1/700 oosterschelde

[Pieter]

Hey group,
after meeting Marijn van Gils last week with one of my micro builds in tow I realized I never posted that one here. My micro build are always sized to the 90*55 mm diorame bases sold by Trumpeter. This one was entered in a britmodeler group build last year.
MV Oosterschelde was one of a series of three small side loading ferries build for the short but dangerous ferry routes in the Rhine Scheldt delta. I just missed them as they were sold out of service in the early '70s when I moved there. I had good drawings for Oosterschelde in the early 1950s so this is what she was going to be. I started with my usual balsa hull with evergreen 2020 planking. This was a bit difficult as the car deck had partially diagonal planking on the loading section but I managed to get it right I think.

The rest of the ship was straight styrene shapes.

And the fun part. L'Arsenal makes this really nice set of 1/700 WW2 US military soft skin vehicles with could easily be ' civilised'.

Note that I originally added a bus to the deck . According to paper model guru Wim van der Meer of Scaldis who essentially grew up on these ships this was impossible as a bus could not make the turn when loading.

So I replaced it with a much smaller truck from the spares box.

And there were some details and decals to be added.

This was a real fun in between build taking some 4 weeks of a very nice looking subject.
Oosterschelde is still around but heavily rebuild as a club and restaurant. Her longer half sister Koningin Emma has been restored to her original configuration. She is in use as a hotel in Vlissingen where she was build. I spent some time drawing her last year.

[spejic]

This is a really charming build. Can you describe how you formed the plastic for the stern of the hull? I'm toying with doing a scratchbuild of a ship with a similar shape and I don't have a clue how to make it.

[Pieter]

Thanks you for your comments.The stern bulwark was build by first glueing a styrene strip (1.5mm wide I think, it has been a while) vertically on the deck while leaving some space toward the stern . After that I added some more strips of 1 mm and .5 mm to it and sanded it smooth with a tiny amount of filler and superglue added to the mix. I left the inside vertical rather than undercut as it is hardly visible in '700 but one could hollow it out off course. I added a rubbing strake at the last moment which was .5mm styrene rod. I had tried originally to form the bulwark by directly putting a strip if styrene on the deck and pushing it inwards but I could not get the top curve 'right'. Note that the picture looks messier than it really is by now after more priming, sanding and painting.

[Pieter]

PS if you mean the hull itself that is simply styrene strips over a carved balsa hull.

[Neptune]

Beautiful and very obscure subject. Learned something new again here.