Yesterday's Airlines Hangar Update Part 2

My collection started out entirely focused on the USA and specifically the US regulated era from about 1950-1980. Of my 1534 models the US part of Yesterday's Airlines still consists of a big chunk of the collection - 641 models in fact. I like to display by airline fleet and this has created some challenges especially when this part of the collection has been stored in a variety of different cabinets. In this part of my hangar update I take a look at how the US collection has been upgraded recently.

For part 1 of this series see: Yesterday's Airlines Hangar Update Part 1

It has actually been a while since I last updated about the hangar changes so in fact the layout being replaced here has never been blogged about.

To the left is part of the display i wasn't overly happy about. Since the last update I had replaced the wooden shelves with glass ones but they didn't fit the inside space well and if you look closely you can see that for the shelves to be supported it required a selection of wooden dividers, an upturned glass and a couple of upturned pasta storage boxes.

There was also a space issue as although it looked full most of the shelves didn't fill the internal space and I stil had models outside in the open air. You can see that some supplemental and World Airways aircraft are still sitting on top of the Braniff display.

I looked at getting a new display case but the cost was very high and instead I lucked upon some secondhand shelving that was almost perfectly sized to fit the cabinet. All up that cost me only $20 and I got a lot more shelving than I needed, in various sizes.

This shelving would come in handy as the capacity of the larger metal framed glass cabinet could also be boosted with an extra shelf. Below was the outlook before I got started. I really love the custom made MDF cabinet on the left but of the 6 occupied holes the lower two (housing Delta and Northwest) were still open to the air. The others have had thin plastic sheets put across them.

The way things were back in July 2017

The first step was to remove the models from the smaller metal framed display case. They were temporarily stored on the pool table. They consisted mainly of the CO, NE, WA, NA and supplemental fleets:

I'm not much of a DIYer but I needed a smarter way to keep the shelves upright and came up with my own slide in wood pillars. With three in place the shelves aren't going anywhere. I used a counterweight (in the form of some pebbles) to keep the top shelf in place and was able to add a smaller 4th shelf above it:

The next step was to rearrange the occupants. With more space available I was able to move both the Delta and Northwest fleets behind glass for the first time. In fact aside from the Capital, National and World fleets at the top this now looks very much like a Delta heritage cabinet as it also includes Northeast and Western. Note also the new style logo headers behind the displays showing the airline logos through time:

As I said the extra glass shelving also enabled me to increase the capacity of the taller metal framed cabinet, which gained the Supplemental airlines. All shelves also got the new style airline logo banners:

The eagle-eyed amongst you will note that I'm still missing one of the US majors. This is Continental, which having been removed from the smaller metal framed cabinet was now homeless. Fortunately I was able to use the extra shelving to make a glass topped and fronted display to go atop the Braniff cabinet.

So the overall look of this part of the collection remains from a distance the same, however in detail I have managed to move the last models behind glass and radically improve the storage and look of the display areas for a minimal cost. I have to say I'm really happy with the refresh. However that is not all. Although the metal edged cabinets are fitted with LED strips much of the rest remains unlit. Plus there were now also two empty cubes in the old MDF cabinet.

In part 3 I'll finish off this hangar update by looking at those issues.