Sternwheeler From the Susquehanna River's Hard Coal Navy by Keith Black - 1:120 Scale

[Keith Black]

2 hours ago, clearway said:

to be honest Keith i prefer the ugly ducklings of the ship/ railway genre- you wont find many passenger coaches or passenger ships in my collection- freight rules.

 Keith, you have built/are building beautiful models. Far far from ugly ducklings.

 

36 minutes ago, Cathead said:

Speaking of dredging, I'm coming up dry in my barrel of superlatives, having used them all up on your logs over time. So, you know, good job and all that! Models after my own heart.

 Eric, I'm glad you think this ugly little towboat is worthy. I think an ugly barge will tie the package together nicely.  

[Jim Lad]

Barge - easy. Dredged spoil - hard! 🙂

 

I'm looking forward to seeing your solution for the dredging material, Keith.

 

John

[Keith Black]

11 minutes ago, Jim Lad said:

I'm looking forward to seeing your solution for the dredging material, Keith.

 John, I'm thinking a thin mix of drywall joint compound and sand. It needs to give the impression of a wet slurry mix with hints of anthracite peeking through. I think getting the color right is going to be the make or break part of successfully replicating the dredging material.  

Edited Monday at 08:25 PM by Keith Black

[Javelin]

Hi Keith, 

 

This is the inside of my split barge Bengel. 

Might give you some inspiration. 

 

The rougher side dredge material is a mixture of acrylic gel with beach sand, the glossy wet look is caused by the glossy acrylic gel. You can add more or less sand for a rougher or smoother result. 

The watery inside is that same acrylic gel mixed with brown acrylic paint. You could add streaks anthracite paint in it as well. 

 

[mcb]

Hi Keith, 

 

You have captured the 'mood' of the thing.

Well done, you are going to have a fleet of these soon!

Thanks for posting,

mcb

 

 

[John Ruy]

On 10/4/2025 at 6:33 PM, Keith Black said:

Thank you so much for your support and for taking the time to follow this journey.

 

   Keith

No, Thank you Keith for taking us on this journey. Astoundingly Incredible work. 
 

 

[kurtvd19]

15 hours ago, Javelin said:

This is the inside of my split barge Bengel. 

Roel:

Do you have a build log of this barge?

Kurt

[clearway]

in the world of military modelling you can buy "wet mud effects" to add to your vehicles- not sure if it will look overscale as never used it myself- there always the sieved soil out of the garden method as well

[Javelin]

3 hours ago, kurtvd19 said:

18 hours ago, Javelin said:

This is the inside of my split barge Bengel. 

Roel:

Do you have a build log of this barge?

Kurt

To my own surprise it seems not. I thought it was one of my first shared builds, but it appears I've only put her in the gallery here: 

https://modelshipworld.com/gallery/album/2675-split-barge-bengel-1400/

[wefalck]

... you had a complete building log on www.shipmodels.info, if I remember correctly.

 

And yes, that is what I am doing for simulating wet sand, to play with acrylic gel and gloss acrylic varnish on fine-grained sand.

 

I was too lazy to go back to the beginning of the building log to check and wonder, whether loaded the whole dredged material into the barges, or whether there has been some kind of sorting on the (bucket?) dredger? I wouldn't want to know about the impact on the river flora and fauna of the dreging and the release of the tailings though ... The water must have been turbid for miles down the river.

[Keith Black]

 i'm sorry for being late to respond but a Covid booster put me out like Lottie's eye. 

 

 

On 10/6/2025 at 9:54 PM, Javelin said:

This is the inside of my split barge Bengel. 

Might give you some inspiration. 

 

The rougher side dredge material is a mixture of acrylic gel with beach sand, the glossy wet look is caused by the glossy acrylic gel. You can add more or less sand for a rougher or smoother result. 

The watery inside is that same acrylic gel mixed with brown acrylic paint. You could add streaks anthracite paint in it as well. 

 Thank you for post the photo, Roel. Beautiful work and a great idea to consider. 

 

On 10/6/2025 at 11:23 PM, mcb said:

You have captured the 'mood' of the thing.

Well done, you are going to have a fleet of these soon!

Thanks for posting,

 Thank you very much, mcb. I do play with Lula and the Susquehanna towboat, abreast and passing one another. 

 

19 hours ago, John Ruy said:

No, Thank you Keith for taking us on this journey. Astoundingly Incredible work. 

 Thank you for the kind comment, John. 

 

13 hours ago, clearway said:

in the world of military modelling you can buy "wet mud effects" to add to your vehicles- not sure if it will look overscale as never used it myself- there always the sieved soil out of the garden method as well

 Keith, thank you for the heads up. I watched a couple of videos and they provided great ideas but this is a one time deal. I don't want to spend money I don't have to if I can get away with using drywall compound. Hopefully I will be able to do some testing within the week.

 

30 minutes ago, wefalck said:

I wouldn't want to know about the impact on the river flora and fauna of the dreging and the release of the tailings though ... The water must have been turbid for miles down the river.

 Eberhard, mining of any type is very hard on our Mother Earth. The great paradox of making life easier.  

[wefalck]

As a minerals policy professional I would slightly diagree with the last statement, though historically you are right. Today, we have mining techniques and strategies that can result in minimal impact. Totally impact-free, of course, is not possible.

[Rick310]

This is a really great build Keith!!

Amazing detail at such a small scale!

Rixk

[Cathead]

On 10/8/2025 at 3:32 AM, wefalck said:

I wouldn't want to know about the impact on the river flora and fauna of the dreging and the release of the tailings though ... The water must have been turbid for miles down the river.

My understanding is that these dredges were digging up material deposited behind the power-generation reservoirs built on the Susquehanna. So they're hardly dredging up pristine riverbed, they're digging into thick deposits of sediments that were already laid down behind the dams. And the dams had (and have) a far larger impact on the river's ecosystem by completely altering its flow regime as well as flooding miles of river valley. And most material stirred up by the dredge likely would have settled back down again before flowing over the dams.

 

So I can't imagine that the dredging itself is a meaningful environmental issue compared with (a) the dams themselves and (b) the upstream pollution that resulted in this much coal washing down from the mines in the mountains in the first place. If anything this is slightly ameliorating the environmental impact by salvaging a bit more of that wasted coal from the river instead just burying it in reservoir sediment or washing it out into Chesapeake Bay.

[wefalck]

OK, I didn’t know the geo- and hydrographic situation.

 

[Javelin]

It does give an impact as Wefalck mentioned. 

There is quite a lot of turbidity, depending on the material you are dredging. Some examples below. If you look on the right, you can see the brown cloud around the barge. Mostly from the dredging itself, but a lot of it from the water overflow of the barge as well. 

 

And the condition of that barge has a sort of similarity to the dam. The heavy material sets down, while the water evacuates by an adjustable overflow. The water however is full of lighter sediment itself, flowing back to the environment. 

So practically it will also pass any dam when dredging nearby that dam. (In case of Keith's barge however, the flowrates and velocities were obviously lower). 

In this particular case the depth at which we dredged was reduced by 1 meter on a later survey. We did some testing and the sediment remained in suspension for up to 3 days. A period in which the life in that area is obviously disturbed. 

 

Turbidity is an issue nowadays. In some cases they don't even allow an overflow and basically make a barge transport a lot of water with a small amount of dredged material back to sea on each trip. Creating a huge waste of fuel to transport water to the sea, just to avoid turbidity. Dredging will always have an influence on life on the river-/seabed, there's no avoiding it, however, I believe humanity sort of agrees it's necessary. 

 

I do not judge, but saying it won't have an influence is certainly not correct. What scale this influence has, is up for discussion as the "original situation" is questionable (before or after the coal industry, before or after the construction of the dam and so on) 

 

That said, @Keith Black, if you need more examples of a barge filled with dredge material, let me know.