or alternating green and white - fixed wing only.
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Alternating green and yellow - fixed and rotary wing.
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Flashing yellow or alternating yellow and white - rotary wing only.
Nick
There is an intermodal center at the airport in Hunstville, AL. http://www.hsvairport.org/iic/index.html
I knew I’d seen this:
http://www.the-gauge.com/showthread.php?t=2569&page=15&highlight=airport
Several years ago my father-in-law (retired TWA) gave me a Walthers’ HO-scaled DC-3 airplane, suitable for either civilian or military use. He insisted that airline service be appropriately represented on my “transportation” layout.
I have never assembled the kit.
The problem is that an HO scaled airplane looks ridiculously too large if it is suspended in the air – a plane flying over town at any reasonable height would appear so small it could only barely be seen – so unless the plane were either already on the ground or actually in the process of just landing or just taking off, an HO scaled model is way out of whack. And in order to model a plane either on the ground or in the process of landing or taking off, a significant portion of extremely valuable layout real estate would need to be dedicated for the scene.
I’ve NEVER known ANYONE who thinks they have too large a layout or would want to sacrifice that much space on a layout oestensibly dedicated to “model railroading.”
I’ve “toyed” with the idea of half-building the kit and using Lionel Strang’s method of melting the plastic to simulate a recent crash into the side of a mountain, but I don’t think my father-in-law would appreciate the humor…
One other problem with suspending an aircraft in the air over the layout is its lack of motion.
Granted, we have vehicles on our layouts that, for the most part, also don’t move. Like my people, I put my vehicles in positions where they don’t look strange standing still. That means my vehicles are either parked in parking lots or along the side of the road, or stopped at stop signs and grade crossings. I have an empty coal truck that’s pulling into the coal mine, but has stopped part way to allow for the switcher to pass with a cut of hoppers.
Likewise my people are generally standing and talking to each other, waiting for a train, or reading the paper. Some are sitting. One guy is running toward the restroom at the gas station; he’s my one “suspended animation” allowance because it’s a neat little gag.
The point is, there’s very little disconnect between the vehicles and people that don’t move and the trains that do, because the vehicles and people don’t look like they have to be moving.
An airplane sitting in mid-air, defying the laws of physics, allows for that disconnect as the trains roll below it. A helicopter might work since it can hover (a traffic helicopter over a jammed-up Interstate might make a neat scene!), but the airplane creates confusion between its static position and the overwise “live” layout beneath it.
Just my two cents… Your opinion may differ!