emergency vehicles in HO scale

[trainman1980]

I like emergency vehicles and converting regular vehicles into emergency vehicles.Sometimes I put the lights on the roof and sometimes inside on the dash or rear deck.The best emergency light kits to use are modern day emergency lights made by Busch.You glue the lenses onto the dash,rear deck,grille,or bumper.I perfer to use blue,clear,and sometimes red lights on my police vehicles and red and clear for my fire and EMS vehicles.I'm mainly going by Arkansas law.Also the older style lightbars made by Busch are good for modern day because the beacons can be used and the red and blue lenses from the Twinsonic lightbar make great minibars.Comments welcome.I would like to know how each modeler do their emergency vehicles.

 

[UP2CSX]

Check out http://www.policecarmodels.com/index.html if you haven't already been there. It's mostly police vehicle oriented but they have some fire stuff and great selection of decal.

I'm a retired deputy sheriff so I made a few police cars and fire trucks for my layout. The right is a Busch Crown Vic with the standard light bar that I detailed and decaled for my town of Hillside. The left unit is a Model Power car and the detail level is actually better that Busch in terms of replicating a Crown Vic PI. It's decaled and detailed for the county sheriff and uses a Busch light bar:

I like other emergency vehicles as well although I don't know as much about them as police cars. This a Boley International brush truck along with old No. 1, an indeterminante age Seagraves.

A better shot of the brush truck:

I also did up one Dodge Sprinter ambulance. Ths one was also Busch, as I recall:

I'll probably do a pumper and another city police unit as I have the time. There are a lot of emergency vehicle modelers out there although probably not as many in HO as in the larger scales.

 

[firetacoma]

That brush truck is really more of an urban interface engine. It would be a type IV. BLM and USFS have lots of that style. As for the seagrave, the front end looks wrong to me, but I'm not an expert on antique fire apparatus.

 

[trainman1980]

nice models

 

[UP2CSX]

Thanks, Trainman. Fire, like I said, I don't know much about fire apparatus except that when you guys showed up, I did traffic control. Old No. 1 is a hunk of plastic that comes with the AHM firehouse so I don't doubt that it's really not a Seagraves or any other type of real engine - I just like the name Seagraves.

BU 8 is a model of an International 4900 crew cab truck. Being from California, this used to be the most common type of what the CDF called "brush trucks". I did do a lot of work with CDF on wildland fires so I'm used to seeing their trucks and their guys always called them brush trucks. I think the urban interface term developed after the Oakland Hills fire, when CDF had it's first real combination wildland/structure fire on a large basis. I was there for that and it confirmed for me why I never wanted to be a firefighter. It was scary.

 

[trainman1980]

One thing about the ambulance.It would look better if it had red lights on top of it.Those yellow lights look better in the rear or on a tow truck.

 

[trainman1980]

Can you make a regular car an unmarked police car or a volunteer firefighter's or EMT's vehicle?

 

[UP2CSX]

Trainman, look again. The ambulance has one side of the lightbar red and one side amber. I guess it doesn't show too well in that photo. In California, red and amber are the only colors allowed for ambulances (no blue) so the combination is common in California. Even though I live in Alabama now, I still tend to think like a Californian when it comes to emergency vehicles.

You can make a regular car into anything you want to. I'm not from a state that allowed volunteer FF's or EMT's to have emergency lights or sirens but, in passing through states that do allow that sort of thing, I've seen lights on everything from broken down pickups to whackermobiles completely decked out in every light known to man.

The most common unmarked car is a Crown Vic, except in Alabama, where it is the official car of little old ladies. There's a difference between an unmarked street unit and an undercover car. Street units just try to look stealthy with clear LED lights and nothing sticking out, like push bars. Undercover units can be almost anything. We had a Mazda Miata, a Corvette, and 1966 Ford Galaxie that our UC guys used.

 

[firetacoma]

Thanks, Trainman. Fire, like I said, I don't know much about fire apparatus except that when you guys showed up, I did traffic control. Old No. 1 is a hunk of plastic that comes with the AHM firehouse so I don't doubt that it's really not a Seagraves or any other type of real engine - I just like the name Seagraves.

BU 8 is a model of an International 4900 crew cab truck. Being from California, this used to be the most common type of what the CDF called "brush trucks". I did do a lot of work with CDF on wildland fires so I'm used to seeing their trucks and their guys always called them brush trucks. I think the urban interface term developed after the Oakland Hills fire, when CDF had it's first real combination wildland/structure fire on a large basis. I was there for that and it confirmed for me why I never wanted to be a firefighter. It was scary.

My entire fire district is in the wildland/urban interface. The best assignment you can get is structure protection! Most of the time the fire doesn't get to you and the homeowner usually tells you to help yourself to the fridge!

When I hear brush truck I usually think Type 6... pickup with a tank of water.

 

[trainman1980]

Trainman, look again. The ambulance has one side of the lightbar red and one side amber. I guess it doesn't show too well in that photo. In California, red and amber are the only colors allowed for ambulances (no blue) so the combination is common in California. Even though I live in Alabama now, I still tend to think like a Californian when it comes to emergency vehicles.

You can make a regular car into anything you want to. I'm not from a state that allowed volunteer FF's or EMT's to have emergency lights or sirens but, in passing through states that do allow that sort of thing, I've seen lights on everything from broken down pickups to whackermobiles completely decked out in every light known to man.

The most common unmarked car is a Crown Vic, except in Alabama, where it is the official car of little old ladies. There's a difference between an unmarked street unit and an undercover car. Street units just try to look stealthy with clear LED lights and nothing sticking out, like push bars. Undercover units can be almost anything. We had a Mazda Miata, a Corvette, and 1966 Ford Galaxie that our UC guys used.

I see it now.Thanks.

 

[CBCNSfan]

Hi Jim, thanks for the link, pretty interesting site. For now I've bookmarked it.
Really like the vehicles you've done.
Cheers Willis

 

[UP2CSX]

Thanks, Willis. It's a really nice site with good selection, good prices, and some really hard to find decals. His service was fast as well. I'll tell you, though, trying to decal an HO scale police car makes doing a freight car seem easy.

Fire, I'm not really up on engine typing since I'm retired but I think that engine is also a type IV in California. California is probably unique in having such large units commonly called brush trucks. It has a suction pump mounted on the rear for drafting and carried about 1500 gallons of water, as I remember. The 4900 is an earlier unit that both USFS and CDF used. If you look close at the model, you'll see I've made a canvas cover for the hose bed. They originally had no hose bed cover and the hoses would catch on fire when they were standing by for things like structure protection and a big ember fell in the hose bed. The new ones are all enclosed in diamond plate to prevent this.

I had to do a lot of evacuations and then standbys in neighborhoods to prevent looting. I always made friends with the FF's who were doing structure protection because they always knew which house or houses we were allowed to raid the fridge.

 

[trainman1980]

Check out http://www.policecarmodels.com/index.html if you haven't already been there. It's mostly police vehicle oriented but they have some fire stuff and great selection of decal.

I'm a retired deputy sheriff so I made a few police cars and fire trucks for my layout. The right is a Busch Crown Vic with the standard light bar that I detailed and decaled for my town of Hillside. The left unit is a Model Power car and the detail level is actually better that Busch in terms of replicating a Crown Vic PI. It's decaled and detailed for the county sheriff and uses a Busch light bar:


I like other emergency vehicles as well although I don't know as much about them as police cars. This a Boley International brush truck along with old No. 1, an indeterminante age Seagraves.



A better shot of the brush truck:



I'll probably do a pumper and another city police unit as I have the time. There are a lot of emergency vehicle modelers out there although probably not as many in HO as in the larger scales.

Thanks for the website.I've never seen anything like it.

 

[trainman1980]

Also check this link out


copcar.com

 

[trainman1980]

I picked up this white step van for my police dept.Should I put just 1 set of blue lights on the front or a lightbar on the front and rear of the van?I'll show you when I put the blue lightbar or lightbars on it.I'll decal it later.

 

[trainman1980]

I haven't decaled it yet but I put 2 lightbars on it.

 

[UP2CSX]

Lightbars are one of those things that vary by department so there's no rules. It looks fine with the two lightbars. What's the stepvan going to be used for? If it's a command post, you'll need some white floodlights for each side and a boatload of antennas for the top. If you want a challenge, try building one of those hydraulic masts like you see on TV news vans. We had one on our command post with a CCTV camera and a couple of antennas mounted on it. Pretty impressive when it was up the full 34 feet.

 

[trainman1980]

I don't know what I'm going to use it for yet.I have another project with another white step van.I'm going to make it the county's Office of Emergency Management's command center.I'm going to use clear lightbars because in AR,OEM vehicles can only have green lights and green lenses are not available in HO scale and I'm not going to take any time to paint the lenses.I'll just use clear lenses.They have LED lightbars that are clear off,colored on.

 

[trainman1980]

Lightbars are one of those things that vary by department so there's no rules. It looks fine with the two lightbars. What's the stepvan going to be used for? If it's a command post, you'll need some white floodlights for each side and a boatload of antennas for the top. If you want a challenge, try building one of those hydraulic masts like you see on TV news vans. We had one on our command post with a CCTV camera and a couple of antennas mounted on it. Pretty impressive when it was up the full 34 feet.

Thanks for the ideas.What do you use for antennas?

 

[UP2CSX]

First, for green on the lightbar, get some green glitter nail polish and use that for the green lenses. Comes out nice and the lightbar looks like it really has reflectors.

I use several different types of wire for antennas. If it's low band with the big whip, I use 22 gauge wire with the insulation striped down to about 3 mm at the end. I cut it off, drill a hole big enough for the insulated portion to fit, and then just eyeball it until it looks like a spring. A small drop of CA on a toothpick will secure it.

High band antennas are a lot more difficult. I use one strand from a 20 gauge wire, which looks about right on the vehicle. The fun part is drilling the little tiny hole. You need a Dremel variable speed tool and a #80 drill bit. Use the drill bit to make a tiny nick where you want the antenna or the drill will slide all over the roof. With the drill on its slowest speed, just touch the roof lightly and it will go through plastic in nothing flat. Metal takes only slightly longer. Get the wire bit as straight as possible and slip it in the hole - should be a perfect fit if you've done it right. Use some CA to both secure it and build up a small base that you can paint silver or black to represent the antenna mount.

Anything above high band I just drill the hole, use the CA to build up a base, and pretend there's an antenna there.