Here is another hanger diorama, this time a small, ag operator's hanger. It's O-dark-thirty and the work day is beginning.
I found this Lionel hanger on eBay for a good price, so I thought I would build it up and see what it looked like. I was interested in the translucent roof that allowed light into the hanger for viewing, so I thought I would dress out the interior. Here are the results.
The doors are odd. I have seen doors like this that curve around ninety degrees on rails, but never on a hanger.
The trick to building this hanger is to bend and mold the plastic before gluing. The clear roof panels are flat and relatively rigid.
If they are not pre-formed, they will pop loose from the bending stress, as the brittle plastic does not glue well. The hanger trusses are very brittle and had to be repaired a number of times during the building process.
The doors are flat, heavy rigid plastic that are supposed to curve around on the railings, which of course they cannot do because of the heavy plastic's rigidity.
The doors are supposed to be popped on and off for open and close positioning. Since I did not care about closing the doors, I bent the heavy rigid plastic around a curve to conform to the rail structure. I then added the details and figures before final assembly of the roof.
I decided to clad the building in corrugated metal in the same fashion as many full-scale counterparts.
However, I chose not to clad the inside.
Of course, what is a hanger without
lighting so I put a couple of lights in with the battery pack/switch hidden under an attached shed on the backside of the hanger.
The fuselage framing cut out for the
Stearman's hopper was set out back behind the hanger, next to the shed.
Hangers like this invariably have shelving with various odds and ends stored upon them, so I built shelving out of Evergreen stock
and installed various aviation related bits and pieces along with a truck tire from the spares box. A number of details are white metal and were ordered either from
Berkshire Valley https://www.berkshirevalleymodels.com/ or
Grace Shaw at
http://www.VirtualDollhouse.net
Flight ops need a windsock, so I made a working model for the hanger
This is part of another diorama featuring a loading ramp that will be featured in my next article. I thought it would be easier to make the two dioramas in a manner where they could be displayed individually or together.
78 additional images. Click to enlarge.
Very atmospheric and a great dio. Is that an Ag-Cat you've so artfully added to the wonderful, if trying, hangar. In another life, many years ago, I worked as a journalist on an international fertiliser magazine. To break the monotony, I wrote a series of articles about aerial fertiliser application by air round the world The US and N Zealand featured heavily, as did the AG-Cat and the Piper Pawnee (?), then purpose-designed replacements for ageing Stearmans and the like. Great work! Paul
A beautiful diorama!
That's an awesome build of both the diorama and the Ag-Cat. Excellent creativity and craftsmanship. My compliments to you.
🙂 … Greetings … 🙂 :
Interesting diorama G, nicely detailed.
Nicely done G., lots of great detail to view. I like it.