Often, in pictures of people’s layouts, you may see a set of wings flying above those trains. It’s a time when to different parts of the scale modeling collide, when aircraft fly above a layout full of trains.
So do you have aircraft flying over your layout. I’m curious to see how many people do this. Please add you though (and pictures!) below.
Also I am curious were and how people get HO (or N, etc.) planes to populate the skies of their layouts. Do they come in kit form or ready to run (fly?). I am kind of interested in getting so aircraft in the same scale as my trains for that big layout I may someday build!
Whats Neat this week just had a episode with a HO scale plane’ it had real working propellers even. It was a old Army cargo plane used during WW 11’ their were thousands of them sold after the war. Would work great on a 50s layout. Myself I just do not mix planes and trains and slot cars even.
Yes, I saw that video! That caught my attention. That was one of the first this that gave me this idea. The second was a post in a recent thread with a Grumman Goose flying boat. It would be cool to have an aircraft with moving propelers, though I wasn’t to keen on how they jerked on an off at the beginning in the What’s Neat video The Builder said that was to make it more realistic but I’ve seen airplanes do the start one prop and then the next this and they don’t jerk around like that. I feel like it could be better. It was still pretty cool though! It be nice to know what the kit was that made that DC3 (technically it was a C-47, but big difference!).
Not in model railroading, because an aircraft in the air sitting still looks terrible to me. I am also not a fan of animation in most cases.
.
However… in Wargaming we use scale models of appropriate aircraft all the time as they are needed for markers in game play.
.
Some players just use plastic or acrylic markers for aircraft attacks, but my group insists on the visual value of actually having an airplane model.
.
.
The key rule to get these to look right is to use an airplane of the INCORRECT scale. This is because we normally view aircraft from a long distance, and we rarely, if ever, get to view them with a known size object for context. If you ever see a 1/32 scale P51 Mustang next to a 1/32 scale Sherman Tank you might be shocked at how big a weapons platform the Mustang is. Airplanes tend to be much larger than people think.
.
A smaller scale airplane (in flight) just looks right.
.
In this picture, the JS-2 tank (a HUGE tank), is 1/100 scale, and the Junkers JU-87 aircraft (a SMALL airplane) is 1/144 scale. Still, the JU-87 is much larger than the JS-2.
.
A 1/100 scale airplane would look silly even though the scale is correct.
.
.
1/144 airplanes can look good. This late war aircraft is a single solid piece of cast resin, except for the cannon barrel, but with some basic painting it looks good.
.
.
I would suggest 1/144 for HO also for flying aircraft.
It is interesting how often when you are coming in for a landing at a large airport, that you pass over rail lines or rail served areas. So there is something to be said for including aviation on a layout. I agree that the sight of an airplane just frozen in mid-air is odd in real time, even if it photographs well (ditto for figures shown in action such as running or jumping: they give a better impression in photos). Walthers used to sell a plastic kit for a DC3/C-47 in HO. Maybe they still do. I have seen some pretty nice backdrops that show a tiny plane, with contrails, in the sky.
Not really pertinent to the OPs point but Athearn used to sell a small plane as a flatcar load.
Mine fly so high that they are no longer visible from my layout. [;)] In reality - an overhead plane would only appear realitic if it were close to earth - e.g. like a small crop duster - or in the far background, as part of the scenery. Even a Cessna carrying a banner would need to be considerably high (several hundred scale feet) above one’s layout. That doesn’t seem very practical for most layout settings.
Having an airport where planes are on the ground, or where a plane is just taking off or about to land would be easier and more practical to model. Just sayin’…
Several years ago I purchased an IHC kit Stock No. 2086, with 2 gliders and 4 airplanes from a local hobby shop. A couple of months ago I built one of the tow planes for a thread on another site and placed it above the layout as a conversation piece. I added the pilot figure and a disk of clear styrene to simulate the propeller arc. It has been a real hit with my youngest grandson and adds some color to the upper reaches of the layout.
I’m fairly sure you can still find the IHC kit somewhere.
Kevin makes lot of good points about scale and perspective.
The other problem, even to model a small general aviation airfield, you need space. A typical small airfield will have a primary runway at least 800 to 1,000 feet long, or about 12 actual feet.
Even selectively compressed by 50%, that is a big feature for most layouts…
The Gulliver’s Gate exhibit in NYC has a scale model of LaGuardia Airport, complete with modern jet aircraft and elaborate systems for takeoff, landings and even taxiing. The builders made dozens of HO scale 3D printed models of planes because they did not find commercial kits that worked.
The exhibit has many world areas, with DCC trains in them. I asked a simple question about why places like China would have Canadian National boxcars. No one knew until their train guy showed up. He was so happy to have another train guy to talk to that he gave me a personal tour.
Those boxcars, by the way, were Walters track cleaning cars they hadn’t gotten around to painting yet.
Several years ago, I was browsing the toy department in a Walmart, looking for vehicles that might be suitable for my late '30s-era layout.
While there was nothing appropriate, I came across this pretty-close-to-HO-scale Steerman biplane, painted in John Deere colours…
It seemed to me to be a good solution for layout photos not taken at HO scale eye-level, and to that end, I created a character, Barney Secord, (affectionately-based on a real person), to pilot this find. He’s the owner of Secord Air Services: aerial photography, crop spraying, barnstorming stunts whenever he feels like it, and emergency flights for those times when you’ve just missed your train, but gotta be somewhere else really quickly.
I repainted the 'plane, adding a figure that fit into the cockpit, then let him loose. Here’s a photo, grabbed by a fisherman (apparently equipped with a camera capable of stopping the propeller’s motion) on the Maitland River, as Barney flies under the Erie Northshore’s Maitland River bridge…
When I want to show track layout or the arrangement of structures, photos like these are usually “courtesy of Secord Air Services”…
I don’t think I like the idea of hanging airplanes high over the layout. I would prefer to have them low where you can see them with the trains, so either something low flying like a crop dusters, something on approach or taking off, or on the ground. That’s why I’d prefer HO scale models.
Recently on the Canadian canyons MR/MRVP project layout a Cessna was placed flying low over the main hill of the layout. It looks a little low but okay.
The ramp space for five humble 737s would take up an entire 4x8 in HO scale.
Curiously, airplanes always strike me as way smaller than I expect them to be. A CRJ700’s passenger compartment is actually smaller than, say, an Amfleet coach.
After extensive research, I realized that even unofficail (smaller than municipal airport) runways of the absolute mininmum length to be able to safely land an aircraft would be way too long (at least 8 actual feet). And I wanted an AIRPORT, not just a dirt strip. Oh well. Fooey. I decided that having models flying in the air would look silly too, so I just bought a small athearn v tail and called it good (for now, at least) However, if you still want to hang some HO models obove your layout, tell me what plane you want, and I will scale a model down for you of an existing model and post the STL file. Then you can 3d print it. Otherwise, have fun trying to find many good HO aircraft. I have already tried…
For those wanting to give a nod to aviation on their layouts but don’t have the space to have a runway, never mind an airport, consider the approach lights for an off-layout aerodrome. They could be made to flash like the real strobes. A rail line passing under the approaches to an airport or military base is quite common. I agree that a multiple hundred mile-per-hour flying machine frozen over a layout is hard to take.
But general aviation planes like a Piper Cub or a Beechraft Bonanza only fly between 100 and 200 mph max and often look “suspended” in the sky when observed from a distance.
Athearn has produced tens of thousands (maybe more) HO scale Beechcraft Bonanza V tails, sold loaded on flat cars and individually.
If you have “deep” scenery, you could hang one near the backdrop and it could look rather natural - just don’t stare at it real long…
