Javelin

I'm definitely not designed it myself, I'd make it much simpler and wouldn't take 10+ years to build it if I were 😁. I have some plans, but a General Arrangement plan doesn't really show the whole piping. It mainly just covers the main pipes and does give a good indication of its location and dimensions. I combine that drawing with a LOT of pictures, 100's of them (much like the manifold picture I posted previous post). That's also why the research takes so much time. For a lot of the details I need to scan through the pictures to get an angle on some details, then determine what size they are and what their actual location is compared to their surroundings.

Hi Phil, it's actually quite a while ago that I served on this ship, around 15 years now... But technology is technology, so I remember most of it. The U-shapes are indeed to absorb expansion. I've always wondered why they had two bends on the transverse manifold lines, but during construction of this model it actually appeared to me. The liquid enters from the longitudinal lines through that strainer line into the transverse line, somewhere around the center. You load or discharge only on 1 side of the vessel, portside or starboard side is connected to shore, that means the other side is blinded off and contains a gas bubble. Since there is no liquid entering that side, it doesn't cool down (or at least much less so). Due to that effect they put one U-shape on each side, so you certainly pass the cold liquid through one of the U-shapes. And I agree on the complexity, I believe a fully rigged model is in the same league, you're basically also taking a lot of small steps to slowly build up that final complex appearance. In a very similar way you have to plan which lines to do first and which ones later. Thank you very much for actually saying that Ian. It appeared logical to me that people could pick out the new stuff on the pictures and relate that to the text. Now that I know it's not that obvious, I'll work on that to make it more clear. I'll take an overview picture today and mark the different parts on that overview. I've also been thinking to make a small diagram showing the piping and flow, perhaps I'll do that as well if people would be interested in that.

Not sure if you're talking about the model, or the real ship... On the real ship, as Roger explained there are quite a few "rules" that determine how this is all set up. A side note to that is that there is a certain pecking order in the design. With so many people involved, I would assume somebody designs the hull, then the "cargo guy" can do his thing and then the next one in line etc. That does complicate a lot of things for a lot of people I assume. The engineer who had to design the fresh water system and piping for example, was probably the last in line and had to arrange his piping from the fresh water tanks to the manifolds as well. On Chaconia I noticed they had dismantled most of that piping, using only the aft connection to bunker fresh water when required. The same counts for hydraulics etc. The engineer who designed the cargo system put some hydraulic valves in his system, but probably did not design the run of hydraulic piping. So in some cases, we do wonder why they did what they did, the way they did it... Your remark did remind me to put a picture of that real manifold in here, since I don't think I posted that yet. So yes, I still have a lot of work to do. On the other hand, it does show the real paint job on those ships, a reason I'm not too concerned about painting on the model. 😂 The big white pipes on the manifold are actually the liquid lines, they are frozen due to the cold liquid being pumped. As mentioned before, that liquid line was going to take a while. Once I have that one, it'll be easier. Below is that strainer and it's by-pass etc. To adjust piping and get a staight cut I use my old pipe cutter. It goes only down to diameters of 3mm, so it can't cut through, however, the cutter does leave a nice straight cut mark, which I can later on follow with a knife to get a 90° cut. I thought a while about the cross shaped reinforcement on the lid of the strainer, but decided it really was required to give a proper impression. The lid itself is a litho top with the bolts punched in, backed by a 0.3mm styrene plate to give a little more thickness. The cross is made up of 0.3mm styrene. The strainer body itself also has support beams, but those will be added later, in an opposite fashion, since you can't line up everything from bottom to top. Additionally there is still a pipeline that needs to go from this liquid line down to the booster pumps (part of that pipe can be seen near the deck level, with a piece of brass wire sticking out). I am nearly there when it comes to this pipe.

So now both bunker manifolds are in place. Not on Portside, because on that side the bunkerline is actually crossing over the cargo piping (due to the longitudinal piping rack). So first up is the transverse cargo piping and then PS HFO bunker pipe (DO pipe does run underneath the pipe rack, logics 🤪...) First was lining out the support bars for the piping. I wanted to start aft and connect to the cargo heater system, but decided against it and started on the forward piping. Aft part will be more difficult as it's the part going over the edge of the hatch. It would also have restricted my access for the forward piping probably causing damage to the aft piping, so, first forward. Since I had the two supports of the manifold piping in place, I could now put a transverse pipe in place to line out the supports. I used normal straight pipes. I'm also building the bent cargo piping on a flat surface to have the bends in a single plane. As you can see I held the supports up with some copper wire attached to the beams. I used CA on 1 or 2 vertical supports and normal plastic glue (= slower curing, but stronger bond) on the rest of the supports. One of the supports near the center was a bit angled in, not leaving enough space for the aft (Inert Gas manifold) pipe to pass. I used a spreader on top of the pipe to keep them at a correct distance while using the support to keep at the proper distance. Seems to have worked. The 3 forward pipes in place. Most forward is Liquid System 2, followed by Vapour System 2 and Inert Gas line. For normal cargo operations the Vapour Return is not used on LPG tankers. Normally the reliquefaction plant will liquefy the vapour coming from the tanks and send the liquid/condensate back to those tanks during the loading operation. If for some reason the reliquefaction plants can not handle the vapour and pressure rises too much in the tanks, the vapour return connection can be opened towards the terminal, but in that case the vessel will have to pay a fine (normally vapour return is sent to a flare and is therefore considered a loss). So it's almost always connected to the shore terminal, but rarely used. This may look like major progress, but it's not. As you can see I need to make a lot of flanges for valve connections on those pipes. Lining the pipes up transversally and longitudinally is a challenge as you need to keep the longitudinal distance on the manifold equal, while you also need to keep the bends in the correct places. Again a lot of fitting, adjusting, fitting again etc. The forward liquid system also has a big cargo strainer connected. During loading, you normally load through the strainer (you don't want dirt in your tanks), while during discharging, this strainer is generally bypassed (but often stainers are using inside the manifold connections). Of course this means you need valves to by-pass this strainer, so again more valves to add on the system. The stainer you can see already on the starboard side, unpainted. It will take a while before I finish these lines, but once they are done, it will be quite a step forward to completion of the vessel.

Been a while again, but there's no messing with the 2-piece quotum. Although it doesn't look like much, I'm busy with a critical pipe. One that scared me a bit (= stopped at that point in the past) due to its complex shape. It's the bunker manifolds. 2 pipes are there, an HFO (Heavy Fuel Oil) system and a Diesel Oil system. They are shaped very strangely, but I assume they did it that way to make sure that the line can be drained properly to the tank, so in case of a leak on the manifold, there would only be a limited amount of oil that could possibly leak to the flange side (that is at least my theory for this odd shape). A long while back I made preparations for this system since I put a 1.5mm rod with a 90° bend already in that manifold. I would not be able to place such a pipe afterwards. I was a bit obsessed with having as little joints in those pipes as possible and always tried to make things from 1 piece. In the end, the installed pipe didn't have a good 90° bend and didn't want to go in place, so I clipped it near the bend. Made a proper 90° bend. I also could remove both pieces of the pipe that way and adjust their lengths properly without risk of damage to the rest of the construction. Having decided to do this, it allowed me to take the next step more easily. As you can see, it goes over the edge of the hatch, complicating things a bit more, as the pipe has to be properly sized and fitted, there's no way I could bend and glue the aft piece to the drip tray. Flanges and valves were dry fitted for testing. Here, handwheels are already fitted to the valves. I used 0.3mm thick styrene discs which I drilled out in the center and later on in the 4 corners. This pipe had to be painted and fixed in order to proceed with the transverse beams above them. Here it is painted and fixed in place. The forward transverse beams are in place, since the DO system only goes to the aft drip tray. DO system (Smaller capacity and diameter of pipe) is dry fitted here. The whole process involves a lot of bending, fitting, bending, mounting the hatch back on the ship to see for the drip trays, then removing it again to work on the piping etc. Once the DO system is in place, I'm ready to continue with the transverse beams and then I can proceed 1 level up with the actual transverse cargo pipes.

I think that about sums it up. Cruise vessels nowadays do carry larger engine room crews (because also the side jobs like sewage plant, technical issues in cabins etc are part of their jobs), but not anything like on United States. On modern merchant ships, notably the LNG steam ships, we had an engine room crew of around 7, mostly composed of: 2nd Engineer 2 x 3rd Engineer 4th Engineer (apprentice engineer, optional) Fitter Wiper Oiler Chief Engineer is an office job, much like Captain nowadays, so I'm not considering them really as part of the engine room operating crew. Of course these were fully automated engine rooms, unmanned during the night. Full of sensors with linked alarms that wake up the duty engineer if required.

It was fun. Rooms are ok, breakfast was really good. Kids also got a small plastic bottle with a special paper to send home in form of a message in a bottle. Location's great too, not too far from the Maritime Museum, and price was good compared to any other hotel as well. In the end we'll have to go back, since we didn't even have enough time for the guided tour. Not sure if you'll feel the same way if you've seen her in better days in her true element in the past ...

That's a great result on that lettering and portholes! I'm still amazed at the speed at which you can achieve such results.

Definately better. Looking forward to see it matched with the hull!

I'm no specialist on submarine decks, but in those days subs spent most of their time on the surface. I would imagine their decks would not be that dirty, much like the hull above the waterline as algae etc. wouldn't get time to get a grab on those parts. I would imagine they'd keep it cleaned as much as they could to make it less slippery as well. The ageing and tar of the wood would probably give some contrasts, but not sure if it would as visible as what you made. That said, most people won't make that kind of considerations when looking at your model. If the weathering of the deck matches the rest of the build and you're happy with it, that's fine.

That's great news all around Keith. Hope Maggie keeps making progress. Great to hear she's gotten this far already. Great to see you're getting "some time off" as well.

So, time to continue. I do have plans now, but still I need to think about the sequence of construction. I also had some hesitation regarding 2 small pipes coming from the compressor room towards the manifold. I had made provisions for those pipes in way of making large supports on the big pipe to accommodate them, but I was never sure if I'd place them after all. Eventually I decided to place the pipes. I had put part of a pipe below that manifold. It didn't look right, so I removed it and built those pipes in different sections. The joints next to tank dome 2 will mostly be covered by the platform shown in previous posts. In below picture you can see the brass pipes running parallel to the big pipe. The joints are hidden in the shadows. The reason I had to put them now was of course that they were also a bottleneck for construction of the manifold. I wouldn't be able to place them if I continued further on the manifold. And I've started the structure of the manifold on portside. All beams in place here.

@Roger Pellett, Although I understand and agree to most of your post, there is one note. Steam Turbines are still used today. Up to 2012, new LNG carriers were still often built with steam turbines. That particular type of vessel required the boil-off gas to be burned in order to control the cargo tank pressures (and not vent it to the atmosphere, which they routinely did in the past). In order to burn that gas, a dual-fuel solution was needed and steam boilers provided just that. Each boiler has/had multiple burners with the choice for each burner to burn either natural gas or fuel. The equipment was generally Japanese, Mitsubishi Boilers and Mitsubishi or Kawasaki turbines. Generally a large turbine (one High Pressure, one Low Pressure and one Astern turbine mounted together)for propulsion and 3 turbo generators for power supply (backed-up by a diesel generator). Another advantage of this set-up was that, when not underway, a steam dump could be used, this steam dump allowed to burn gas, although there was no demand of steam. The steam would then simply be condensed and the energy given to the sea. With the advent of the much more efficient dual-fuel piston engines, the steam turbines went out of fashion. In order to get those piston engines working, they did need a way to control the tank pressure and that came in form of reliquefaction (very inefficient energy-wise) and Gas Combustion Units (GCU = basically a big flare in the funnel of those vessels). That said, the steam vessels are still around, although they come much cheaper (and therefore not very attractive for the owners) and are only used when the gas tanker market is tight. You also see them increasingly being used as storage units nowadays. In the past I actually did some operations with very old US built LNG tankers of the Aquarius class. All in all there are still quite some steam engineers around, although of course nowadays they are increasingly rare. Of course United States tech is indeed way behind on technology and renewing it would cost an arm and a leg. As you mentioned business and legal wise, it's probably not the best idea to even try this. Looks are however deceiving. Her appearance may not be too good now, but given a good sand blasting and coat of paint she'll look the part in no time. Perhaps she can be turned into a hotel. I recently slept on SS Rotterdam, an old liner in the port of Rotterdam. Part of the vessel was converted as a hotel, machinery spaces etc. can be visited (paid tour of course) and part of it simply off limits. I assume they try to reduce costs by limiting the amount of the vessel that is used. All in all an economical exercise, how many people do you expect to accommodate at any time and which features do you want to maintain.

Here you see what I tried to describe. This one is in wood, but the same method can be applied in styrene. It avoids compound curves, which styrene sheets, like wood, won't handle either. Depending on the curve you can adjust the thickness and size of strips you use. I didn't apply filler on this wood hull as it would be covered by fibreglass (RC model), but with styrene, some filler will give good results.

I wouldn't try to connect styrene to wood. Due to the different expansion coefficients it's likely to crack at the seams. It's not fully clear to me what the shape of this vessel is from the plan, I'm assuming a twin prop -twin rudder configuration? If you want to go full styrene, I guess making styrene strips (=planks) over styrene frames will be the easiest way in such an area. Afterwards you can fill the gaps with filler and sand smooth. For the stern itself I'd make a false stern/last frame to end the planks on, then level all planks there and put the full stern plate behind that. Although I'm mainly a styrene builder, I must admit for such a size model, I'd prefer wood. Styrene becomes very brittle and if you're making such a large detailed model, it might as well last for a while...

I could use a million of words of admiration, but I'll just keep it at "wow, what a masterpiece !" (for now).

kind of funny. I just saw this question and this very evening I stumbled across this painting: Michiel Loos merchant ship The name on that pennant, indeed the vessel's name, is also reversed... and the pennant colors in exactly the same style as yours. And yes, I know, funny, the flags are pointing aft while under sail...

https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.cnn.com/cnn/2024/04/23/business/baltimore-bridge-collapse-lawsuit-hnk-intl And there come the lawsuits.... As if they could have handled it any different. Can't quite blame the city for it, but on the other hand, these are the risks of maritime transportation. If you're not prepared to accept it, better to close your port then. In general some of the most outdated maritime infrastructure can be found in US, time for them to get moving on this. Also the reason the largest containerships nowadays can't even call any port in US. Their closed market, including in dredging, creates a huge disadvantage compared to the rest of the world.

Hi, Thucki, it's not insane detail. It's a balance between having something that looks a bit like the real thing rather than having nothing at all. The real P/V valves for example, look different from what I produced. Pretty sure PE experts would succeed in making it all look 100% accurate, but I'm trying to find a way in between. As mentioned I actually don't like all that detailing, but in order to making a convincing model of a tanker, you need to at least create a certain amount of clutter on that deck, whether it's accurate or not, doesn't really matter to most people. In my case it's accurate to the amount of devices etc. on deck, but not necessarily to what all those devices look like. Here is a picture of the actual P/V valve, something I represented by a small piece of brass sharpened at the top, with a small cylinder stuck to it on the side. (and you can also see that red fire wire reel behind it) Jerome, I guess those rub-on letters are what I make with my stencil cutter. The question for now is whether the cutter can make them small enough to match the scale of this vessel. I used it successfully in my build of the split barge Bengel, but that was in 1/400. Arguably a smaller vessel with smaller lettering in real life as well. If I'd make those letters just slightly smaller, they might actually be good enough for the Europe. I'll probably give it a try sooner than later. Considering I'm out of pictures on this one, this is likely to be the last post (except when my stencil cutting trials would work). The anti-fouling came out rather nice. You can also see the size of those big warts for the anchors. Although I wasn't planning on any railing, I did have to add some details to the sides as well. Again, to make it more convincing. Those details, fairleads and the heavy manifold railing (made to carry the weight of cargo transfer hoses during ship-to-ship transfers) would also be visible from a distance on the real ship. In order to make the heavy railing, I used a piece of "normal" 1/700 PE railing, modified it a bit and then used it as a framework to add heavier stanchions and the top bar (brass wire). This way I had a consistent distance between the stanchions and straight line-up. And here the railing "in action", being used what it's made for. All tankers have those since sometimes on terminals hoses are used instead of loading arms. I also decided to add the markings for the bulbous bow and the arrows for the locations where tugs are allowed to push. You need a lot of tugs to push something this size sideways through the water. Those shapes were easy, so I cut them from a piece of masking tape and simply painted them on. And finally the funnel. The Tankers International sign was also painted, using maskings in several steps. The end result of this vessel is visible in the gallery. Seems I hadn't taken any pictures with the lifeboats on, except for those final pics. I also had to think for a very long time whether to add the floodlights on the masts around the deck as well as the accommodation. Eventually I decided it was necessary, to give the masts a purpose and for general appearance. Those are just small squares mounted at a downward angle. They can also only be seen on the final pictures.

Since I'm back at the workbench, I'm more or less on schedule to finish this topic and continue on my real in-progress work. Here is a better view on the lay-out of the caps that were below the masking. Some details were then also coloured, a nice distraction from all the white. Forward and aft some red winches, those are the fire wires. Two wires that were hung over the side and made fast on bollards. The eyes are normally kept about 1m above the water, so that in case of a fire, tugs could grab the wires and pull the tanker from the jetty. You have to take into consideration that it takes about 1 hour to get a tanker's engine ready, so they can't move on their own power on short notice, even if they wanted to (not much you can do without tugs though). Nowadays this practice has been discontinued. Only a few ports still require it. It was found that hanging these wires caused quite a few accidents, while in reality the tugs would probably either break the wire or destroy the bollards if they really had to pull a ship off the quay like that. The added value didn't add up against the disadvantages. The yellow details are the emergency towing gear. Any tanker has two Smit brackets on the bow, basically very strong points to connect tugs to. The box in front contains the chafing chain, a chain that's normally made fast to these Smit brackets for the towing. Chains can handle immense forces and are resistant to chafing and fire, therefore they chose a chain for this purpose. This gear is there to tow the ship on high seas, sometimes for longer voyages in case the engine would be disabled. She ship and tow can move considerably during such oceanic tows, so the chain has its purpose. On the aft there is a big reel with a pretty big wire on it. The yellow box in the back contains a buoy with light and a messenger line connected to the wire. In case a tanker would want to assist another vessel in distress, the buoy and messenger are released into the water to be picked up by the other vessel. The wire is rolled out fully until it catches a strong point. Once the wire is connected on the other vessel, the tanker can tow it. This could also be used by tugs to tow the vessel. The aft system is only required from a certain size of tanker. And then came the helo deck markings. I very rapidly found out I should have tried to mark this before adding the piping around it. I couldn't really put the masking in a decent way. I didn't have a stencil cutter back then neither. All in all it ended up becoming a bit of a weak point on this vessel. Nowadays I'd do it better. In below picture it was only started, more lines (and more difficult ones) still had to be added, going through that piping too. I did correct it a bit afterwards, but still something I'm not proud of. Due to my lack of stencil/decal ability, I also didn't add the name of the vessel. 1/700 is too small to actually paint it. However, since I do have a stencil cutter nowadays, I may revisit it and see what I can do with the stencil machine.

It's a great story John. I'm definately curious where this will go. I'll be following this build.

Hi Keith, yes there is, not a real pad though. It's simply an area marked on deck. The area is also kept mostly free of piping and the railing on the side can be folded down. Anything sticking out from the deck is also highlighted. Of course there is no helicopter landing officer onboard, but the crew have a bit of training on these things as well.

For sure it would be a long tour... It effectively takes over 5 minutes to get from the bow to the accommodation. Really annoying when you had a job near the bow and you forgot a tool! Then it was time for the finer detailing. Each tank has some P/V (Pressure/Vacuum) valves that stand on deck. They release gas when there is an overpressure and suck in air when there is a vacuum, although that vacuum is normally prevented by topping up with Inert Gas. They are only safeties. I built the overpressure part from a brass wire with a sharpened point, while the vacuum part is just a small cylindrical parts stuck to that wire. A whole forest of these things all around the vessel. Although there are only 3 cargo pumps, that doesn't mean there are only 3 cargo tanks. There are large center tanks, with on each side smaller wing tanks. And each one of those cargo tanks has its own P/V valve of course. And an overview of the nearly completed deck. Mainly the mooring winches and fairleads are still missing. And then it was time to get that bottom painted. Sprayed it with a spray can, easier with this size of vessel. Masking is of course tricky over all the details. To avoid any damage and to be able to turn the vessel around for spraying, I stuck some high bottle caps to the deck, where space was available. They were stuck there with some masking tape before I applied the mask of newspapers and masking tape. You have to make sure of course that the caps are higher than the highest details 🤪

Thanks Keith, Thought I didn't have so many pictures of this build, but it seems I was wrong. In any case. Next were the prominent oil cargo piping going from the pumproom (where three pretty potent cargo pumps are located) to the manifold area. Furthermore there is also the line with all the small boxes, which in fact is just a duct for electrical cables, with the boxes being junction boxes in between. And then the last layer of piping is a few connection pipes at the aft end where the Inert Gas (in this case produced from engine exhaust gas) is sent from the engine room to the cargo tanks. These inert gas lines are also connected through a water seal that will overflow in case of overpressure in the inert gas line or the water will be sucked into the line to eventually let air in and prevent vacuum. These seals are located in front of the accommodation between the engine room pipe and the deck pipe. You also see the aft set of wavebreakers and some bollards on deck. Slowly going up, so next were the cargo hose handling cranes And some vent masts that allow to vent cargo vapours and/or inert gas to a safe place without endangering anybody on deck. The accommodation block itself has a surprising amount of detail that even I wasn't aware of... Luckily I had some pictures as well as a lot of pictures I found online, to get the puzzle together. And time to mark the waterline on the hull as well. I always paint my hull fully with the lightest colour (be it the hull colour or the anti-fouling colour), so that I don't have any gaps when painting the other part. You can see some dark vertical lines near the bow. Those are actually cracks. I don't have those on my smaller builds, so I'm assuming it is caused by the method of construction together with the large size of the ship. I had it on one other, large, build with a similar construction method as well. These cracks also don't appear directly, they usually only show after a few weeks. I'm assuming it is due to the expansion/contraction of the styrene skeleton vs the more rigid filler. In the end I do always succeed to fill those cracks/paint them over. And the massive bulk of the real ones. And yes, there are cars near the building on the left to compare...

All of the above was in preparation for the first coats of paint. If I'd continue with the next layers up, they would likely cause shadow areas during spraying. First came a coat or 2 of grey primer. Working with white top coats makes it extremely important to remove any contrasts below the paint. Pencil marks are notably difficult to get covered with white. I therefore first use grey primer to even out all contrasts, later on followed by white top coat. Regarding the piping supports: - I drilled holes through the deck to allow for height adjustment - I made the brackets using jigs to have them all equally sized and shaped - I then inserted the first bracket, using a styrene piece inside the inverted U to determine the correct height - I then used that same piece of styrene (a long bar shape) to place the second one - Slowly going forward using that same piece of styrene, each time blocked under 2 fixed supports while mounting the next 2 supports - while doing this, I used a metal ruler to push the brackets each time down, creating a long straight line on top of the brackets in a longitudinal direction After this initial coat came the second layer of piping, pipes that aren't quite on deck, but just slightly above (taking into account the 1/700 scale of course) And then came the typical long longitudinal pipes. Again I used the metal ruler to keep things straight. Over such long lengths, 0.3mm and 0.5mm wires have a tendency to bend. While moving to each next pipe, I used small spacers with a diameter depending on the actual spaces. In the above and below picture you can make out some 0.3mm wire in vertical position between the last longitudinal wire and the one-but-last one. These spacers were of course removed afterwards.