On my trips back and forth from New Mexico to Ohio, I met a veteran of the Admirable-class minesweepers, so I numbered it for his boat, 267, the Pirate, and gave it to him on the next trip.
Nice ships! My small N scale layout I'm building doesn't allow for craft larger than a pleasure boat. Water will be a feature of the layout, however: a river and a lake which the river runs through. It should be quite a scenic view. There will be a dock fo4 up to 12 pleasure boats, including fishing boats. Also planned are a boat sales/repair shop, a place to purchase fish fresh from the river and lake, and a rest area with grass and a few benches to sit on and watch the boats in action. I grew up near the Mississippi River, on the east Iowa side, and have many memories of fishing or buying fish at a shack on the riverbank, and watching Milwaukee Road trains, including the Hiawatha, go by. I was born soon enough to see steam engines (road on a few as a boy who wanted to be an engineer) and, later, the diesels, head up the trains across the river and follow the bluffs. The fishing and railfanning were tops. If I didn't catch enough catfish, bullheads or sunfish, I could always buy more (ready to fry) at the fresh fish shack.
Well done Peter, I'm sure he was chuffed at recieving such a fine model not to mention the memories it would've brought back. Any other pic's of your latest project,I have always enjoyed your ship building threads.
I haven't built any ships for layouts but about the only ship I have laying around that's relatively undamaged is this 2 foot long model of the USS Nevada that I built back in the 70's when I lived in Germany.
Z scale and anything close This is a shot of the tidal dock on my Cuyahoga Z scale layout with a scratchbuilt car float, a large tug based on the Heller 'Smit' kit and the 'Bodensteiner' trawler also a Heller kit. Although they are 1/200 ( Z is 1/220) they look just right This is an early shot of the layout before the Coach shed was built and features 'Le Suroit' a French exploration vessel. Again it is one of the discontinued Heller kits. All of the boats on Cuyahoga are named after my grandchildren however the rate of grandkids getting born is outstripping the availability of 1/200 kits!
[/QUOTE] <Warning off topic but I can't help a "What ship is this?" question!!!!> Based on the approaching LCACs off the stern and squared hull shape this is an amphib assault ship, looks to be a Wasp class but those hull number don't go into double digits. The USS Kearsarge (LHD-3) seems to fit the bill. I think what looks like another number after the "3" is some sort of mark on the flight deck. Here's a picture from Wikipedia. Note the round fittings on the bow, two masts with the aft one higher, and the shape of the bridge and the radome on the forward part of the island. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:USS_Kearsarge_LHD-3.jpg George V.
Correct LHD-3 Kearsarge, WASP class. The Tarawa class LHAs have a different bow shape and flight deck arrangement. I'm hoping to eventually build a pier section for the Concord Naval Weapons Station on my layout. I may have it "reindustrialized" to a container facility but leave the ammo bunkers with the railyard in between and the loop of track out to the piers. Of course I won't be doing it in the current house since I don't have room:mwacko:
No pictures, yet--it's still in a carton after being shipped to Ohio, along with some of my modeling tools and supplies. I don't have a workspace here yet.
Thanks! I'd recommend the subchaser as a good starting ship for anyone who wants to scratchbuild. It's only 173-feet long (13 inches) and narrow, has a fairly simple hull, and not a lot of stuff above deck. And the US built 362 of them in 2.5 years, and shipped them around the world, so they lasted well into the 1970s. And a 1:192 5-inch open gun mount from Bluejacket Shipcrafters is about perfect for a 1:160 3-inch gun. I discovered this too late, after I labored to build the guns from tiny bits of styrene. Here's my 3-inch gun: I wouldn't recommend the 110-foot cutter as a scratchbuild until you are pretty experienced. It has a difficult hull, with lots of sweep and camber, and a lot of stuff up top. Great little ships--they served the USCG for 60 years. But hard to get right.
Those are some fine ships. I am going to need to build one for my new dockside container area. Here's a boat I built for the Ely and Great River Ouse shelf layout. (Don't tell the skipper it's not a ship)
Welcome to Trainboard! I started out with a number of small boats. Then a barge. Then a tug. And then the fleet! I still think small boats are very hard to get right. Due to traveling, I had forgotten about this thread. Here's a detail view of my small Navy tugs:
