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Paper models, photos and musings of a Paper Kosmonaut

25 October 2017

Schiphol 1935 1/300

Hi there.
In a way this is a follow-up of the last build, because it has the same subject in a diorama setting: 

The Handley-Page HP. 42 PH-PNG “Groningen” 
at Schiphol Airport, 1935.

It's not often that I revisit a story or a build but this one wasn’t finished yet, I guess.
After building the Handley-Page HP.42 in 1/100 and having recoloured it into a fictitious livery, I thought it would be nice to also do the other fictitious livery from the story, the KLM one. But not in the same scale.
It was long ago that I have tried a small scale build. Mainly because of my eyes have deteriorated a little and me being a little afraid to face a failed attempt to build in these little scales (which I always have preferred).



A little giveaway here, you can see some result in the top of the picture. More on that can be seen below.

Well, anyway, I just printed the HP.42 in 1/300. in its KLM livery, with the same registration as the Kroonduif one except for the nationality letters. So PH for the Netherlands instead of JZ for Dutch New Guinea. So this is the “Groningen”.
(something unusual for the time in KLM-tradition, since all their planes were named after birds, using the last letter of their registration code. Even the hard to name PH - AKQ was named after a bird. Kwak, a small heron. (It could have been Quetzal, but perhaps that was to long or still too unknown in the Netherlands at the time…)

The HP.42 build goes quite well, and I am pleased with it. I used a loupe once in a while to cut out things like the engine nacelles. But in the end it also could be done with just the old specs on the nose. It looks like it is going to work in this scale. work in progress pics further down the post.

But there is already something I can show in a more or less finished state. I wanted to create this into a diorama so I also wanted to make the Schiphol airport main building. There is a very nice little paper model of the building, originally called “Het Stationsgebouw”. It has been designed by Noorderlicht, the architect bureau that actually rebuilt the original Schiphol building at the Aviodrome in Lelystad, the National Dutch Air and Space Museum.

The rebuilt Schiphol main building like it looks today in Lelystad. Photo © Aviodrome Lelystad
They created the building like it was in 1928. By then, it was two years old and already had a little extension added (the part in the back with the four square little windows). Now in my story it is somewhere in the thirties, in the time the KLM HP.42’s entered service. I had to figure out how the building looked in, say, 1935.

It was quite hard to even find good photos of the building itself (it has been destroyed by bombardments in the Second World War) but it was even harder to date the photos. I got confused when I saw elements on photos I couldn’t find back in the building I was making.
It appeared that at a certain moment it was thoroughly expanded and changed. 



The restaurant part was rebuilt, moved forward and heightened. The tower got an extension with an external staircase and the lower roof was turned into a terrace. It took quite some time to figure out what happened to the building, and especially when it happened. Luckily, I finally discovered the elaborate rebuild took place in 1937 so I still could use the original 1928 model for my story.

03 October 2017

Handley Page HP.42 Kroonduif Airlines [1/100] part 2

So here's the next (and last) installment of the HP.42 "Kalong" of Kroonduif airlines.
The plane is ready and has taken a nice place on one of my shelves.

Here she is in finished state:


Now below is the build story.