S.S. VALHALLA Part - 3

Merry Christmas to all.  Hope Santa was good to all.  

Spent a nice long weekend at home with the family, just relaxing and working on trains.    As I've said in earlier blogs I am trying to divide my time equally between building structures and the layout.  I'm proud to report that all the track is down on the Coke Works Branch and it is about half wired for power.  I even was able to install one Tortice switch machine.   I also repainted the backdrop in this section - just the sky - still need to do the clouds.    I'll take a photo of the branch line panel when I'm finished with things.  

I also continued working on the SS Valhalla freighter.   This is a completely freelanced ship design.  The only photos I am working off of are a few from a Model Railroader website feature I printed out on marine modeling - and an article from the same magazine featuring a coal ship on the Severna Park layout.   The marine modeling feature had a few photos of a freighter in HO scale that was built from a kit - I looked up the kit and it was way too expensive so I chose to scratchbuild.  There were features on both the models that I liked and am incorporating them into my model, plus some other features I picked up from maritime books,..etc.    My freighter represents a very smallish, WWI vintage freighter, still in use in the 50's but for hauling pig iron to third world nations and bringing back iron ore.  (Colonialism at its finest)   This will had some operational interest - moving materials and products between the port and the furnaces.    I started to add some bracing to the bulwarks throughout the ship using styrene strip.  The rest of my work focused on the superstructure.  Freelancing this as I go, I'm pretty pleased with the overall proportions.   I intend to make some masters of hatches and other features and cast them in resin.   The tank behind the pilot house is a water tank for drinking, washing, and cooking.   Most of the superstructure was built out of .040 sheet styrene.  The closed railings are .020 sheet.   The stack is 7/8" tube  with a 1" base.