HO scale police vehicles


T

txbull816

New Member
I'm new to the site so forgive me if this has already been brought up. I'm looking for HO scale Crown Vics to use as police vehicles. I've seen a few but I'm trying to model the units used in my area. The wheels on the models I've seen look like regular vehicles. The departments around here have the small hupcap . Hope that's understandable. Does anyone know where I can find anything like that as a complete model or do they make wheelsets to replace them? Also looking for decals for police and fire units. Thanks
 
http://www.policecarmodels.com/ is, by far, the most comprehensive police car model dealer. In addition to vehicles, they have a great selection of lightbars and decals so you can customize your own units. All the Crown Vic's have the full wheel covers because it's a lot easier to disguise a full wheel cover than make one. For example, here's one of my Busch models that I've painted so the wheels appear to have just the hub covers:

VotingDayPoliceCarMedium.jpg


Unless you hold it right next to your eye, you can't tell the wheel covers have been painted. A little flat black paint and a fine brush is all it takes.

Of all the Crown Vic's, the most accurate Police Interceptor version is actually the cheapest, made by Model Power. It's the only one that has the correct dual exhausts and wider wheels and tires. The only problem is they only come with Vision light bars and they aren't very good. I get the slick top models and then add my own light bar, decals, spotlights, pushbars, and antennas.

As you can proabably tell, I'm a retired cop so I probably get a little more anal about police cars than the average modeler. :) Fire trucks I'm not so good with since I always ran out of buring buildings. Boley makes a very nice line of fire trucks and I have a few for the town fire station. If you go to www.Walthers.com and search on fire truck, you'll see there are a lot of models available. There are probably websites like PCM devoted to fire trucks models also so a Google search would turn up something.
 
Thanks for all the info. Gonna give it a try. The PD and SO units around here should both be easy to model as their both white. The SO units are solid white with a gold star on the door. The Pd units are solid white as well with blue stripes down the side. PD just got about 10-15 of the new Chargers and all of the guys are playing around with them. They also have one Magnum for the K-9 unit.
 
txbull816 said:
I'm new to the site so forgive me if this has already been brought up. I'm looking for HO scale Crown Vics to use as police vehicles. I've seen a few but I'm trying to model the units used in my area. The wheels on the models I've seen look like regular vehicles. The departments around here have the small hupcap . Hope that's understandable. Does anyone know where I can find anything like that as a complete model or do they make wheelsets to replace them? Also looking for decals for police and fire units. Thanks
Click to expand...

Here's my emergency vehicle thread.
http://www.modelrailroadforums.com/forum/showthread.php?t=7930
 
If you’re looking for any police officers to go with your police cars, Woodland Scenics offers a fine selection of police officers in different poses
 
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It hit me the other day that I'm modeling 1984 (- +) and all my cop cars are Crown Vics circa 2000's.
Any one know of cars in my era? Guess I'll be selling off some vehicular stock soon!
 
That's a tough era for police cars if you really want to be accurate. The common cars in use in 1984 were the Dodge Diplomat/Plymouth Grand Fury, Chevy Caprice C9i, and the box body Ford Galaxie/Crown Vics. I'm not aware of any of the Dodge/Plymouth lines from the 80's or a box body Crown Vic in HO. There is a 1978 Chevy Caprice available at http://www.policecarmodels.com/ho19chimpoca.html. This body style was used until the late 80's and would be close enough for your era. There's also a 1967 Ford Galaxie at http://www.policecarmodels.com/ho19fogapoca.html which is earler than your era but looks closer to a box body Ford then the current Crown Vics. For some reason, HO models from the 50's though the 70's a fairly common, as are Crown Vics that would pass from 1989 until today, plus the new Dodge Charger. The 80's seem to have been completely missed by model companies.
 
Thanx Jim, I think I can make the Caprice work just fine.
I'm not a big nitpicker on time lines but I like to be somewhat close.
Nothing spoils a great pic like a modern forklift loading a boxcar on a steam era layout!

(BTW, I noticed you're still running) :p
 
You're welcome, Rico. I'm not sure what you mean by still running but I'm a little dense tonight. :)

Mac, that's very cruel. Besides, we didn't have any Dunkin Donuts in California so we hung out at Krispy Kreme. :D
 
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