Boeing, Boeing...

[ljudice]

Current work in progress:



Still needs a lot of work on the aircraft (custom decals for windows, decal on the yellow tape slatthered all over these things),  custom decals for the flatcars and finish the box on the vertical stabilizer carrier car and of course the icebreaker, which is not going to be easy...

The green is prototypical, BTW, it is a thin plastic coating wrapped over the planes.

Of course the 737-400 itself is 1 144th...

[Ed Kapuscinski]

That's cool. I've seen a bunch of pics of them on Railpics and always thought they'd be a cool model.

[lock4244]

Great model! Not something that gets attempted often. Seen a few fusilages myself in the late 1990's traveling on CN's Bala Sub (they were deHavland or BBD), a real head turner, for sure. Wings too, but never as interesting as the fusilage!

[mcjaco]

Al Krug touches on these a couple times in his photo blog from years ago.  

http://krugtales.50megs.com/rrpictale/p000514/p000514.htm

and

http://krugtales.50megs.com/rrpictale/p010713/p010713a.htm

Wish he'd update it, as it was always a great read.

[Day One]

looks great!
I've been interested in doing a few of these myself but wasn't sure where to start with the fuselage. What are you using?

[ljudice]

I found a model from Minicraft which is a 1/144th Air France 747-400

There is also a model out there of a 747-800 which I believe is longer.  I figured I would go with the shorter body since I'm already 10% too big overall.

I cut off the tail and the nose. Best part is that I was able to use parts of the landing gear covers as the major support for the airframe on the flatcar.

I picked up two kits - I was anxious to try painting one first to try to get that unusual look of the plastic wrapping. I used Tamiya Aluminum overall and then masked it off and sprayed with Tamiya Metalic Green. I think it captures the overall look.

For the flats, I used Floquil Zinc Oxide Primer and then oversprayed with ColorTool Rosetta Red. Color tool is a line of paints for florists - they go on very, very thinly - but the Rosetta color is positively dead on for freshly painted mineral red - and depending how many passes you make you can do a faded car or a freshly painted car.

Lou

[Bob Horn]

Lou, looks more like a 737 than a 747, no bump on the roof. Flight Minatures has the 757 in 1/150. Bob.

[chuck geiger]

I lived in Wichita, KS for several years before moving to Fresno - On my commute from Derby to
Wichita, I passed Boeing (now called Spirit) and BNSF would make a train up of the fuselage and
several other component cars, they would instantly roll these up North to the route to Seattle
and they would be completed in Everett, WA. In HO I modeled the plant and had some of the
covered flats for airplane parts. Great job. (PS There was a rumor that after 9/11, they began
to have security on these trains and placed at sidings when they would be called to the hole. Also
heard they had the highest priority on the line).

[Nato]

   That really does look good so far. Never wanted to model this ,but did get several of the LBF covered Boeing / General Dynamics cars and an old resin version of that car from N Scale of Nevada. I can't wait to see your finished work.    Nate Goodman (Nato). Salt Lake, Utah.

[ljudice]

Yikes - sorry - I meant 737...   Egads, I've spent enough time in the stupid things!

[Walkercolt]

A Pig-on-flatcar! Actually, some years ago, my BNSF condutor freind and I were "camping", in a VW Campmobile, our way up to Matfield Green, KS and on the way saw and photographed a section of a "pig" on an 89' flat. Richard went ahead and used a 1/144th section of a 737 (silver) on a MT flat with real green plastic wrap streched over the "rear-end" and nose. It doesn't look as good as your's, but it looks very nice on the N-TRAK layout, but it's a "wide load" even with N-TRAK spacing! They still ship the wing sections in the big "aircraft boxes" as they are unbelievable fragile. ( A large number of wing sub-assemblies now are shipped in specially modified DC-10's, but you didn't hear that here!)

[GaryHinshaw]

That looks very cool Lou - the green is convincing.  Do you have adequate clearances to actually run that guy?

Cheers,
Gary

[ljudice]

Gary, I don't know.  I ought to be building track instead of putzing around with 737 carriers....

Seriously - vertical clearance is no problem - it is much shorter than a doublestack car.

It's a wide dimensional load though - although not by much. The issue is going to be tunnels near curves.  On the prototype they walk these things through tight spots, BTW.

[Ed Kapuscinski]

Like I've said, I've seen a bunch of really cool pics of these on Railpics.

This just came up today:
http://www.railpictures.net/viewphoto.php?id=302227