1:400 Airport Accessories - Lighting Poles

My Xīn lóng International airport model has been close to completion now for sometime but one thing I have been struggling with has been adding some relief to the surroundings. Partly this could be achieved with some fake lighting, however selecting the lights has proven difficult. There are however several options for lighting in this scale all of which are pretty good.

I admit to having struggled to find useful lighting for my airport dioramas. Whilst I am impressed by all the electronics I see being done with LEDs and such I never have had the patience or skill to actually light the airports. It's enough for me to have some things that look vaguely light like on the diorama. There are a few possible sources of lights in 1:400 scale and in this post I'll take a look at 3 of them:

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Maqualas Lights (1:400)

Fred Willem via his site Maqualas.com has been selling various 1:400 addons including some lights but I have never got around to acquiring any. The lights themselves look pretty decent but didn't really match lighting found at any airport in China, plus they have a rather large base. I'm still tempted by them and the site says they are still in stock - although Fred himself has been quiet for quite some time now and I suspect isn't actively involved anymore? Certainly many of his other accessories haven't reappeared

These lights come in a 4 pack:

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Airline Manufacture (1:400)

This Chinese company has created a wide range of 1:400 accessories (I'll be taking a look at some of their other items in another post) including some lights. I acquired a set of these, which annoyingly only came with 2 lights. They are quite good but if you want to populate an airport diorama this is an expensive way to do it!

The lights are quite nice and scale well with larger 1:400s. I particularly like the bases, which look like they are meant to be there and not just there to allow the pole to stand.

Below you can see how they scale against a 1:400 A330:

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Herpa Scenix (1:500)

Despite the available 1:400 options cost wise and looks wise I think the best result is still using the 1:500 scale Herpa Scenix sets, which are well sized for 1:400 and have the added bonus of being a lot more cost effective as you get 10 in a pack. Jon Champs has previously sung their praises and I agree with him.

They are excellent, have a pleasing design and stand well with a bit of glue or blu-tack. In fact to my eye they actually look better with the 1:400 scale than the lights made for this scale (which sometimes seem a bit chunky).

Look at the size difference between the Airline Manufacture lights and the Herpa. The AM lights seem a bit too large.

For my Xīn lóng International  layout I have decided to standardise on the Herpa lights, although I have also slotted in the pair of Airline Manufacture poles too. The latter although nice are just too big for narrowbody gates and too expensive to acquire in the numbers I need.

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@ Xīn lóng International

Below you can see the Herpa Lights in action on my diorama. I think they look great.

The two other lights are on the small I pier: