Do many of you put fire hydrants on your layouts ? If so, do you buy or make them ? I found some from AMB but the picture isn’t good enough to really see what they look like I ordered a couple of sets because they are cheap enough.
Some IHC kits I built came with them. I also got some from Life Like and (I think) Model Power.
I bought a kit for an HO Scale dog one time and a fire hydrant was included with it!
I got some from Walthers a while back. I think they were the AMB ones. There’s one of them in this shot, off to the left. (Sorry, it’s a twilight shot, so the fire hydrant isn’t particularly well-lit.)
These came as bare metal, so I had to paint them up. They’re quite long, so I drilled a hole in the styrene sidewalk and glued it in.
When I first ordered these, they were out of stock with no estimated date. I made a few of my own with sprue, but these came in before I ever put them on the layout. In terms of detail, these are much nicer, and I glad I got them.
I model fire hydrants, sprinkler valves and hose houses around my sawmill. In the past, I purchased hydrant and other special castings from Hudson Shores Model Train Depot in Blauvelt NY. I modified some of these castings to represent sprinkler sectional control valves. These castings appeared to be special runs and I am not sure if they still carry them. ( Refer to MR LHS directory for web site and telephone number)
Peter Smith, Memphis
The Walthers street system comes with decent looking fire hydrants. I didn’t notice them at first after clipping the street and sidewalk pieces off the sprue and nearly tossed them together with the manhole covers and gutter drains.
Dave Nelson
I’ve got several of them on the layout. All are white metal and by at least two different manufacturers, Juneco being one of them.
To me, this kind of detal is the best – very easy to install and adds greatly to the feel of realism on the layout.