The talented Rob has been back in touch. This time he’s added a model ship to his stunning model railway:
“Hi Al,
It has been a bit quiet on my part of late. The reason that I have been so quiet is my latest project. I have been engrossed in building a ship in the scale of my railway, 4 mm per foot. The completed model is huge at 70 inches long. It looks fabulous to me as a background object behind the trains.
I started thinking seriously about building it in December. Here it is June, and I am just getting close to completion. When done, I will have weathering to do. That could take a while also. It has been a wonderful journey, and I have enjoyed every second of it.
The model is built from polystyrene plastic. I mostly used sheets of varying thicknesses. My inventory included 0.010″, 0.020″, 0.030″, 0.040″, 0.060″, and .125″ thick plastic. I also incorporated a number of shapes or strips in the finer details. I tried to fabricate most everything, from bollards to blocks to portholes. The only things I did not fabricate were the basic boats that form the lifeboats.
Styrene is welded by slightly melting it with a solvent, after which the two pieces flow together and become one. As a consequence, the ship is very lightweight but not particularly fragile. There are several videos detailing my progress on the project. The one here is about modeling canvas covers for things. In this case, I build covers for the lifeboats.
Thank you for all you do for the modeling community around the world.
Rob”
A huge big thanks to Rob for sharing his model ship update on his stunning layout.
(You can see more of Rob in the Hall of Fame.)
Whenever I see ships on a layout I always think of Kaustav’s N scale harbor – also another stunner.
That’s all for this time folks.
Please do keep ’em coming.
And if today is the day you press the fun button and get started, the Beginner’s Guide is here.
Best
Al
PS More HO scale train layouts here if that’s your thing.
Need buildings for your layout? Have a look at the store.
They are great fun to make and great value too.
Anchors aweigh my friends!! Dip dip dip dip little ship sailing on the ocean blue!!
I can hear the ship’s diesel engines competing with the trains!
Rob, THANK you for your videos. They are well done and a wonderful inspiration to us layout builders.
It’s a shame that there is not 1 train to be seen on the entire display.
excellent
Wow Rob! What a cool scratch build. You have more skill and patience than I have to tackle such a project. Thank you for sharing such an interesting project. The lifeboat video was also excellent.
nice work
Hello Rob,
Where did you get the plans for the ship you built?
Thank you,
Allen from CA in the USA
To Allen, I bought a one-page plan on eBay to start my ship. It had the lines. The problem with it was that I found out after seeing it: it was in French. I don’t speak or read French. Google helped me with the translations, however. Rob