I’m looking for the dimensions of a small river barge that carries cars with coal or iron ore. I was looking for some on the Internet but the ones I found are huge. They look like they might be more for the great lakes. It’s been 40 years since I’ve seen one up close and I just don’t remember them being that big. I'm assuming they come in different sizes? Anyway if the barge is too big for my diorama, then I’m going to pass on the barge and just have a small Lock and dam for average boats that might be on the river.
Well I just saw on Wikipedia that a typical barge measures 195 by 35 feet which kind of fits, but I also saw that Train Cat has a 90ft by 27ft barge which is even smaller, plus he has a towboat which I didn’t think about. I don’t think I have room for both. I don’t know why I didn't see this before. So I guess I got my answer.
The dimensions given are probably for nowadays; "economy of scale", and whatever a modern towboat could handle, that kind of thing. If you're modeling earlier times, they could easily be smaller. Barges could probably be built for specific circumstances. Say your locks were built in 1900; after that, the barges could be no wider than the lock capacity. Total length of the towboat plus (say) one or two barges needs to fit the lock also.
Oops! I forgot that the tug had to be inside the lock with the barge, I guess this isn’t going to work after all. I sure am glad you said something. Thanks
Try looking for canal locks in the Library of Congress online. Library of Congress Home go to architecture, then HAEBS or something like that. Hundreds of thousands of structures, from 1700s to early 20th century with plans and photos. You've paid for it with your taxes, might as well use it.
I’ve been reading and learning a little. I’ve been calling it a barge but I just learned that it’s called a car float. I had to add about 10 inches to the diorama, but I think it might work. That is if I understand it right. The diorama is a steel mill below my main layout with a high bridge above and another bridge on the river at the same level as the steel mill. The track below to the steel mill is not functional, but the double track higher up is.
I'm not an expert, but, while foaming along the Mississippi last year I saw a set of barges and a towboat (not a tugboat) pass through a lock. Surprisingly they "uncoupled" the barges from the towboat when they passed through the lock, which allowed them to fit an extra barge in their "consist," which was something like a 3x5 grid. In any event, you don't need room for the towboat in the lock to fit that operating practice.
I guess I have to do some more research, because I don’t know the difference between a tug boat and a tow boat. I wanted a place for my Steel Mill, a River, Rocky Cliffs and a water fall all in a 5x2 ft space, but I had to compromise the Water Fall for a Dam which is when I thought of the lock. I was trying to keep this less than 2’ in depth because I need to reach into the far corners of the upper layout, so I’m skimping on everything. I even had to split the mill up to both sides of the river. I’ve been looking at photos of looks and every one that I’ve seen so far are huge. I believe the smallest I’ve seen so far has 6 barges in it. Well I’ll have to look some more when I get home from work.
Research towboat/pushboat as they do both. Typically the vessel has a blunt bow to push with versus the tugboat which has the standard tapered/pointed bow. They also come in any number of sizes in the 1 to 1 scale. They can be as short as 25 foot. Barges are also varied in length and width. Tugboats also varied in size from the river/lake going vessels to the ocean going which are for the most part larger. Two more manufactures lines that come to mind for the above referenced equipment in N scale would be Sylvan and Seaport. Usually the suppliers have them listed under the vehicles section. A coal barge is 6 X 2.5 inches. A Great Lakes type tug is 6 X 1.75 inches.
Thanks, I plan on scratch building the boat myself out of wood, so the smaller and less complicated the better. That is unless I find a boat kit that Ii like This lock looks small but without anything in it I can’t tell for sure. http://www.lrp.usace.army.mil/nav/images/ld6a_aerial.jpg Well any way I have to run off too work, so I'll check this out some more when I get home.
Bluntly, I think for the scene you're trying to depict just work backwards.... develop your car float size, figure your tug size (like you have it drawn) and build the lock size to suit. It's going to be way smaller than the prototype, but that's OK. It will still be a very nice scene. There were a lot of smaller locks and dams over the 1800's canal systems - those became obsolete as soon as railroads kicked in. There's a bunch of them remaining on the Cuyahoga River and some of them preserved. Same with the Erie canal, some of the original locks are now museum sites and have been preserved. These are really pretty small, way smaller than what you're talking about, but may give you an insight as to design and appearance. http://hikingohioparks.com/canal-lock-trail-hiking-ohio-parks.html http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:KentOhioCanal.jpg Nice drawings here: Erie Canal - Locks Your whole 'steel mill on the river scene' screams Cuyahoga River, by the way, if you're looking for a prototype. They have a turning basin inside the original LTV steel facility to bring in Great Lakes ore freighters. Looking at the river, what with all the curves and drawbridges to get one in there, it seems impossible. I've always wanted to be there when they took a big one upstream, haven't ever seen it. Look at it on Google Earth, it's one of the most industrial/rail/bridge intense areas I've ever seen. Down in Pittsburgh there was a small car float operation across the Allegheny/Mon/Ohio that was about the size you're talking about - it enabled one of the steel mills to directly serve a facility on the river without involving a shortline in the middle. So something like that did actually exist for a while. One of the magazines had an article about it not that long ago.
Not necessarily. That tow boat takes up room that could be used by another barge. We have a lot of barge traffic on our three rivers [Pittsburgh, PA]. In fact in its heyday more tonnage moved on the three rivers than thru the Panama Canal. Anyway it takes time to raise or lower anything in the locks so what the tow companies do is use two tow boats one fills the lock with barges say from down river. Then it goes to get more barges while the water in the lock is raised to the upriver level. Then the tow boat on the upriver side removes the barges and takes them to a mooring area. The process is reversed for traffic going down river. Dams on the rivers are as far as 19-20 miles apart or can be as close as 4-5 miles. They are place to ensure a navigable depth of 10 feet at normal pool level. Most barges are designed with a max draft of 9 feet. Now here is the caveat. The above is for the rivers [Monongahela, Allefgheny and Ohio] around Pittsburgh. If you go down to the lower Ohio and into the Mississippi Rivers barges used there might have different specs.
I was running late this morning so I couldn’t look anything up, but I searched for a photo of a Pittsburgh towboat and they are huge. I then found this photo of a pushboat which I really like except that I still didn’t know what the front looked like until I found this one So I’m now thinking of buying one of these and cutting off the front to make it a PushBoat so that it doesn’t take up to much room
Thanks so much for the advice, it looks like that’s what I’m going to have to do and wow is that Canal Lock 29 ever small. That sure wouldn’t take much space to model. I’m not real found of dioramas because I like to see trains actually running, but my whole railroad is just so boring to look at right now because there is so many tracks and I don’t know how it’s going to look even after I start adding scenery. So I’m desperate to do something. Plus the Steel Mill is from my good friend Barstow Rick and I want to display it right, but without a lot of space, I just have to make do. I don’t want him coming down off the mountain to take it back. laugh: I’ve always had the Allegany River on my mind ever since I started model railroading, which wasn’t that long ago, because I have so much history on that river. I just never had the space to do anything prototypical and this is probably the closest I’ll ever get. I used to swim in the Allegany River near Cheswick across from this Lock . I’m still looking for more info on it and I don’t even know the Lock number. As an adolescent I had other things on my mind besides Locks and even trains sorry to say. I looked at this lock everyday from the school bus on my way to school and it never occurred to me that someday I would want to model it. The very first job my brother-in-law did for the railroad was working on the car floats in Pittsburgh off the Allegany River I believe, but that was in the early 70’s. He was just a youngster then and he probably wouldn’t have noticed much at that age. He still works for the railroad now except that now he has a different job for NS. I might give him a call this weekend to see if he remembers anything. He used to tell me stories, but I don’t even remember them.
Thanks Inkaneer for clearing that up and I was hoping you would join in being from Pittsburgh. I figured you would probably know a lot about this. Well I definitely don’t have enough room for another car float in the lock and I really should cut the diorama back a little, so I can reach the rest of the layout. I wonder if I have a cutaway view of the lock so you don’t know how long it is and have the upper gates open with two car floats being pulled out by the tug under the bridge.. The rest could be left for your imagination. No one would know if the lock was big enough for two barges or 5 barges. The upper level bridge is really what’s determining where everything goes, because of the piers. And now that I think about it I’m going to have to take another look at the lower track elevation so that the tug will fit under the lower bridge.
A little off topic, but just another connection to the Allegheny River, this is my Grandparents on Granddads boat at very Lock that I have talked about.
I live on the Allegheny, just a lot further north. South of Mike W. though! We'll see if this post works, but here's the view on the Cuyahoga River that I flashed on when I saw your track plan.... Bing Maps - driving and transit directions, routes, traffic conditions Zoom in and out to get a feel for the birdseye, go exploring. If you decide you really like it I have a lot of ground-level photography. There were two railroads there - the Cuyahoga Valley (not to be confused with the tourist railroad) and the River Terminal. The River Terminal had a really snazzy blue and white scheme and a cool 'generic name'. Check this out: Cleveland's River Terminal Ry in the mid-90's I've never seen so many tracks, mills, and drawbridges jammed along one river anywhere else. But if you want to stay linked with Pittsburgh.... did you ever hear of the Allegheny & South Side? I had decals made for their 65-ton Whitcomb switcher and its proudly in my collection. Uh...what if you put the tow/push boat at the BACK of the lock?
Try this link for what is about the smallest one I've seen in my researches. http://www.pushboats-barges.com/
Lindberg used to make a bunch of kits 35-40 years ago with small boats, aboiut 5 inches long. A tuna seiner, a fireboat, a tugboat and a towboat. They sold for maybe 98 cents apiece. Or maybe it was a little more but not much. I had a tuna seiner- maybe close to N scale. In about 1990, I used the hull and built an HO superstructure as a small shrimpboat for bay shrimping for a club module of the Aransas Pass, Texas shrimpboat harbor. I also have had a towboat..may 25, 30 years and I have kept it, not knowing what to do with it. I needed some small boat hulls like the ones from old kits. Found a set of all four Lindberg little boats for about $10 on eBay from Japan. I am using the tuna seiner and a fireboat as shrimpboats in a shrimp harbor scene, and now I have TWO towboats. I plan to use them as small barge hulls undergoing rebuilding at a drydock scene. Sorry, I don't have pictures of the towboats. But I wanted to tip you to them. The set of 4 Lindberg small boats was catalog #72120 when I got it 2 or 3 years ago. The single 98 cent (?) package with the towboat was Lindberg #432 3 o4 decades ago. Three or four years ago, I have
Wow that’s amazing and it gives me some ideas for running the pipe lines for the mill, but that is really a little too industrial for what I want to do. I’m trying to blend industrial with a bit of nice scenery, if that’s possible. My problem is the yard/staging is just so industrialized with railroad industry there is no room of having anything else. Just show what I’m talking about, here is a photo. I don’t have the service building in yet because I just got all the turnout working. The last time I was in Pittsburgh, I saw some closed mills that were overgrown with vegetation that made it somewhat interesting. Maybe I can do something like that and have a closed mill. I think I like your idea for moving the boat because then it will be more visible.
