Back in early February, I posted about building models from "scrap material". In other words, apart from giving the "Save the World" acolytes a warm glow, it is nice to use things with little apparent value (if any) to create something that gives you pleasure.
It seemed worth putting this idea into action and a search of my garage cum workshop located some lumber (PSE pine and plywood) that had been left over from some domestic jobs. I honestly cannot remember what these jobs were but the wood was well covered with dust and cobwebs but otherwise sound. What to make was the next problem.....?
During one of my many wanderings around the Internet, I came across photos of Car-Floats, an interesting and, on this side of the Atlantic, different subject. American Railroad companies often employed tugs to move things around in their extensive dock and harbor facilities. This included loco's and rolling stock on simple barges fitted with train tracks. This jogged my memory and in another corner of the workshop area was a toy train set which had been bought for a project that stalled some years ago. The loco had a rather horrible toy "Wild West" air about it but was a similar scale to a US railroad tug I'd built some years ago (plan published in Model Boats Sept 1985).
That was enough to start me building, or more correctly figuring out how to make it look realistic whilst avoiding having to buy anything extra. Some of the photos showed tugs moving large car-floats but, with only a single loco, tender and couple of items of rolling stock to play with, I opted for a modest size comparable with the tugs length.
The loco and rolling stock had the "Wild West" and other inappropriate items removed, would you believe the they featured some "gilt" trim...! This was where my plan not to spend any money on the model failed, spray cans of black and red had to be bought to finish off the loco and rolling stock.
With a final weight of almost 4 pounds, the car-float would be easy for the tug to move but how...? It would have been simple just to tow the float behind the tug or, as the full size often did, push it ahead of tug but I was tempted to try something else. Many photos of the real things showed the float lashed to the side of the tug. This looked more interesting but it took some trials on the garden ponds (much to the annoyance of the frogs) to figure out how to make a secure system that could be easily assembled and disassembled at the waters edge. There was also the problem of launching and recovering, my usual testing site in a canal basin having the water-level at an inconvenient distance below the bank side.
Then, there was the problem of the tugs propeller offset to one side of the combination. Yes, it turns much tighter one way (more or less spinning on the spot) but turning the other way is quiet acceptable. Once you have mastered the quirks, it's a comfortable sail.
I'm now looking around the garage cum workshop and other areas to see if any more forgotten items can be found for some further "scrap building". With a bit of effort it really doesn't have to look like it was built from scrap.
Glynn Guest [size=78%] [/size]