Home Sweet Home: Manufacturer House Colours

Given the ever expanding size of my 1:400 collection I probably ought not to be expanding into new collection areas, however I obviously can't help myself. My latest foray takes me into the territory of manufacturer house colours and has been bolstered by some excellent releases from Phoenix, JC Wings and Panda recently.

Most of my collection is organised not by aircraft type but by geographic region and within that sometimes the airline itself. I love this representation of the models however it does mean that there is nowhere from which an easy comparison of aircraft types can be made. Often when non-aviation people visit the collection the first thing they ask is about the aircraft types not the airlines or history.

The case as a Cathay Pacific display

I had acquired a glass display case as part of my huge 1:400 haul from a few years back and this had been filling in as my Cathay showcase until the recent move of Cathay and Asian airlines into their own larger and easier to access cabinet.

Reviewed models for DF - now almost all sold on

That left the glass case as a temporary display of models I was reviewing for The Diecast Flier that were to be sold on after the reviews. I had already acquired a small selection of house colours aircraft but I noticed last year that Phoenix and JC Wings especially were rolling out a decent number of new house colours models. Not only did these give me the opportunity to review new moulds at Diecast Flier but they also looked great and would allow me to display different aircraft types next to each other. Below are some of the new house colours releases from 2017 that joined my collection:

Then at the start of the year Waffle had that huge 1,600 piece massive collection sale and I noticed that quite a few of the models there were also in house colours. I snapped a few up and now have a passable representation of house colours aircraft as follows:

For the timebeing the new house colours presentation still fits comfortably inside the glass display case - and I need to keep it that way. It was originally going to just be modern types but the opportunity to pickup a DC-10 and 747 was too good to pass up :) . There's still plenty of types that could be added, although I am avoiding the many Dragon Wings Airbus house colours due to the weaknesses of their moulds for the types. The plan is to take a relaxed approach to filling in this case. The new NG Models 757s are tempting but annoyingly appear almost impossible to acquire. Here is the case at the moment (with glass removed):