wefalck

The Dutch company Artitec makes some resin-kits of small German railway ferries around the island of Rügen (I think) in HO- and N-scale:
 
https://www.artitecshop.com/en/railroad-ferry.html

https://www.artitecshop.com/en/wittow-ferry.html

https://www.artitecshop.com/en/ferry-fehmarn.html - This one I remember seeing in operation, when we spent our summer holidays with may grandparents up at the Baltic coast.

 
 
 
 

The Dutch company Artitec makes some resin-kits of small German railway ferries around the island of Rügen (I think) in HO- and N-scale:
 
https://www.artitecshop.com/en/railroad-ferry.html

https://www.artitecshop.com/en/wittow-ferry.html

https://www.artitecshop.com/en/ferry-fehmarn.html - This one I remember seeing in operation, when we spent our summer holidays with may grandparents up at the Baltic coast.

 
 
 
 

The Dutch company Artitec makes some resin-kits of small German railway ferries around the island of Rügen (I think) in HO- and N-scale:
 
https://www.artitecshop.com/en/railroad-ferry.html

https://www.artitecshop.com/en/wittow-ferry.html

https://www.artitecshop.com/en/ferry-fehmarn.html - This one I remember seeing in operation, when we spent our summer holidays with may grandparents up at the Baltic coast.

 
 
 
 

Indeed the SAVOIE (1914): https://www.cgn.ch/en/savoie.html. We had an extended Sunday-lunch cruise.
 
Warming up the engine:

Getting ready to put to 'sea':

 
 
 
 
 

The Dutch company Artitec makes some resin-kits of small German railway ferries around the island of Rügen (I think) in HO- and N-scale:
 
https://www.artitecshop.com/en/railroad-ferry.html

https://www.artitecshop.com/en/wittow-ferry.html

https://www.artitecshop.com/en/ferry-fehmarn.html - This one I remember seeing in operation, when we spent our summer holidays with may grandparents up at the Baltic coast.

 
 
 
 

The Dutch company Artitec makes some resin-kits of small German railway ferries around the island of Rügen (I think) in HO- and N-scale:
 
https://www.artitecshop.com/en/railroad-ferry.html

https://www.artitecshop.com/en/wittow-ferry.html

https://www.artitecshop.com/en/ferry-fehmarn.html - This one I remember seeing in operation, when we spent our summer holidays with may grandparents up at the Baltic coast.

 
 
 
 

I seem to have read of similar examples from Russia, where tracks were laid across frozen lakes to provide short-cuts, rather than going around the lakes.

I seem to have read of similar examples from Russia, where tracks were laid across frozen lakes to provide short-cuts, rather than going around the lakes.

Interesting subject! These 'Trajekts', as we call them in Geman and neighbouring languages, once have been quite common at places, where it would have been too difficult, not cost-efficient, or impossible to build bridges. Some of them are still in operation, although bridge-building has become more daring in recent years and they were laid off. In some cases there was joint use by railway carriages and vehicles.
- On Lake Constance, between Switzerland and Germany was one in operation for many years.
- At lower reaches of the River Rhine one took whole trains, including the engine
- At the German Baltic coast several connected islands with the mainland to allow through trains.
- There used to be a two-stage one that connected the German mainland with the island fo Fehmarn and then on to the Danish island of Lolland. In the 1960s the small rail ferry to Fehmarn was replaced by a bridge. I once took, just for the fun of it, the through-train from Hamburg to Copenhagen along this route.
- The once famous Trelleborg to Sassnitz train-ferry that connected Stockholm with the rest of Europe via Germany was discontinued after 111 years of service in 2020.

Interesting subject! These 'Trajekts', as we call them in Geman and neighbouring languages, once have been quite common at places, where it would have been too difficult, not cost-efficient, or impossible to build bridges. Some of them are still in operation, although bridge-building has become more daring in recent years and they were laid off. In some cases there was joint use by railway carriages and vehicles.
- On Lake Constance, between Switzerland and Germany was one in operation for many years.
- At lower reaches of the River Rhine one took whole trains, including the engine
- At the German Baltic coast several connected islands with the mainland to allow through trains.
- There used to be a two-stage one that connected the German mainland with the island fo Fehmarn and then on to the Danish island of Lolland. In the 1960s the small rail ferry to Fehmarn was replaced by a bridge. I once took, just for the fun of it, the through-train from Hamburg to Copenhagen along this route.
- The once famous Trelleborg to Sassnitz train-ferry that connected Stockholm with the rest of Europe via Germany was discontinued after 111 years of service in 2020.

Interesting subject! These 'Trajekts', as we call them in Geman and neighbouring languages, once have been quite common at places, where it would have been too difficult, not cost-efficient, or impossible to build bridges. Some of them are still in operation, although bridge-building has become more daring in recent years and they were laid off. In some cases there was joint use by railway carriages and vehicles.
- On Lake Constance, between Switzerland and Germany was one in operation for many years.
- At lower reaches of the River Rhine one took whole trains, including the engine
- At the German Baltic coast several connected islands with the mainland to allow through trains.
- There used to be a two-stage one that connected the German mainland with the island fo Fehmarn and then on to the Danish island of Lolland. In the 1960s the small rail ferry to Fehmarn was replaced by a bridge. I once took, just for the fun of it, the through-train from Hamburg to Copenhagen along this route.
- The once famous Trelleborg to Sassnitz train-ferry that connected Stockholm with the rest of Europe via Germany was discontinued after 111 years of service in 2020.

Sorry for lack of progress, haven't touched the model since my last update. But I did have a pretty cool model-viewing experience recently, getting to see a fantastic scratchbuilt Missouri River rail ferry from ~1870 at a model railroad convention. I wrote a full post about it in the Steamboats and Other Rivercraft General Discussion thread so as not to clog up this one, but here's a teaser image to encourage you to go over there and check the whole thing out. This is at the same scale as my Peerless (1:87).
 

 
Hoping to get back to Peerless soon, but other commitments have had to take priority lately. Thanks for your patience!

The stack. Needs a little trimming on the cone top. The bracket  in the front is for hanging mast light and the eye on the rear is for the stack stays.Used masking tape to simulate the reinforcing rings. 

To be continued

Indeed, making the split at the long part and soldering there, as druxey said, would have been my first thought too. Also silver-soldering with some paste might have been easier and stronger.

Indeed, making the split at the long part and soldering there, as druxey said, would have been my first thought too. Also silver-soldering with some paste might have been easier and stronger.

Indeed, making the split at the long part and soldering there, as druxey said, would have been my first thought too. Also silver-soldering with some paste might have been easier and stronger.

Late to the party; the soldering should be on the straight part of the loop, not the end. Failure rate should be much lower.

I can’t escape the fact that I continue to fail at this chain-making exercise.  As the old maxim goes, though, every failure is one step closer to success.
 
I’ve now thrown away two whole batches of chain preventer plates.  While I was quite right to follow Andre Kudin’s example, for the process of their manufacture, I eventually discovered that that process is not entirely transferable from 1:48 to 1:96 scale.
 
After forming his basic links, Andre solders them closed at one end, and then places the closed link back onto the two pins so that he can crimp an eye on each end with his round pliers.
 
Well, the 28 gauge brass wire I’m using does not provide enough surface area for a strong enough bond to survive the crimping.  My success to failure ratio was pretty poor:

So, my lesson from that exercise was that I needed to do the crimping before soldering one end closed:

These soldered loops will be the lowest end of the chains, bolted into the wales.  That way, I could induce a series of bends into the upper half of each preventer plate, so that they could overlay the next small link:

Above I’m just using another preventer plate to check that the bends I’m making are sufficient.
 
So, I spent a good chunk of time cleaning up the solder and inducing bends into the remainder of the preventer plates.  The solder joint will be re-enforced with the CA glue that fixes the pin-bolt in place:

With that out of the way, I could make a new, slightly closer-spaced pin jig for the next small link, which is only crimped on one end, where it seats beneath the preventer plate.
 
Now that I have a process that I know will work, and now that I’ve had all of this practice, these next links should go fairly quickly:


I have a lot of these to make, solder and bend - about 70 to ensure I can use the best.  This has all been a colossal PITA, but it was really important to me that all of this look very clean and uniformly shaped.  In the process, I have acquired some very valuable metal skills that will only enhance this and future projects.
 
That said, I am going to experiment with using black nylon thread of an appropriate diameter to connect the deadeye strop loops to the small links.  This would essentially be a variation on the way that the stock kit represents these links, but I will do individual chain loops that draw tight with some form of slip-knot that I can pull up and hide behind the deadeye strop.
 
Andre had a great method for producing these variances, but it is all just that much more tedious in the smaller scale.
 
The advantages of doing this are several.  So long as there is not a jarring difference in appearance between the black thread and the blackened metal, it will save me tremendous amounts of time.  It also simplifies the difficulty of accurately measuring and keeping track of a series of increasingly longer links as the shroud angle increases from fore to aft.  Lastly, it greatly simplifies the placement of the deadeyes because I can add the retaining strip, in advance, and it also makes it much easier to locate and properly secure the bottom two links.  Hopefully, that will work out.  
 
Well, I keep saying that I’m going to get back in the swing of the project, and then I get sucked into coaching another basketball team - now my son’s Spring rec team.  Meanwhile, the Rangers and Knicks are just too compelling to ignore this post-season.  At least for now, I can see the end of the tunnel for these chains, which is tremendously motivating, and then I can return to the more immediately gratifying work of outfitting and arming the main deck.
 
Thank you all for taking the time to look back in on This Old Build.  More to come!
 

Indeed the SAVOIE (1914): https://www.cgn.ch/en/savoie.html. We had an extended Sunday-lunch cruise.
 
Warming up the engine:

Getting ready to put to 'sea':

 
 
 
 
 

BTW, talking about toolmaker's buttons: I learned about them about 25 years ago, when I purchased from Lindsay Publications (now sadly defunct) a bunch of reprints of early 20th century machinist textbooks and the likes. Among these was
 
JONES, F.D. (1915): Modern Toolmaking Methods.- 309 p., (Industrial Press, reprint 1998 by Lindsay Publications Inc., Bradley IL).
 
Just checked on archive.org and one can now download a copy from there: https://archive.org/details/moderntoolmakingmethodsbyfranklind.jones.

My personal choice would be probably to varnish, though this is not very naturalistic. Just for aesthetics sake.

The contrast between brass and mahagony is always apealing, but I gather, beying 'under water' it will all be painted? Would be a pity for such lovely craftmanship to disappear under paint.

Thanks, Kurt, these are interesting insights into the operation of such tow-boats. Of course, if these flanking rudders can move, they make perfect sense, when going backward.
 
This would be a classical application for Schottel-props, but I gather they may be too delicate for the shallow rivers full of debris. There is also a limit to the amount of HP they can bring into the water. Turnable pods with Kort-nozzles would obviate the need for all those rudders, but again debris might be a problem and the shallow draught needed.
 
In the early 20th century for working on shallow (central and eastern) European rivers systems, where the props worked in half-tunnels were developed. Some tow-boats also used early forms of water-jet propulsion to aid maneuvering and turning in tight bends.
 
 

I have a separate hard-drive for backing up everything (as I also use the computer for work) around once a month and I only remove images from the telephone, once I have copies on two independent devices ...
 
I was wondering about these rudders in front of the Kort-nozzles: do they move? If not, the boat would be quite sluggish to turn, I could imagine.
 
And: oh, yes, the project is coming on nicely !

Pennants or streamers with the ship's name on it are commonly seen on paintings of merchant craft (sail and steam!) throughout the 19th century.
 
I don't know, whether these were sewn on or painted, but tend to think they were sewn for longer life. Given that the material of pennant would be very light, in translucent light they would become viurtually unreadable, if they were executed with the lettering in the correct way on both side.
 
Usually, the name begins on the side towards the mast. I seem to recall having seen paintings, where the lettering on the pennant was in mirror image.
 
Usually these name pennants were flown from the truck of the main mast or the foremast of schooners and brigs. I suspect on long sea-passages they were taken down. As most ship's portraits show the ship near the coast, they are usually represented.
 
In the second half of the 19th. century or so, name pennants were gradually replaced by number flags for identification (which required that you had to have an up-to-date 'flag-book' to hand). On paintings they are often seen together though.