Trumpeter La France Fire Engine

This is to a picture on HLJ's homepage. Not painted but gives an idea of the subject.

http://www.hlj.com/showreports/ths05/ths-auto/pictures/IMG_0417.html

 

Niclas

I have been wanting to do a fire truck for a long time. Is there a list of what is available? I know I have seen a few trucks from ERTL or AMT over the years but know nothing about the kits. Who makes a decent fire truck model, and are there aftermarket parts available to enhance the model? I'd like to do a model of the 1950s or 1960s vintage trucks but any nice model would be OK.

Sorry to jump into your thread, but you guys seem to know something about the subject and I am completely ignorant about it.

 

Sorry, I'm no fire truck/emergency model vehicle expert. I do know there are not too many offerings out there. I believe the AMT models you mention are 1970's La France, but don't quote me. There's an aftermarket company in Texas, Fred's Custom Models (I think that's right) that has some stuff. Anyhow, the Trumpeter La France is the only 1/25 injection molded modern truck, soon to be available. Pete

Niclas, Thanks for that photo link! Pete

rangerj wrote:

I have been wanting to do a fire truck for a long time. Is there a list of what is available? I know I have seen a few trucks from ERTL or AMT over the years but know nothing about the kits. Who makes a decent fire truck model, and are there aftermarket parts available to enhance the model? I'd like to do a model of the 1950s or 1960s vintage trucks but any nice model would be OK. Sorry to jump into your thread, but you guys seem to know something about the subject and I am completely ignorant about it.

 

The best listing of emergency vehicle kits I know of is at The Scale Firehouse, not all of these are currently available but at least it shows you what might be available. I know the AMT American LaFrance kits are pretty easily found, I believe the Peterbilt fire truck is currently in production, the Italeri Opel Fire Truck and Mack Fire Engine / Impala Police Car kits are moderately common. The Opel truck could be kit bashed with a 1950 Chevrolet to make a decent 1950's water tender, the running gear is very similar to larger GM trucks.

Here is the list

http://www.scalefirehouse.com/kits.html

 

Also the ALF kits are mid to late 60's, although that basic body style came out in the late 50's and lasted until the early 80's.

The AMT/ERTL kits are excellent kits. I recently purchased AMT's ALF Aerochief snorkel, and simply opening the box and looking at the contents gave me goosebumps.

They do however need an improvement in the emergency lighting. The "bubblegum machine" rotators leave a little to be desied. Much better lightbars can be bought from such sources as Silvershield Diecast, and Chimneyville Hobbies, to name a couple.

 

Oh, Squadron has the AMTs on sale right now, the ladder and snorkel are only $19.99 each!!!

Supposedly the ALF is going to be out next month. From what I have seen it will be around $65 for it but the kit looks to be pretty good, especially considering when they brought out those AMT ones again recently they wanted about the same for them. I have some built up and painted pics of the ALF that if you would like to see drop me an email and I will send them to you.

The list on the Scale Firehouse site is pretty much what is out there or has been at some point. I have a couple to add still but they are ones that are real hard to find.  About the best you can do right now is kitbash other kits into trucks. Even the AM area is a bit limited right now for tools and stuff. Don Mills has some stuff that he makes that you can still get that can be found on the Scale Firehouse site as well.

looking at the picture i am a bit surprised at trump

look at the white section on the side the gauges are molded in

if you look at most of their auto models large piece counts seem to be their thing and follow this the gauges  should be separate

 

I see what you are saying. It looks like the panel will need some time spent on it to make it look right all around any way. That is alot of detail painting and what not. Not only that but looking at pics ofthe actual truck and then the kit, it looks like the kit part needs to be sprayed with some metalizers to get the right look. 

Looks like they could have made the light covers on it seperate pieces so they would be more 3 deminsional for one. Coarse those could always be removed and replaced with some PE fret or something.  Here's something else I noticed, the actual truck has diamond plate on the rear of the cab section, fromt he looks of it the kit does not.

I'm not going to knock it to much at this point though,  I have not yet seen the actual kit first hand and judging by the looks of the build in the pics , it was not a first rate job.  All though I can't wait to get my hands on it and detail the heck out of it.

Here are the walk around pics of the actual truck though that I have put on my site.  http://scalefirehouse.com/alfeagle.html

Anyone notice the builder put the cab clearance lights on the wrong way on the Trumpeter kit?

Fred's Custom Models does quite a bit of fire equipment. He does figures as well but he did/or was going to do bunker coats, helmets and the like. Stuff looks really good and would look good on seats etc.

I bought some lightbars from him for a police car but I wasn't impressed with them. Ended up tossing them out in the end. Maybe I just got some bad ones who knows.

I have the 3 AMT trucks still in the boxes waiting to be built. Oh well, one day.

Oh, Hobby Heaven had a reissue of the Ford galaxie police car if I recall. It could also be built as a fire chief's car. It's from the early 70's so it would work alongside the AMT trio of engines.

I have aftermarket decals for the Chicago Fire Department. I think they would look good in the balck and red colours.

 

the ford was police only  they issued the 70 impala as the matching fire chief car no reissue on that kit but they reissued the regular impala model just buy the fire chief decals and lights