The barge apron at the harbor is built [:D],
I had planned to build it from the drawings I had from Sylvan but I had mislaid them …
On the good side I had the good fortune to find a portal crane on eBay that could be a good starting point:
After a little searching of the web for inspiration,
I built the ramp.
I used plasticard and parts from the scrap box:
So here is how it looks after painting:
It´s just a barge to build as well…[;)].
[tup] Nicely done. I’m sure the barge will as good.
Nice job! I’ve been contemplating an apron/car float as well - was hoping to pick up a Walthers float but haven’t seen one on eBay lately.
Very impressive and nice job on the paint, too!!
www.trainworldonline.com. They have them. Buy it now, or wait forever. Seriously, I got one a couple of weeks ago. I was ready to start sacrificing goats, but there it was.
Graffen did a great job on the apron. I’m really impressed at how nice it looks. I’ve got the kits for the apron and car float, but I hope I can get as nice a model as has been shown here. Superb work.
Here is another off Ebay.
| Item number: | 220585263472 |
|---|
!(http://i.ebayimg.com/02/!BqQiy9wBmk~$(KGrHqUOKi8EusBo,9d7BLu9pvEv4Q~~_35.JPG)
Larry
I have now started building the rest of the port including the car float, the first thing I had to do was to raise up the waterlevel 1 cm, because I thought that it was a bit too low.
I used 10 mm balsa sheets that I cut to fit, I then glued them to the bottom with wood glue. When that was dry, I primed the balsa with artists gesso in two rounds, once to saturate the wood, and once to create the “waves”:
When it had dried, I painted it with Tamiya Dark Sea Blue, afterwards I dry-brushed the waves with white.
After that was completed, I painted the whole surface again with a transparent sea-blue:
I then painted pure white on the wave tips:
Here is what it looks like in process.
I then clear-coated the water surface with “Johnson Clear Polish” [:O], which is so easy to work with!
The fact that it is very glossy and dries fast does not hurt either:
Almost done.
While I was waiting for the water to dry I took the opportunity to begin building the Car-float as well.
I took two sturdy pieces of balsa (it´s good sometimes to have been building model airplanes as well), I glued them together and sawed them to shape so they took the form of a barge. After “some” sanding, I primed it with ordinary spray-primer and then let it dry for a few hours before sanding it.
There were a lot of pores remaining after sanding, so with a little elbow grease and some carpentry putty later, it was smooth:
To get some “metal” effect on the sides of the Barge, I took the opportunity to test something new, namely aluminum tape (the plumbing kind). I cut it into small squares and I applied them with about 1 mm overlap. Then I cut strips of it to use in th
holy cow … that water looks FABULOUS and that barge is really coming along! Can you take a closeup (or have you already) of the aluminum tape?
I also really like the rust on the apron … is that chalks? or paint?
The weathering is both paint and chalks (mostly paint).
The Barge is now finished to the point that it can be put on the water with a couple of boxcars on it:
I´m quite happy with how the deck turned out:
As can be seen, neither the detailing nor weathering is finished.
The cars looks rather well on the barge, or what do you think?
Beautiful work Graffen! The car float looks like it is really floating on that nicely done water and I agree with you that the weathered cars look great on the car float.
Joe
Outstanding work and extremely realistic! I don’t think you can any better than that.
Some great work there.
Great work Graffen ! I am especially fond of the water effects. What is the function of the white knobs on the fascia ? I have something similar to control the vertical and horizontal movement of the Walthers’ apron, which serves a huge 4-track car ferry. My 3-track car float serves the nearby Ashland Iron & Steel mill. Bob Hahn 
Graffen,
Very very nice work.
nick
Thanks, the knobs are actually for controlling the turnouts. I use them as it is a shelf layout.
Nice to see that someone else models carfloat operations, nice!
Howz THIS for a carfloat:
? I can´t see any carfloat in the link.
Well, anyhow…:
More progress 
, I had one of the old Lindberg diesel-tugs lying around and decided that I wanted to use it in some form on the layout.
My plan was to use the Sylvan tug I already had built, but I didn´t really “like” it´s style…
After I made some research on the Web I found some very interesting Tugs.
The most likely candidate that could be modeled with the Lindberg kit as a starting point was the “BEDT” steam tug “Invincible”.
“Eads Johnson, Johnson’s Steam Vessels of the United States - 1929”
This is the plans and pic´s from the BEDT website (http://www.trainweb.org/bedt/bedt/BEDTTugboats.html).
The general appearance of this Tug is quite appealing in my opinion:
“Invincible” - June 9, 1962
(note stack is covered)
C. Milster photo
I had to build everything above the lower deckhouse completely new as the Lindberg kit was a diesel tug with a low steering cabin.
Here is a picture of how it looks like built as standard:
This is what I came up
Graffen,
I very much like your work, and it is a pleasure to be able to follow up on the progress of your new layout. One thing I noticed, however, is, that the crane you use to lift the apron appears to be a little too “light-footed” to carry the weight of the apron plus loco or cars. The weight that such a crane has to carry is easily in excess of 150 tons - a GP 40 already weighs over 120 tons. Those aprons do not float on the water, so the crane has to be able to carry both the weight of the construction and the loco.
The following picture shows a more appropriate construction:
I hope I am not too nit-picky.
Auhagen in Germany makes those steel girder towers you could use. See this link.
I get your point Ulrich, but as the apron has a “no locomotive rule” (as many in reality had), the framework on the crane should be adequate (I hope) for supporting the weight of the apron + cars. I have an idler-car for reaching the cars on the float.
This is after all a small carfloat-port, it is only serving a mere dozen of industries, of wich only half is represented on my layout.
This carfloat port is, as I have planned it, the only connection to the outside world. The layout is to represent the “Harbour side” of a east coast city (Portland or similar), and this is the part of the railroad that is isolated on this side of the city. The rest of the RR is on the other side of the car floats route, with several bigger ports and interchanges with other big RR´s.
I´m not trying to model the Bronx terminal or the BEDT or anything of that magnitude, but it is nice to have those bigger operations as inspiration.
I had an old Atlas locomotive on the shelf,
a S-1 diesel which I bought for at least 12-13 years ago (oh how time flies [:D]).
It was factory-painted in the Western Pacific’s colors,
silver and orange, but since my own company; The MK & Eastern RR has embraced the same colors as the Minneapolis and StLouis RR
(green, yellow and gray),
it was so decided after the M-K & E “received” a consignment of M & StL locomotives,
and it became “easier” to just paint the new company name over the original
(or however it was, M & StL is still looking for its locomotives [:-eyebrows]).
I decided that now was the time to do something about the locomotive in question.
Thus, the locomotive was dismantled and I dumped the shell in some danaturated alcohol overnight.
The following day, I only had to brush the paint off the shell with an old toothbrush [:)].
I took the opportunity to install warm white LEDs while the shell dried.
After some painting and weathering it looked like this:
Here is the “Port Fleet” gathered:
It is, by judging the position of the photographer,
quite evident that these last two images was taken from one of the ships in the harbor[8D].
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