VALLEY FORGE
From the 1971 science fiction film ‘SILENT RUNNING’ written and directed by DOUGLAS TRUMBULL
The Valley Forge is one of 8 massive space freighters - operated by American Airlines - that are carrying the last vegetation from various places around the world. The Earth is diwing from pollution and the effects of the ever expanding civilization. A sort of fleet of ‘Noah’s Arks’ for plants. It is a very good natured and sweet film.
1/600th was Airfix’s scale for larger ships. The ship is listed online as being 1 mile in length, but I think from what you can tell in the film it is more like 1800 t0 2000 feet. So a model in 1/600th scale would come out at nearly 3 feet long.
The domes which are the giant greenhouses and that would be 200 or 300 feet across in reality, would be maybe 4 inches in diameter at this scale. And the central pressurized living quarters area (the white bit in the middle) would be maybe 6 inches, making the superstructure pretty small – akin to the Airfix Bismrack kit.
Potentially a bit of a boring kit so I put a few things on the box – decals for the 7 other ships – not terribly exciting! Nearly 3 feet long etc. In the film we see that the domes are detachable so this would be an option too. I imagine this would come in the white plastic favoured for their spacecraft.
There would need to be a stand as there is not landing gear shown in the film – and these things are clearly too big to land. Possibly two of the truss stands like you got with the ships. Or maybe a superkit stand.
Had this kit been made it would have certainly offered a lot of potential for super detailing the hull and the gardens within the domes.
I am not sure who designed this - possibly Douglas Trumbull