Norscot Peterbilt 389

POOLSIDE RAILS

Where Paper Crafting and Model Railroading Collide

Peterbilt 389 from Norscot

HO Scale Vehicles

Normally you’d expect to find finely detailed HO scale model trucks and your local hobby store, and you can. And you can find them online from about a scadillion different vendors. Sometimes you can even find them at high-end toy stores.

The marketing guys at Norscot, however, have found another venue the rest of just ignored. Who drives Peterbilt 389s? And where do they stop for fuel? And who might want a model of their rig to share with their kids, their families, or as a simple emblem of their passion? Norscot’s point exactly. Their catalog is chock full of Caterpillar construction equipment and over-the-road machines like the 389. Scaled to either 1/50 or 1/87, their collection is impressive both in scope and in the level of detail.

Our 389 came from a Pilot truck stop in Barstow, CA. It was on the half-price rack, marked down for the holidays from $7.99 . The truck came nicely mounted on a black base with a clear plastic cover that was all packed inside a handsome window box plastered with Peterbilt logos. The “not suitable for children under 8” message is printed in no less than 14 languages on the back of the box.

The truck cab itself is cleanly molded in white plastic and is mounted on an equally well molded black plastic chassis. Door frames are raised and nicely picked out with a very light coat of silver paint. The seven bullet lights across the top of the cab are touched ever so slightly with amber paint, resulting in a very scale appearance. While the exhaust stacks, grille, bumper, canisters, and sun shade are all chrome, the fuel tanks, battery boxes, and mud flaps supports are painted silver – a very nice touch in such a small scale. The massive Peterbilt grille is realistically blacked out, resulting in a striking model.

Six of the ten wheels are nicely depicted, and each axle set rolls smoothly. There is no working suspension on this model, as it is meant to remain attached to the plastic base on which is was presented. The red and white Peterbilt script logos on the hood and mud flaps are cleanly printed and appear exactly in scale.

There is no interior on this model. The cab’s smoked windows, which sit behind their frames rather than in them, hide the paucity of detail in there. But a flashlight reveals a gaping cavern just waiting for the super-detailer’s knife. Opening the doors on the cab would be a simple operation, as the cab is plastic.

Better yet, the cab is held to the chassis by a pair of small Phillips screws. The forward screw sits exactly where the bottom side of the engine would lie, eliminating that detail. Behind that screw socket is a nicely detailed transmission and a driveshaft that terminates in the other screw socket. This second socket sits in an unrealistic rectangular box that is fortunately hidden from side view by the fuel tanks. These guys thought of everything!

The model scales right in at 1/87, and will look perfectly at home on any modern-era HO scale model railroad layout. Super-detailers will want to add a hose stand to the rear deck and work on that cab interior. But the rest of us would do well to swing by our local truck stop and put our hands on one of these striking models. While there, you could actually compare it to the real ones idling right outside!

You can learn more about the full line of Norscot models at the Resources Page or by visiting their website at Norscot.com.