PS LORNA DOONE ex HMS Atherstone -- 1/700 Paddlesteamer

[JIM BAUMANN]

New Year- New Project


a few years ago I built a 1/350 scale model of the Royal Navy racecourse class paddle steamer HMS ATHERSTONE using the AJM models Ascot class resin kit.

http://www.modelshipgallery.com/gallery ... /index.htm







whilst not perfect--it was a good starting point and a fair shortcut to a pleasing model of a handsome ship .

HMS Atherstone was built as an Admiralty minesweeper during WW1 in 1916

Laid up at the end of WW1 and remained so until 1928 when bought by the New Medway Steam Packet Co
and she was renamed 'Queen of Kent'

She Operated on excursion services from the Thames ports to the Kent and Essex coasts as well as the French channel ports.
Requisitioned as a minesweeper in September 1939 she was returned to peacetime service for the 1947 and 1948 season on on her Thames routes.
She was sold at the end of 1948 to the Southampton, Isle of Wight and South of England Royal Mail Steam Packet Co

( ==> RED FUNNEL Line )-who still to the present day operate car Ferries and High speed passenger vessels from Southampton to the Isle of Wight)

The paddle steamer entered service in early 1949 as the Bournemouth excursion vessel PS Lorna Doone, operating from Weymouth in the West to the Solent and Southampton waters

( postcard from my collection)

( excerpt of screenshot of online image Nostalgic picture library




( not to be confused with the 1891 single funnel paddle-steamer Red Funnel line Lorna Doone (i)

Lorna Doone spent the 1949, 1950, 1951 and the first half of 1952 season at Bournemouth ,
but transferred to Southampton in July 1952 to replace her fire-damaged sister PS Solent Queen

( ex 1916 minesweeper HMS Melton => Queen of Thanet => Solent Queen )
During the winter refit of 1952, due to age and corrosion it was decided not to proceed and Lorna Doone was sold for scrapping.

Living close by to Southampton I decided to honour the now almost forgotten memory of the splendid steamer Lorna Doone by building a model of her !

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The vessel was reasonably well photographed - from water level from ahead and astern

However as a modelmaker one always seeks images from either High quayside / over-head bridges or ariel photos
to be able to ascertain what and how the deck structure detail arrangements were....

I bought a useful ariel image of her near sister SOLENT QUEEN as a postcard for my collection - but unfortunately much on deck detail is obscured by swathes of untidy and inconveniently ( for me !) located passengers !

This is complicated by much of the actual on-deck detail of Solent Queen IS quite notably different from what I was able to discern from the 3/4 bow and stern photos of Lorna Doone


I was really fortunate to make voice phone contact with the owner of a company called FOTOFLITE


https://www.fotoflite.com/

who have been photographing ships from the air since 1947

- and as a result have an image library of over a million photos (!! ) dating back to 1947.

Not only did they have an overhead image taken from the air--they also VERY kindly retrieved and re-scanned the original negative (!)at very high res from me ; -and scanned zoomed in excerpts for me -- all for a most reasonable nominal cost.


Highly recommended ! Herewith the said image as found with their library search engine

and a ( lower res ) excerpt...

This one image solved almost all of my dilemmas !



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Starting the model....

when I bought the 1/350 kit I also purchased the 1/700 version of the Queen of Thanet ( ex HMS Melton and later Solent Queen )

When I first decided to build a model of Lorna Doone 6 months ago I opened the box and came to the conclusion I needed a bit more underwater to allow me to show a bit of hull midships when at speed , -so added a strip of styrene to the water level.

In the meantime I completed the protracted SMS Vulkan diorama build

viewtopic.php?f=59&t=154091


Upon re-opening the box I noticed that the hull had in the meantime deformed fore and aft.

Whilst the 1/700 version lacked sheer-line ( decks-spring ) exactly as did the 1/350 kit...

It was more than I needed... still -- better than being hogged ... Hehehe!


I drilled some holes from underneath and pulled it down to a pre-drilled stainless steel plate

to my chosen sheer-line with screws. Placing the hull thus constrained on a central heating radiator for a few days

reformed the Hull to my will!

more shortly!

JB

[SG1]

I drilled some holes from underneath and pulled it down to a pre-drilled stainless steel plate

to my chosen sheer-line with screws. Placing the hull thus constrained on a central heating radiator for a few days

reformed the Hull to my will!

Excellent technique Mr Baumann! Question: standard radiator heating tempreature or a chosen/appropriate-to-the-task one?

Cheers,

SG

PS magificent job with the Vulkan flags

[JIM BAUMANN]

Thank you on both counts, !

Central Heating radiator but left on for a few days.

the trouble is --its a complex ship with a surprising amount of challenges in every way
and the vessel in 1/700... might best be described as diminutive... !

alas -- it is not without its flaws ... that need some innovation to cure...
( just how I like it!

so for a small vessel-- a heck of a lot of work ahead...

more soon
JB

[wefalck]

Looking forward to this new project !

One thing that always puzzled me, is that they used paddle-steamers well into the middle of the 20th century in the choppy waters around the British Isles and in particular in the Channel. Was it because of the shallow draught, suited to the tidal waters?

[JIM BAUMANN]

I have of late been frequenting quite a few paddle-steamer sites....

Here is a direct quote

Paddle steamers were particularly suited to coastal minesweeping duties due to their relatively shallow draughts. The Royal Navy requisitioned many such vessels from civilian operators during the war and also during World War II. Two groups of paddle minesweepers were built during World War I. A potential third group was ordered but cancelled due to the end of hostilities.

additionally my thoughts are also that a steam powered paddler has immense torque for towing the sweeping gear of that era more effortlessly ; ==> when the paddles dig in, such as on the fine lined Swiss Lake paddlers ( 800 passengers)

such as Uri

my model
http://www.modelshipgallery.com/gallery ... index.html





or that sea going behemoth of the UK -- the SS Waverly- over 900 passengers

-the sheer acceleration is most prodigious... - giving a shove in the back !-
unlike the more linear acceleration of equivalent era motor-ships

considering that Lorna Doone and Solent Queen were originally
NOT at all designed as passenger vessels-

-their ability to carry 900 passengers was impressive !

[EJFoeth]

Great subject, lovely colours, will watch with interest! Too bad the kit misbehaves but they always do

[Iceman 29]

@Wefalck

Between the Isle of Wight and Porthmouth / Southampton the roadstead is rather sheltered from the prevailing winds, the Isle of Wight is also rather close to the coast.

With strong wind of South East winds, which are more rare, the traffic was probably interrupted.

The kind of ship that now links the Isle of Wight, personal picture took during a port of call at Fawley:





There is at least one that sails in Scotland.

The PS Waverley:


The steam engine is original

But the operating costs may put an end to this kind of navigation.

Public fund is launched for 2023:

https://www.heraldscotland.com/news/232 ... -set-sail/

https://youtu.be/BsHCuSBVN1E


https://youtu.be/-tndQfj8K5g

[wefalck]

I gather that the general abandonment of steam-engines in favour of the cheaper to operate diesels from the middle of the 20th century on also led to the demise of the paddle-wheel. IC just run to fast and would need to be severely geared down (with resulting efficiency losses). Perhaps the rise of high-torque low-rev electric motors could provide for a renaissance? But then paddle-wheels have a lot more moving parts and are expensive to maintain compared to screws.

Still, it seems that paddle-wheels have been abandoned in see-going vessels much earlier around continental Europe than around Britain.

Will there be anything visible of the wheels in the finished model? Could be quite a challenge at this small scale.

[EJFoeth]

Paddle wheels cannot handle draft differences or seakeeping very well and are very easily damaged in combat (even engines exceed the waterline height in these older vessel). Ease of maintenance might indeed also be a reason. For tug boats they were still used in the earlier half of the 20th century though (see pic of Nelson on the beach)



More modern paddlewheels are Voith-Schneider propellers (very popular for tugs, highly maneuverable) or other cycloidal setups (whale tail propulsion as above, basically an underwater paddlewheel aft of the ship; Dutch inland vessel had one but broke down and went bankrupt unfortunately). All these are not drag but lift based (compared to the paddlewheel of old) but they do not beat propeller efficiency.

[Sszabi]

Ho-ho a new interesting project! I will follow this with interest.

[JIM BAUMANN]

whilst waiting for the filler to harden in some of the port-holes that were not quite in the right position
I set about making some of the smaller parts in readiness...

Lorna Doone is well littered with a considerable number of cowl vents of various sizes
The kit supplied the larger vents; but whilst broadly OK ....

they were not to my liking yet... (!)



I cut the cowls off and re-attached them to new shafts -as the ' rings ' are nowhere to be seen on the real ship !

and then scraped off the ' lip ' , drilled the cowl into the shaft and started to hollow them out
so as to give a very thin edge

I made new funnels of tubing --the kit items had the steam pipes cast on and the surface was not a smooth as I would have liked

the funnel tops were made as per image below using small wire rings wound around a small drill shank into a spiral and cut into circles

to achieve a lightly hollow taper the two rings were ' joined' with thinned white glue

The aft deck structure - ( which may have been washroom- )
with framed windows ( made from suitable sized PE 1/700 ladder stock)

The 2 x funnel base structures of laminated layers styrene sheet mek-packed together

I made a template for my home-printed paper deck ( as per on my Normandie )

I kept on test-fitting the deck to the hull casting get it about right
==> that I had built up slightly in the centre to cure
the aforementioned hollow dishing and thereby achieve a ! bit of positive deck camber ...

it was fiddly !



more soon next time !

JIM B

[marijn van gils]

Hi Jim,

I'm still waiting for you to build Bretagne...



But this is a beautiful subject too! And your post are already very educational as usual!

I really like the look of your printed decks. Much more subtle than the usual grooved decks, and not so, well, 'grooved'.
It is too late for my current project, but I will certainly consider it in the future!

[Alexey Nikitin]

paper deck

Hi Jim!
Please tell me in detail how you make wooden decking from paper..? What kind of glue do you use to stick these decks to the models..?

[JIM BAUMANN]

Wooden decks....( made of paper ! )
sure-- no problem ! rather than re-write everything again ....
--as I covered this in fair detail on my Normandie build

http://www.modelwarships.com/reviews/sh ... /index.htm

and much greater detail in the build thread from the forum
I have posted direct links from the build thread of my 1/700 SS Normandie build.


herewith below the direct links;

============================================================================
IMPORTANT...

" ...>> all these decks were printed on 100 g dead flat high quality non-grained paper
on my home ink-jet ( canon MG 3600)
using the best quality print it had.

I did try a commercial laser printer ( horrid result) along with other printers-with no significantly noticeable improvement over my own home efforts

BUT... once marked and cut

I varnished the undersides with Humbrol matt-kote first
and then turned them over and varnished the tops also


so as to make the paper decks impervious to moisture or dis-colouration when gluing... <....""

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I described how I got there with the paper decks here in my build Log of the 1/700 Normandie....

viewtopic.php?f=59&t=168156#p748347

How I made templates

further on here;
viewtopic.php?f=59&t=168156&start=20#p751977

preparing for deck application
viewtopic.php?f=59&t=168156&start=20#p752244

and here-- its can be tedious and fiddly !
viewtopic.php?f=59&t=168156&start=40#p759236

the actual gluing was done with matt varnish and/ or white glue ( good grab--takes a while to dry..! )

hence the reason for varnishing the decks both sides to prevent moisture ingress and consequent discolouration
and insurgent lifting edged are dealt with by sliding an 11p scalpel blade.,loaded with CA glie on the the TOP of the blade only,

so that the CA goes underneath on the underside of the paper deck .==> It is the pressed down with suitable tool to get an instant grab.

The overall effect stand up well even quite close up-- obviously...(! ) flatter than recessed grooved decking.

[Alexey Nikitin]

Wooden decks....( made of paper ! )

Hi Jim!
Thank you!
Everything is very clear.

Regards, Alexey.

[JIM BAUMANN]

Happy First of February Gentlemen and Ladies...!

Progress has been of the slow and dull type...-- lost of fiddly work with no real tangible progress ( it seems !)

...though in reality it a lot of very small completions-some better than others-(!)-which in the end do add up to progress.

Lorna Doone and her sistership Solent Queen had fine black and white lines between the back and white portions of the hull


.... as various images at various ( as yet undated !!) stages of the 3 years of operations show varying widths of line... (!!!??!)

this white line is much wider , thought the other proportions do also vary slightly...

I did not even try and attempt to mask this for painting--

the Parallel lines being 0.20mm and 0.15 mm respectively-- ( or so...)



This hurdle nearly scuppered the project for me --as my usual source of using of very fine decal lines only go down to 0.25mm

and in the world of sub quarter of a millimetre lines this would really show./..( and I would know and be irritated by it!)
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In a previous life I had done some railway locomotive building ( as well as collecting locomotives... )

The British pre-war company LNER...( London North Eastern Railway ) in the 1920's and 1930's painted their locomotives in a handsome apple green livery
with the boiler bands picked out in white and black....

AHA !

I had some old decals of this lining left over from way back then in 00 Gauge ( 1/76 scale-==> (4mm = 1 ft )

I hatched the plan of aligning the edge of the white portion of the white/black/white decal with the edge of the white part pf the hull
as a consistent spacer so as to get the parallel black/white line....

and as old as these elderly decals were ( 30 odd years plus) tested out --and found they were still in fine order....

alas rather too chunky !

I then devised a new plan....

... that if I used decals of this pattern at half the scale ( UK N gauge ) 2 mm = 1/ft -- 1/148 ....
I might get away with it....?!

apologies for fuzzy out of focus image-- but you can see what I was aiming at on the 4 mm scale variant!

In reality this was trickier than one may think--as the slight compound curves of the hull did made me work for it!


anyhow-- considering the model is only 4 1/4 inches loa ( 110 mm )

at 1/1 scale viewing it looks pretty good and ' in-scale / proportion '

The mooring line eye fairleads and roller apertures were cut in and framed using very small pieces of brass scraps


Overall the effect is reasonably pleasing

(or...--it will be when I have ironed out the not quite perfect finish ( !!)and colour match...)!

This steamer has many pitfalls for the unwary... differing numbers of Portholes starbord to Port being just one of them .

conveniently outlined with a white line... (!)

I have during this time been working away quietly on the Fwd bridge structure-
-which is surprisingly complex.

an early stage...

( which had most bits removed and remade / replaced after this photo... )

a little bit later

The bridge wing railings had smart white dodgers in white canvas...

Above the white dodgers there were mounted some small poles to which were attached
another small dodger - in a slightly darker shade of canvas -- that could be raised/lowered to give additional shelter from headwinds and spray

I think that the angled tails of the dodger were folded / flaked or rolled ...I believe--

as their length does seem vary from one photo to another of the real 1/1 scale thing... !!


I made the uprights and the top of the small dodger, to go above the main dodger ,
using small pieces of stainless steel railing trimmed to size...

Once these were tacked on with sticky matt varnish ...
when adjusted to be square and symmetrical -- backfilled with small amounts of CA glue for strength

and lastly in-filled with thinned white glue to simulate the canvas ( as per the main Dodgers as well)
and painted a slightly creamier shade

once dry--the effect was quite pleasing --
(the uprights will have a line spanned on them nearer completion )

Other small components that have been made in readiness...

were the various water tanks and deck boxes

skylights x 2

to which were added the lids with portholes ( cut from a piece of scrap larger scale perforated floor PE.... of unknown source...)

the deck house abaft the fwd funnel

The 2 x funnel bases were repainted from white / grey to all brown according to the recently acquired ariel photo

and had a chunky overhanging beading of wire added to the fwd base only according to aforementioned photo...)

and -- gratifyingly... I managed to stretch some brown sprue into a flat section--

which allowed me to cut and form the margin planks around the paddle boxes
-- a distinctive feature again identifiable in the above mentioned photograph!

for some light relief.... I carried on making more of the seemingly endless small cowl vents --

using a cored( easy to centre the drill in ) solder which I have owned since I was a small child-with-soldering-iron... ( !)

This solder is almost 50 years old and has shown no signs whatsoever of oxidising or degradation in all that time.

....and has been used hardly ever for actually soldering !

-- but has yielded many dozens of small cowl vents over the years !!

and lastly for this update-- for an easy , sharp and speedy result ... the walkways on the paddleboxes...

more soon

JIM B

[wefalck]

This 'pin-striping' on ships, locomotives and the likes in small scales really is a pain, I know this from experience. Good job you did on this!

[marijn van gils]

That's a lot of progress! It seems like some of the main challenges of this project have already been brought to a satisfying (or better: beautiful!) result?

Very education too as always, especially on the lines. The stretched sprue margin planks are a great idea too!

[JIM BAUMANN]

sooo--the idea of the decal railway lining to obtain the thin white/black parallel line
worked out OK after some experimentation...

( I removed them--twice and got better at it!-- one does really live and learn.
the next issue to conquer was the vexed question of the name script lettering , portholes and ....the paddle boxes...

so one at a time... and all together.

The portholes were effectively flush- drilling them would not improve them



so very kindly.... fellow modelwarshipper Bruno Gire came to the rescue...
( Bruno came to my attention when I saw his INCREDIBLE
non-marine (!) Soyuz launch pad project which won Best of Show @ Telford some years ago
He is also an most accomplished ship modelmaker!

meanwhile.... he designed for me a DECAL sheet, containing a whole variety of portholes sizes
( and eyebrows -- rendered not as an eyebrow but the shadow it would have cast....!)

going in closer ....the Portholes...

the name scripts.....

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Now then --with the paddle-boxes-- this was quest all in itself

the trouble is that the PE supplied does not really quite convey
the looks of the real thing, ==> where the vertical ' ties' being in reality near invisible.

' we' ( me especially..! ) did get very ( over! ) excited
and 'we' studied endlessly the available photos to glean detail between the graininess of the film!

The biggest mystery was the contents of the crest in the centre of the paddle-box....

the squiggle in the crest we identified as the house flag....

all this was worked into the decal artwork...

alas on a decal not quite 7mm loa... it may be near invisible...
I have not studied or cut them yet

[JIM BAUMANN]

The portholes with the eyebrow shadows were genius--

and I shall use that feature on a future build,
probably on a grey rather than white background ship
but in the end decided to use just the black part of the porthole;

the definition was pleasing in this small scale
on white-- and the eyebrow became a distraction...

The vessel has been launched at last


this should make it rather safer to handle now!