I’m looking to replace the beachcraft planes on my T&P flat car with a fighter jet (corsair that was built in my hometown during the war) What scale should I get? I don’t want one that will be hanging off the edges!
A7 corsair (jet, Vietnam) or the F4U (WW-2/Korea)?
You might be able to get a 1/72 scale kit and only use the fuselage for the load? Even with the wings folded the A-7’s a bit large for a typical flat car load. Monogram did make a 1/48 scale model that could be used as a basis for a scale flat car load if you modeled the fuselage as partially assembled to be shipped to another plant for final assembly. Boeing actually did this with a much large plane (737) and used special flatcars to ship the partially assembled fuselage, wings and tail assembly from one plant to another:
I was thinking about 1/72 if I could find a model where the wings folded up. The Corsairs did that for the Navy. Remember Ba-Ba Blacksheep show on NBC. Those were built here (Grand Prairie, Tx during the war) My dad worked for Vought…later LTV… etc… They also built the tail sections I believe for Boeing later on and I would see these flat cars that were enclosed. You could never tell what was inside them, but they bulged out somewhat. But you’re right probably be better to model just the fuselage.
F4U’s did that wild rotate at the root and fold back along the sides of the fuselage.
The A7’s had the piston to raise the entire center of the wing and the last 10-12 feet on the wings folded back over the fuselage when the plane was stowed. This still gives you a 20+ foot wing span. An A-7 with the wings missing and spraylat/plastic film could make for a fascinating flat car load. Good luck!
This reminds me of a story my grandmother used to tell. In the early part of the last century, my grandfather dragged her down to the train station to watch a train go by with an airplane on it. He told her that this might be her only chance ever to see one. He died before I was born; but she lived to the age of 100, long enough to fly in airplanes herself.
Here is my Boeing Fuselage Transporter that i built. 
Here is a F4U Corsair.As you can see they folded toward each other. 
The F4f wildcat had the wings that pivoted and folded back toward the fuselage. 
Thanks for the clarification/correction. BTW those are beautifully done aircraft models. Those could make nice flat car loads.
Since we rarely see modern jets next to railroad equipment it’s hard to get a handle on the scale. I guess another possible modern jet that would fit well on a flat car is an AV8. I don’t know if MD ever shipped that way but that doesn’t mean they coudln’t.
Philo,
Great looking Corsair… Two questions… would it fit on a flat car… and where did you get it?
Thanks!
Rob
The real plane’s folded wing span is about 17’ which is 7 feet over the width of a standard rail car. The length overall is about 34 feet and the highest point on the plane with folded wing tips is 18 feet. About 15 feet for the prop (vertical clearance), 13 feet wide. If you remove the wings and the prop, clearance drops to 11 feet.
Those blueprints from that link are pretty impressive don’t you think?
Well guys the planes are 1/32 so they are too large for “O” gauge.I was just demonstrating how the wing-fold structures differed on the Corsair and Wildcat.I built both planes from kits and painted them with my Paasche VL double-action airbrush.To make a flat -car for “O” gauge you would need a 1/48 scale plane.(Hasegawa makes 1/48 scale Corsair and Corsair ll kits that are outstanding).
Thanks for all the info. Looking at the complete picture I guess is would be better to just haul the fuselage. But I could get the complete planes and set them up in an airport setting near hangers… Since I’m going to model my hometown and there was a naval air station next to the plane factory. Thanks again for everyone’s help. Love the message boards!
It will be close with 1/50 on side measurement. Think length will be no problem. Check some diecast at shows and take a measurement. I would have thought that transporting with wings off would be normal.
Bill D
Monogram (now Revell-Monogram) made millions of 1/48 scale kits of USN WWII aircraft, and they reissue them from time to time. A quick check of eBay shows two or three available right now, and many more of the other ones: TBD, TBF/M, F4F/M, F6F, SBD, SB2C, OSU2. also, several of the Tamiya and Hasegawa kits are avilable (but perhaps less desireable as they don’t fit the nostalgia). You could build one up, easily leaving the wings off and detailing the area lightly with “good-enough innards.” You could then put the wings on another flatcar. An article very early in CTT’s run showed how to build a suitable rack for a Paper Kite–uh, I mean Piper Cub 
for use on a Marx flat.
Revell. Monogram. Memories of strings of aircraft hanging from the ceiling in my boyhood bedroom. Fokker triplanes chasing a B17 and a B24. At least I got the combatants right, but I was just a kid.
Jack
The SBD Daultless, the SB2C Helldiver, and the TBF/M Avenger could actually drop their bombs and torpedoes. Many a warship model on the floor lost a radar dish or a gun barrel to a dropped bomp or torpedo from a vastly over-scale aircraft flying a couple of feet overhead. . . .
Good memories. I also used to blow them up with firecrackers, gasoline, magnifying glasses using the sun, air rifles. All good boy stuff. About 15 years ago, I remember driving to their HQ in suburban Chicago to get a catalog. I still have a B-26 and F4 Phantom on a shelf in my office.
Does anyone remember this plane? 
The pic is a bit difficult for my eyes, but the markings suggest it is a TBD Devastator, late-prewar/early war USN torpedo bomber. By the markings, this was the #3 aircraft in VT-6, Torpedo Squadron Six, still part of Carrier Air Group Six, assigned to the U.S.S. Enterprise during the first part of the war up until June of 1942 when, along with most of its squadron mates as well as those from Yorktown and Hornet, almost all operational TBDs were shot down attacking the Japanese carriers north of a little sandspit called Midway. IIRC, ten of fourteen TBDs flying with VT-6 were lost.
Blame for the loss is often placed on the aircraft design–and it was fairly slow–but the real cause was a mix of uncoordinated attacks; the straight, level, and low attack pattern of torpedo aircraft; and unfortunate timing.