Building a 1900-1910 N Sea Ferry

[Andy Hayter]

Taken from the Washbourne thread
 
http://www.rmweb.co.uk/community/index.php?/topic/107190-washbourne/page-4




Andy Hayter wrote:
30/05/2016 at 13:06
I am looking to construct a North Sea Ferry ca 1900-1910 to be ready to depart from Haltemprice Quay.

Northroader replied:

30/05/2016 at 16:43
To me that's big, about four times the size of anything I've tried, mainly fishing or sailing boats. Still, thinking around it, I was looking at TSS Duke of Clarence, which would fit your specification, 312' x 36' x15' (I would assume the last is the freeboard?) I would take it that you would do a waterline model, rather than have her stranded on the mud, showing her nicely rounded bottom, which would help reduce the thickness of the material needed, and also the work input. This comes out in OO as a block 48"long, 5.75" wide, just under 2.5" (I hope you don't mind inches, it comes with my sell-by date) It should be possible to get a block of wood this size, and I would stress a hardwood with straight grain, such as gurjun, the ordinary softwoods would give a poor finish with their grain and varying density. Then mark out a boat shape in plan view, and cut round this. Any contacts with a bandsaw? Then just bash on with wood shaping tools, slight rake at the bow, slight camber at the sides, but the stern is trickier, receding under the counter with concave curves either side of the rudder post. My dad used to help me here by roughing out the hulls on a big grindstone they had at work. The main deck also is cambered along its length, perhaps it could be left level? Then just smooth away with sandpaper.
The other way would be thick cardboard, like 2mm greyboard. Do a waterline plan shape, then make regular cross section pieces along the length, gluing down with gussets out of cornflake packets, to give a series of cells. You could then do an outer skin fixed to these, which would give you an approximate shape without the side camber, although the deck camber would be easier. At the stern the upper part would curve around the counter with the help of a D shape below, under this a straight central fin for the rudder. The problem would be fairing in the curve to the rest of the hull, as you'd need quarts of filler.
Anyhow, hope this helps the thinking process, you might have come up with something better already. Anyone else with ideas? Don't worry about being off thread and all that stuff, this is an interesting problem. WASHBOURNE is all at sea, anyway!

[Andy Hayter]

Yes it is big.  A search through a couple of books suggest that the ferries of the time were being built to a length of 275-350ft  (no apologies for using old units needed).  Which will scale out to around 4ft in 1:76.

 

From what I can see most of the ships were slab sided for the central portion, which could be done as a straight rectangular box.  It is really the prow and stern that are causing me to think hard about how to proceed.  Added to that, the only plans I have show the deck plan but not the waterline plan so judging the curves in the body side is not looking that easy just now.

 

Loco Revue had a recent article on building a ship and there they were suggesting a rough cut out with styrene insulation sheet and then using Gesso (Plaster of Paris in a glue carrier) to cover the limps and bumps - followed by sanding.   It is getting the original profiles right that is stopping me from starting.

[Nearholmer]

There is a stack of information about this sort of thing, often with drawings, in The Engineer, and Engineering, available via Graces Guide.

 

I misread what you were after, and had a quick look for train ferries, and quickly found a series of articles, notably a set starting in edition 1919/01/10 about the facilities at Richborough, and the boats that were sold-on and became the GER train ferries.

 

Also, a picture of SS Dresden, owned by the GER, and the ship from which Rudolf Diesel was lost overboard.

 

K

[Edwardian]

I was about to ask what sort of vessel you meant, but paused to consider Kevin's thread.

 

Were you looking for a railway-owned ship?

 

Northroader suggested something like the Duke of Clarence of 1892, a railway owned ship on the run between Fleetwood and Ireland.  I, too, would envisage something like this.

 

This a rather sleeker affair than the images conjured up (in my mind) by the term "ferry", which makes me think of various less sleek things like train ferries and those Sealink car ferries people used to throw up all over in the Channel in the '70s.

 

Nor is it, my particular favourite, a tramp steamer, which carried passengers. 

 

I assume that you have seen this - http://www.simplonpc.co.uk/LMS_LYR1.html - with regard to the Duke of Clarence and the LNWR and LYR, from which the picture below is taken? 

 

Interestingly, the Clarence ceased to be a LNWR-L&YR joint ship in 1906, and transferred to the East Coast service in 1906 for the L&Y's summer service between Hull and Zeebrugge, returning to the West Coast each winter (http://www.simplonpc.co.uk/LMS_LYR2.html).

 

The same excellent web-site has a page on the very elegant Great Central passenger stem-ships from the turn of the century: http://www.simplonpc.co.uk/LNER_GCR1.html

 

Great Eastern: http://www.simplonpc.co.uk/LNER_GER1.html, including, of course, the Brussels of the admirable Captain Fryatt, who was murdered by the Germans in WW1 for defending his ship against a U Boat.

[Nearholmer]

Suddenly struck me (bad way of putting it in this context) that there is a massive amount of info about the Titanic around, and kits of it come to that.

 

Relevance? These ferries were very much the same in general hull form, but about a third of the size, so if you could source one of those cross-section diagrams that shows the hull dimensions at numerous points, all in one picture, for the Titanic ........

 

K

[Edwardian]

Suddenly struck me (bad way of putting it in this context) that there is a massive amount of info about the Titanic around, and kits of it come to that.

 

Relevance? These ferries were very much the same in general hull form, but about a third of the size, so if you could source one of those cross-section diagrams that shows the hull dimensions at numerous points, all in one picture, for the Titanic ........

 

K

 

Kits might be less help.  The bigger of the 2 Revell kits is only 1/400th scale, which apparently equates to a hull 67cm long. That's £30-35 for a hull just over 26" long.

 

Academy did a slightly larger one at 1/350th scale. That is 30 1/4".   There is one on Ebay that someone has started with a Buy-it-Now price of £30.

 

I like the idea of using a plastic kit for the hull, especially with the complex hull shapes near the stern, but a plastic kit of the Titanic will only help a 2mm scale modeller to the sort of passenger steamer we seem to be considering.  More's the pity (from the 4mm perspective!).

 

If you can build track, you can build ships, I reckon!

 

Remains to be seen if I can do either, mind you...

 

PS:  The 3mm scale modeller does alright for pre-Grouping sail - http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/ZVEZDA-Z9011-The-Brigantine-Sailing-Ship-Scale-Model-Kit-1-100-/182149020116?hash=item2a68ed79d4:g:3rAAAOSw~oFXGa4L

[jonhall]

Taking this off topic slightly, if anyone has (or knows a source of) more detailed/larger scaled plans of the GE train ferries I'd very much like to know - A frame plan like Nearhomer has posted would be fabulous!

 

Jon

[Nearholmer]

Try the series in The Engineer that I pointed to earlier.

 

It ran on over several editions, and I didn't look at all of them, but since the GE bought the first ones from the military, along with various bits of Richborough Harbour, there might be full details there.

 

There is also an article in a 1924 edition, about the start of the service, but that only has muddy and distant pictures of the boats, although it does include this gem.

 

K

[The Stationmaster]

Useless piece of information - back in the early 1970s, while I was  working in South Wales, a member of my staff was a nephew of the late Captain Fryatt.

[Argos]

Hi Andy,
I currently have a plan developed in 2mmFS for Ardrishaig in Argyll set around 1910 (Full Caley blue!   )
There was a proposal for the line put before parliament for the plan and the line from Dalmally came close to being built. 
 
The plan is on the back burner for a while, but one of the attractions of the location was the harbour at Ardrishaig was a key stopping off point for the Clyde steamers, indeed the main revenue source for the line was day tripper traffic, combining sea and rail tours.
 
Being at the mouth of the Crinan Canal would also justify a puffer or two (never a bad thing!) plus some of the small steamers that shuttled along the canal to connect the steamers docking at Ardrishaig (Clydeside) with the Steamers docking at Crinan (Atlantic side feeding Oban and Fort William).
 
The plan has about 12' dedicated to the railway and the approach and 4' to the harbour, even in 2mm the smaller Clyde Paddle Steamer come in at around 2'!
 
During the planning I did research what model kits were out there for a paddle steamer as building one from scratch was a bit daunting.
There was discontinued kit from an American source in about 1:180 scale, which might have been close enough.
 
A couple of source I found that might have something to kitbash from:-
 
http://www.artitec.nl/index.php/en/kits/category/h0-ships/2
 
http://www.sylvanscalemodels.com/HO%20ships%20new%20page.htm
 
If you search the model boat shops many have hull kits, whilst they won't have exactly the ship you want, they may have a large ship in a smaller scale (or the converse) which might suit.
Cornwall model boats seem to stock just about everything!
If you've a couple of hours to spare you might find something useful!
 
http://www.cornwallmodelboats.co.uk/index.html
 
Lastly I found a couple of second books on the Clyde Steamers second hand on Amazon, all for £0.01, the postage was a couple of quid though, I would assume you'd be able to find some thing similar on the cross channel ferries.
 
All was going so well until I got distracted by airships..............

[Northroader]

Andy in his original post mentioned Haltemprice Quay, and at the specified period of 1905ish, and a specified length of around 4' in OO

puts Duke of Clarence in the frame as a likely candidate. He also said North Sea ferry, without mentioning train. The NBR did marvellous pioneering work, but train ferries on the North Sea were post ww1. The French idea of forming a block from low density materials, cheap, lightweight and easy to form, then applying a hard shell for the finish, sounds very attractive. It's just the materials. The big blocks of foam insulation used to be made as scenic support, you never hear it these days? with hot wire cutting. Could that be a base? I must get together with those two old salts Edwardian and Nearholmer in the Prospect of Whitby, or the Lobster Smack, and come up with something...

[Argos]

I might be adding 2+2 to get 5, but Haltemprice is a district of Hull, so I was presuming an NER operation (I don't think the Hull & Barnsley ever got as far as ferries, though they did have a share in one of the main dockyards in Hull with the NER)?

 

That said there is probably hundreds of Haltemprices around the country.....

[Andy Hayter]

Thanks everyone for the rapid salvo (is that the right term to use on the anniversary of the Battle of Jutland?) of replies, which demonstrate just how imprecise my question was.  Thanks also for the links that I will follow up over the next days.  Of course I knew what I wanted but I have failed to spell this out properly to you guys and gals - so apologies for that.
 
So back to basics.
 
I am looking primarily at a passenger ferry rather than a rail ferry - although I could accommodate one instead with a bit of reorganisation.  If the best bet were a train ferry then I would be prepared to go down that route, but passenger ferry remains the target.  This gives reason for the passenger trains to arrive and leave. 

 

It looks as if the majority of these ferries were railway owned and operated at this time, but if someone came up with the plans for an independently run ferry, that would be just fine..

 

I have sourced a copy of A Century of Cross-Channel Passenger Ferries by Ambrose Greenway for just a little more than 1p but still at a good price even with postage.

I also have a copy of an LNWR booklet on Holyhead to Ireland ferries.  Both have a wealth of pictures and a number of drawings but these are small are not sufficiently detailed  to give me the basis to start modelling due to a lack of isometrics or even waterline profile.

 

I have looked at kits and in fact found a Titanic at 1:350 but even this was too small for my needs by a factor of 2 or more.  This perhaps points to just how big these ferries were for their time.

 

Paddle streamers were by and large resigned to more minor internal routes and no longer used on cross channel or N Sea routes by the early 1900s.  That surprised me when I started the project as I expected to find a mix at the time period I am looking at. 

 

I am pretty much resigned to scratch building, but so be it.  That is not the constraint.

 

I have looked at adapting

[Andy Hayter]

As fast as I write new replies come in.  Many thanks

 

Re: NER

 

My scenario is (the "history" if you prefer) that at the same time that the burghers of Hull (Kingston upon Hull to be precise) were becoming concerned with the monopoly of the NER, the wealthy of Haltemprice were becoming concerned by the monopoly of the Kingston Docks operation.

 

They decided to build a quay out into the Humber to attract deep water shipping further up river with a view to attracting much of the coal exports as well as timber imports.  They approached a number of railway companies to provide the rail link.  The NER had no interest given its already good links into Hull.  The GCR (Manchester Sheffield and Lincolnshire as it was then) and L&Y already had port facilities at Goole and although not deep water was considered as adequate and the MSL also has Grimsby as a good link to Europe.  However when the GNR began asking for running rights to Goole it began to look as if Goole could be bypassed.   Not wanting to miss the boat (so to speak) the LYR and MSL decided to work together with the GNR to provide a joint line.

 

Unfortunately the timing for the quay construction was just wrong and it came into operation just at a time hen deep water shipping started to become a whole lot bigger and too big for the quay.   It ended up for the planned freight as neither meat nor fish being too far inland for deep water freight and rather down stream to really capitalise on inland waterways.  Where it did however score was to provide passenger connection direct from the ship to the rail - and at a time when political unrest in Europe created a mass exodus of some peoples - some of these headed for UK locations and some headed across the UK to Liverpool for onward travel to the USA.  

 

Meanwhile although coal exports were not a major success, a number of industries developed around the port area producing shall we say "interestingly unstable chemicals" used in munitions and similar operations.  So while exports were not a major business, there was still a significant freight traffic to and from these factories.    

 

Eventually even the NER was forced to proved a spur to the quay - if only to run a shuttle into Paragon station and a freight link to their major yards.

[Northroader]

Digging around for information on sailings from Hull, I found a useful site here:http://www.lner.info/ships/NER/index.php, very similar information is in volume 1 of the "North Eastern Record" published by the HMRS in 1988.

Adding an edit to say the book has one page with a drawing (side elevation and plan) of one of the Wilson & NER lines ships "Hero" traced from a Hull reference library source. This is quite smaller than the Duke of Clarence at 216.5 feet length and 30 feet beam and older, 1895. It ran a scheduled service to Rotterdam, but it might not be what you fancy, as it was cargo only, no passengers. I an send a copy if you are interested and pm me.

[Northroader]

As an aside on North Sea emigrant traffic, way back my daughter was on a school exchange with a German girl. Once we got to know the family, they asked for my help in researching some family history. Back in Victorian times, some of the family who had lived in the Rhon- Grabfeld area, went to Hamburg. We had enough detail to show they took a MSLR ship to Grimsby, then onwards Sheffield Manchester to Liverpool, then onwards across the Atlantic through Boston to the USA.

[billbedford]

I am looking primarily at a passenger ferry rather than a rail ferry - although I could accommodate one instead with a bit of reorganisation.  If the best bet were a train ferry then I would be prepared to go down that route, but passenger ferry remains the target.  This gives reason for the passenger trains to arrive and leave.

 

Train ferries weren't used on the NorthSea routes until WW1

 

It looks as if the majority of these ferries were railway owned and operated at this time, but if someone came up with the plans for an independently run ferry, that would be just fine..

 

I have sourced a copy of A Century of Cross-Channel Passenger Ferries by Ambrose Greenway for just a little more than 1p but still at a good price even with postage.

I also have a copy of an LNWR booklet on Holyhead to Ireland ferries.  Both have a wealth of pictures and a number of drawings but these are small are not sufficiently detailed  to give me the basis to start modelling due to a lack of isometrics or even waterline profile.

 

If you are looking for ferries using Hull I would look into the history of the Wilson line, which handled the much of the Baltic traffic into Hull. It went into partnership with the NER in 1906 to run ferries to Hamburg, Antwerp, Ghent and Dunkirk. More details and links on this page. But if you are looking for plans of the ships I would suggest trying the National Maritime Museum in Greenwich and try and trace the records of Earle's Shipbuilding, a Hull company who built many of Wilson's ships.

[Joseph_Pestell]

There is a stack of information about this sort of thing, often with drawings, in The Engineer, and Engineering, available via Graces Guide.

 

I misread what you were after, and had a quick look for train ferries, and quickly found a series of articles, notably a set starting in edition 1919/01/10 about the facilities at Richborough, and the boats that were sold-on and became the GER train ferries.

 

Also, a picture of SS Dresden, owned by the GER, and the ship from which Rudolf Diesel was lost overboard.

 

K

 

I think that there must have been two Dresdens. Photo does not remotely match the drawing.

 

Edit: Sorry, misread. The train ferry is a different vessel. Dresden looks quite big by the standards of the time.

[Northroader]

I would hope everybody is broad minded enough to say modelling ships on a model railway site is allowable, after all they can form a scenic adjunct, even if a bl**dy big one. So here's two piccies with ships and a train.

[runs as required]

Gosh! This is one of those projects I clearly don't have time left to carry out, but it doesn't stop me planning what I'd love to execute

 

One of my most enjoyable cycling memories was arriving in Harwich from North Derbyshire in about 1957/8 and watching the train ferry load waggons shunted on from the quay in front of the Town Hall - apparently the former Great Eastern Hotel.

I recreated this bit of quay beyond the ferry berth from memory for my A level art project

shewn here:

Presumably you could have a waterline model of the ferry in post #3 above an appropriately semi gloss printed vinyl of a fairly calm muddy river estuary mounted on a base sheet that has an under hull magnetic attraction to a electro magnet mounted on a powered chassis below drawing it across a tracked route in and out of the berth.

 

The project would be a nice elaboration of the shunting plank.

A challenge would be contriving how the ferry disappears into a dense autumnal fog bank

 

dh

[Northroader]

Right next door to that was the main Trinity House depot, you can see some of the buoys in your picture. Train ferry, lightships, all the impedimenta of the sea. Push on and try it!

[runs as required]

 ... and try and trace the records of Earle's Shipbuilding, a Hull company who built many of Wilson's ships.

Presumably the same GT Earles of Hope Valley cement works with all their yellow Hull registered (JRH and JKH etc.) Foden and ERF flat trucks that polluted the old Mam Tor road across to the A6 until the transfer to rail

dh

(sorry OT)

[CKPR]

IIRC, there was an article on ship building by Gordan Gravett in MRJ a few issues back - can't be any specific as I haven't got access to my MRJs at the moment.

[The Stationmaster]

Right next door to that was the main Trinity House depot, you can see some of the buoys in your picture. Train ferry, lightships, all the impedimenta of the sea. Push on and try it!

 

Here is a 2014 view - from a ship on the TH wharf - Trinity House HQ at extreme right, Town Hall at extreme left, THV Alert in the foreground at the opposite side of the wharf.  The second view swings round to the right with the TH HQ now on the left and the THV workshop building left of centre while the third shows the wharf and berth we had just vacated plus the preserved train ferry linkspan to the right of it (rail access now blocked by the TH workshop.

Click on the pics to enlarge them.

 

 

 

[Ian Smeeton]

Many years ago a friend's father ran a company supplying high capacity pumps to the shipping repair trade at Greenock and Port Glasgow.

 

He was asked to supply pumps to pump put the bilges and lower compartments of a North Sea Oil tender in James Watt Dock, Greenock.

 

On site, himself and supervising, the job was going well until what he thought was a hatch cover was opened, revealing a large amount of water slopping around in the bottom of the 'hold'

 

Large capacity pumps aplied to the job, and left to do their work. Some time later, checking on progress, the water level has not dropped, so more pumps applied.

 

Vast quantities of water expelled outboard, but no impression made. At that point he realised the the 'hold' was in actual fact open to the sea at the bottom for dropping pipe, or whatever, and he was doing his best to pump the contents of James Watt Dock into James Watt Dock

 

 

 

Regards

 

Ian