Yesterday's Airlines Mk3.5

When I installed the glass cabinets in place of the open shelves it was clear there was still room for some extra shelving. Even though that was only 3 months ago the ever expanding size of the collection has meant that already I have made some changes to the layout and at the same time taken advantage of a few good opportunities to improve the area as well. Here's an update.

For an introduction to the Yesterday's Airlines hobby room / hangar space take a look at the posts under this heading.

So following the installation of the new glass cabinets I had all the non-US aircraft in the collection (that's about 2/3 of them) displayed in 5 metal framed glass cabinets atop the heavy duty workbench as you see below:

This was awesome but the shelf sizes didn't always lend themselves ideally to the models seeing as I had them organised in a geographical layout. It was clear that there was some room for extra shelves as all but one had only 4 glass shelves within it, however the rather bespoke size of the shelves made adding new shelving quite a challenge. Plus the catches holding the shelves were unique and not purchasable anywhere else. Fortunately I managed to find another cabinet seller who had a different style catch that could fit into the rails in the corners to hold new shelves in - at least after a bit of bodging and mucking about. Now I just had to find some shelves.

Above: New convex shelf with Hainan Airlines below and HNA Group airlines on it.

Fortunately New Zealand's eBay equivalent, TradeMe, came to the rescue and I found a company selling shelves for an incredible $2 each. They were a wholesaler who looked like they'd accidentally come into a load of shelving designed for bathrooms that they needed to get rid of. The shelves came in a rather random variety of sizes but would fit inside the existing cabinets. Even so they were not an exact fit and I'd have to find a way to hold them up, as they weren't wide enough to reach the front or far side.

The answer has come in the form of some tall shot glasses I found at KMart for only a few bucks. They are the perfect height to allow the shelf to rest on their top but still have enough room underneath to display models on the lower shelf. At right you can clearly see the shot glass holding up the shelf above. Being transparent they are not too obvious and are actually quite attractive.

2 more glasses help hold up the concave shelf in the European section

The new shelves come in three shapes. One is a standard rectangular shelf about 20cm deep and full width. The rest are either convex or concave shelves about 80cm wide and about 25cm deep at their widest parts. Above you can see the convex shelf in the first Chinese cabinet. A single extra shelf has been added to each cabinet that had 4 to begin with. As you can see below the other new shelves provide a shelf for Chinese independents and Dragonair/Cathay Dragon/New CX, Australian overflow and 1980s European models respectively.

They also give me a little bit of wiggle room for expansion! Below are overviews of the 5 cabinets now. Given the weight of the new shelves and the fact they rest on each other I don't think I'll be able to fit anymore in the cabinets.

The US collection hasn't been ignored either. I have replaced one of the smaller glass cabinets with a 6th metal and glass one I had spare and been able to slip in Continental, Northeast, Capital, National and the Supplemental airlines. Unfortunately I only had wooden shelves, which make it a bit dark. Maybe in the future I can do something with glass in here too?

Lastly my ability to gaze at the collection has been enhanced further. Joining the sofa is now an armchair which my wife evicted from our bedroom. I was ok with it - it's a comfortable place from which to view the US portion of the fleet :). For a closer look at some of my fleets go to the fleets area of the website.