Messing about on the River

A generic looking paddle steamer for use on the river                                       

This was not quite the series of models that I wanted to finish off but it does form part of the ACW project and so still counts! Working on models between two periods certainly keeps one on one’s toes! Given that everything for the ACW I have built so far is more coastal facing than inland I wanted to address the river side at some point for completeness. I had a little spare time today so I had a play around and the picture above is the result. I have a further similar model also under construction but one thing occurred to me in that the same basic design can be varied quite easily to produce different looking models.

For example, the paddle boxes can be centrally located or placed towards the rear of the model, there can be one or two funnels that again, can be positioned forward or centrally. The superstructure can be ‘wedged’, square or ‘arrowhead’ and gun ports can be added or not to suit.

I am thinking around half a dozen variants of this basic design will serve for what I want to build and they can function as gunboats, rams or transports as required.

Another view showing the MDF outer paddle box cover and the balsa wood inner section

The hull was a cut down 5” by 1 1/4” (down to 4”) with a single Jenga block for the superstructure. The paddle boxes were fashioned using the off-cut from a 4” by 1” hull as the former with balsa wood backing. Having the MDF on the outside helps to protect the softer balsa and you can simply file it to match the outer layer. The hatches and gun ports/window shutters are card and the funnel is a piece of dowel rod. The pilot house is also a piece of balsa wood. Now that I have the basic technique worked out (again that is - I made rather a lot of these types of ships years ago) I will get the other five built in the series. That will then leave me with around half a dozen models to finish the project.

Onwards and upwards!