Skybert

"300 miles per hour, in your purpose built machine... at such speeds.. things fly" beautiful build mate.

You certainly did the Mirage right here, mate

You seem to know your way around a tanker for sure, I would need some pics to understand what it is you refer to. On the pic of a contemporary WWII tanker; could you point out the offloading arrangement for me Kev? I can understand there would be a central offloading section where piping from all tanks come together on the deck sides to be connected to a land based system, and assume these would have been similar diameter flexible rubber hoses and maybe pumping stations of some sort to connect to landlines. I bought a railroad refinery as you can see to put on the diorama, and there is a central piping section there as well, might be a bit creative here to align the one with the other, not going for historic accuracy anyway but trying to create a harbor atmosphere. No hurries anyway as explained above, still nice to have in store for later..

Thanks for encouragements guys, The project is now physically in storage, with all of my modelling stuff, and we are up to our elbows in reconstruction work of the new house. Plan to move before feb 1st.. I did recently read a book on the Battle of the Atlantic, and it only fueled my determination to finish this build some day. ( http://www.bing.com/images/search?q=the+battle+of+the+atlantic+jonathan+dimbleby&view=detailv2&qpvt=the+battle+of+the+atlantic+jonathan+dimbleby&id=FADEA4BD3951B0D0BD89B6ACFC8E8FF319D4243A&selectedIndex=3&ccid=yC9eSImI&simid=608016273378379191&thid=OIP.Mc82f5e488988a3d238d351336a48993do0&ajaxhist=0 ) Funny enough the book only fleetingly mentions the use of escort carriers and has even less on MAC ships, paying much more tribute to the belated but ultimate effect of 24 hrs presence of long range patrol aircraft released from bomber command to naval and coastal command that flew ahead and over convoys in 1943 , driving u boats below surface. There is justone page that describes a depth charge attack by a Swordfish on a U-boat... Meanwhile, if anyone has pics or info how tankers unloaded their fuel on a dockside in WW2 ? would be much appreciated..Googled, but to no avail.. cheers guys Bert

Project shelved and stowed guys.. moving ito a new house, no mancave for time being.. modelling stored for some time.. not my phase in life right now.. taking sitrep in 6 month..

Yes, now that you say so; there is a maniacal preoccupation in my mind about this... night and day. :-)

Also started work on cranes. I planned to use the regular H0 stuff, but looks too small, so also bought the hulks of two Marklin electric cranes that i will completely redo with scratched detail, including raising them on scratched railportal bases.

Worked on aquiring second hand buildings and cranes for the quay of the diorama through our local ebay, and now have collected 6 that either look British Industrial or will,once I have modified. This one was advertised as a genuine British steam boiler house. I should have looked better since it was not complete. The most disturbing was the righ topfloor; which is groundfloor stacked on topof another, so i had stairs and doors going into nowwhere.. tried to fix all of that by taking it apart, repositioning windows, saw off dors, add masonry,. I uses black waterproof sanding paper to create a band of plaster in the first floor, also added headstones for the façades; there were none. was tough to put back together again and still hase some corner joints that need working on below is another aquired building, I believe it is the old machbox office since it had a modern entree and glass scaffolding in front plus matchbox advertising, that i all took off. I already weathered the building, but think i will repaintin red to get the British Industrial look a bit closer to home.

A bit of update for you guys. Finished the hull with filler and yacht higloss varnish, to have a hard base for styrene structures and decks . Bought styrene sheets 2x1 meter in a local industrial plastic webstore , for 15 euro each, Evergreen would have drained budget.. I have started building the command deck of the tanker that will later be overcast by the flightdeck Via Kees Helder at Helderline.nl some unique images from macoma I then laid out the diorama plan that is haunting me in my sleep on the dinner table .I have a fairly big dinner table, but it seems we need to be eating out a lot in the coming time. My inspiration comes from Harbor images around the UK in wartime. My dio will have a long qay with oil, coal and refinery installations, some cranes and a railroad. Then on the short side a qay with warehouses, and city buildings. and another long qay with factories and the headoffice of the fictuous 'Empire Atlantic Passage Line'. I bought a second hand railroad station that looks fairly british, but may change the colour to either redder brick or grey basalt The flowerclass corvettte is the matchbox/Revell kit whuih will be built OOB as there is plenty of stuff to do some inspirational images off the net Hope you like it.

Can I ask how the soldering works in PE mate? I tried it on a 1/72 ladder and platform set a few months back, but the heat of the soldering tip made the whole ladder curl up, so that sort of took my courage away and I went on with superglue.. But I can see how soldering has much more filling capacity than glue to overcome joints, folds and crevasses, and makes for a nicer end product. Do you have to use that soldering fluid first you use on printboards?

thx mate

Salute Sir, great work! have a flowerclass lying in wait, great to see that PE work, and all the resources! happy new year, happy modelling Bert

Last work done in 2015: She escaped the bonfire, and am now committed to completion. I meanwhile have wild ideas about a harbor diorama with a flowerclass corvette, and harbor tug, admirality sloop, vosper torpedoboat, harbor cranes, railroadcars, supply trucks and warehouses.. problem is, its gonna be at least 2,5 x 1 meter..

Here is the new bow..a bit less rakish though I could have made it even more blunt.. I decided his will have to do getting close to finalising the sharp end..

Steaming the plywood allowed me to close the hull but the result is rather crude due to my lack of skills and that I was not precise in sawing out the cross sections.. I will be going to need a lot of filler on the hull to make it reasonably straight.. sand shaping the stern made a mess like a pillow fight.. here she is... compare the aftviews of the model and the tanker and you can see that the bow is too rakish.. not bad for USS Missouri, but wrong for a tanker I decided to cap the bow with a new plywood bow shape by increasing the hull width from waterline and make it less rakish