New prop discovery - Docking Bay 94 "yellow tanks"

3Dsf

Sr Member
RPF PREMIUM MEMBER
Not sure if this warrants its own thread, really, but I can't find an obvious place to put it.

Anyway. Docking Bay 94 in the original Star Wars movie features a couple of odd yellow fibreglass tank-like structures off to the side of the Millennium Falcon. They're barely visible on screen for a couple seconds. Technically there's a third object of the same type behind the ship, but you really have to study screenshots to see it.

Over the years different people, including myself and including ILM, have modelled these things as front-back symmetrical, simply because that's the only view of the objects that were available. Renditions of these tank objects appear in the docking bay in Attack of the Clones, for example. But it turns out that's completely wrong!

Thanks to correspondent Gray Sharpling, it appears that these "tanks" weren't tanks after all, but instead were wheeled diesel compressors used for powering pneumatic tools at British work sites. Hydrovane 180DS and related products. Who woulda thought? :)

I've written up a new page on the docking bays which has some additional information on them that I've been able to find.

https://sites.google.com/site/millenniumfalconnotes/part-iic-the-docking-bays

And now I'm working on rebuilding my 3D models. And they're way more complicated objects to model now! Crap.

- nkg

yellow.jpg

hydrovane-trailer.jpg

hydrovane-1.jpg
 
Interesting, I always wondered what those were!

Nice job!

Sent from my VS996 using Tapatalk
 
Wait!!
This wasn't a known thing?

I’m sure it was known to some people. Mainly British people who remember that era. But I’ve done a bunch of hunting around and it’s the first time I heard of these things! They sure don’t have these in the UK much anymore.
 
Yeah, these were super common in the seventies in the uk.

I remember seeing the movie first time around and instantly being disappointed that they had local council roadworks compressors in the docking by !!!!

Wait!!
This wasn't a known thing?

Maybe there should be a dedicated thread with all the things the UK folks recognized from that time period. I'm sure there's things we across the pond have no idea of.
 
The thing was...they were yellow on the street, and yellow in the movie ... toooooooo obvious . I can't believe this wasn't well known .
Maybe a British members question section is a good idea .
 
Okay, so to all you middle-aged British smartypants who know all this stuff, already. :) Can anyone identify the source of the blue box under the Falcon? The one that looks like a large boxy floor polishing machine? Or the cube-shaped small crates with the deep grooves and the holes on each face? Or the flattened grooved tall barrel-type thingies, like the one immediately to our heroes' left as they enter Docking Bay 94?

I'm sure a lot of this stuff is quite well known to some people, but I personally have never seen it written down. So I'm trying to consolidate this info.

Thanks in advance for any tips! :)
 
Can anyone identify the source of the blue box under the Falcon? The one that looks like a large boxy floor polishing machine? Or the cube-shaped small crates with the deep grooves and the holes on each face? Or the flattened grooved tall barrel-type thingies, like the one immediately to our heroes' left as they enter Docking Bay 94?
Thanks in advance for any tips! :)

Any Screen caps?
 
Any Screen caps?

That's a good point.

The mystery blue box:

bluebox1.jpg
bluebox2.jpg

Also, the second shot has the grey tapered objects. Are those flattened tapered plastic tubs, turned upside-down, and stacked together?

There's the vacuformed flattened barrel thingie, to which lights were added.

boxy-thingy2.jpg

And here's a view of a bunch of random crates. To the left is a shipping crate that looks pretty standard. I wouldn't be surprised if variants of those are still made today. The two cubes in the middle are sort of iconic Star Wars crates, with their holes in the centre of the face. RS Prop Masters apparently found one of these boxes, but don't know what it was either. And on the right we have the mystery flattened barrels.

buncha-boxes.jpg

- nkg
 
Last edited:
And a few other randoms.

lamp-thingie.jpg

Mystery object behind the two yellow compressors. Some sort of lamp? Or is it the glass from a ground light beacon, installed on a metal frame?

J-pipes.jpg

Were the J-shaped pipes anything in particular? Or were they just assembled from bits of plumbing pipe? Where did the flat circular plates with holes come from? Was the little control panel stand made from scratch?

wall-thingies.jpg

What are these things high on the wall? They look like glass insulators for mounting wires.

- nkg
 
No idea lol
The "Mystery blue Box" seems to have an upside down crate added to hide its wheels though, possibly some kind of mobile generator?
The flattened barrel thingie, IMO seems to have the same proportions as an R2 unit cut in half, Perhaps a prototype droid they did not go with?
 

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