Caroline N by mbp521 - Scale 1:64 - Mississippi River Towboat

[Keith Black]

 Wowie kazowie, Brain, the realism is just fantastic! i love the gas tank, what a treat, the whole ship is a treat. 

[Canute]

Very nice. I really like your tarp over a load. 👍

[Cathead]

Great to see more progress! That tarp is going to look perfect.

 

I saw a fun river vessel (for me) along the Missouri this weekend that I thought might interest you and others. Let me know if this feels like a distraction instead and I'll remove the post.

 

This is the USGS vessel Gasconade, pushing a buoy tender barge used for maintaining navigational markers along the commercial nav channel. It's carrying both red and green marker buoys and a crane up front for setting them in place. It was heading upriver from its home port in St. Louis, presumably toward a work site. According to the Coast Guard, she covers the lower river from St Louis all the way to Sioux City, Iowa, so who knows how far she was headed toward her work site.

[mbp521]

On 10/13/2025 at 7:58 PM, Keith Black said:

 Wowie kazowie, Brain, the realism is just fantastic! i love the gas tank, what a treat, the whole ship is a treat. 

Thank you Keith!  It’s always fun to throw these little details into a build, even if some go unnoticed. The gas tank was one that didn’t go unnoticed this time but there are still several little nuggets that have been thrown in that are still hidden. I know they are there though. 😁

 

14 hours ago, Canute said:

Very nice. I really like your tarp over a load. 👍

Thank you Ken. I had a lot of fun adding those to my Cairo build so I wanted to include them here as well. That, and there was just too much empty space on the back and wanted to fill it with something. 
 

13 hours ago, Cathead said:

Great to see more progress! That tarp is going to look perfect.

 

I saw a fun river vessel (for me) along the Missouri this weekend that I thought might interest you and others. Let me know if this feels like a distraction instead and I'll remove the post.

 

This is the USGS vessel Gasconade, pushing a buoy tender barge used for maintaining navigational markers along the commercial nav channel. It's carrying both red and green marker buoys and a crane up front for setting them in place. It was heading upriver from its home port in St. Louis, presumably toward a work site. According to the Coast Guard, she covers the lower river from St Louis all the way to Sioux City, Iowa, so who knows how far she was headed toward her work site.

Thank you Eric, no distraction at all. I love these pictures that you post, they show just how diverse these modern riverboats are. During my research for this project I have run across so many varieties of towboats that it’s hard to keep up with.
 

From the biggest, the MV Mississippi

 

To this little fellow. 

 

All have their purpose, and fun to discover. 
 

Not my pictures, but used by permission from their respective sites terms of use they were posted on.

 

-Brian

[Dr PR]

Very nice work!

 

My oldest nephew was Captain on one of these boats on the Mississippi, Ohio and Tennessee Rivers. He sent some nice photos of the river, and a few harrowing tales of floods and loose barges.

[Cathead]

8 hours ago, Dr PR said:

e sent some nice photos of the river, and a few harrowing tales of floods and loose barges

My wife used to be a researcher on the Missouri River, and one time her research boat got buzzed by a helicopter warning them to get off the river because a loose barge was coming their way. Somehow the normal channels of communication hadn't worked and they hadn't gotten the news through radio from their own agency, and the helicopter was searching the river for other traffic to warn (think fishermen or paddlers).

[kurtvd19]

I had the opportunity to tour the M/V Mississippi when it was brand new - a magnificent boat!  I modeled a little truckable tow like the one shown.  It was 1/12 scale and we used it as a retrieval boat for our radio control meets.  Some didn't believe these little things could move barges around.

Kurt

 

[mbp521]

22 hours ago, Dr PR said:

Very nice work!

 

My oldest nephew was Captain on one of these boats on the Mississippi, Ohio and Tennessee Rivers. He sent some nice photos of the river, and a few harrowing tales of floods and loose barges.

Thank you Phil. Growing up on the Mississippi River, there were always reports of barges breaking loose. I remember on several occasions they would break loose and hit the bridges. Not too often would they do much damage, most of the time it was empty ones they had tied along the shorelines waiting to be loaded that someone failed to secure properly. Always made for an interesting story. 
 

13 hours ago, Cathead said:

My wife used to be a researcher on the Missouri River, and one time her research boat got buzzed by a helicopter warning them to get off the river because a loose barge was coming their way. Somehow the normal channels of communication hadn't worked and they hadn't gotten the news through radio from their own agency, and the helicopter was searching the river for other traffic to warn (think fishermen or paddlers).

Being buzzed by a helicopter would be a serious eye opener. I can see the paddlers and fishermen needing the warnings, not too many of them are equipped with radios, but that is strange that the comms equipment on the research vessel was not able to warn them. 
 

9 hours ago, kurtvd19 said:

I had the opportunity to tour the M/V Mississippi when it was brand new - a magnificent boat!  I modeled a little truckable tow like the one shown.  It was 1/12 scale and we used it as a retrieval boat for our radio control meets.  Some didn't believe these little things could move barges around.

I would love to tour the current MV Mississippi, she’s a monster. I have toured the MV Mississippi IV on display at Vicksburg. Very nice setup they have there. I love that you are able to walk around the hull and explore the interior freely. The crew was certainly living it up on this boat. I can only imagine what the new Mississippi is like. 
 

-Brian

[Cathead]

On 10/15/2025 at 10:23 PM, mbp521 said:

Being buzzed by a helicopter would be a serious eye opener.

I can actually top my own story, as long as we're swapping river tales. A-10s based out of Missouri's Whiteman Air Force Base have a habit of using the Missouri River corridor for training runs at times, and they like to line up on river traffic. My wife's colleagues in research vessels have been buzzed on clear target runs before (though not her personally), and we also personally had it happen a few years ago during a paddle race on the river. It's absolutely hair-raising to have one of those things appear out of nowhere and go screaming overhead, especially in a non-airshow setting where it feels more real.

[Canute]

We did that to the Cape May, NJ to Lewes, Del ferry with our F-4s. The ferries were visual reconnaissance targets and not to be overflown.   Well, most of the time.  That's why lieutenants fly with adult supervision.