The Ship Model Forum

As someone dear to me who is working in the port of Rotterdam turned 50 this year I decided to add another 50 to the past and make small diorama of one of the port basins, the Maashaven in 1923.
Some of you may have seen it in Houten last november.
This will be a short series of posts about parts of the diorama.

I’ m starting with the core of the diorama, Graanelevator 5.
Most european ports had a number of these things between 1900 and 1980. I saw some of them in operation in Rotterdam as a kid. I remember the very loud screeching sound of them. Like the overgrown vacuum cleaners that they technically are. They are very different in looks and operation from the more silo like elevators one could find in US ports.
The research was lots of fun and involved hanging out on the only elevator that is still functioning, Stadsgraanelevator no 19. It shares its time between Rotterdam and Antwerp. Maritiem Digitaal gave me the drawings and the realization that these beasts were almost identical as it was a patented design. I chose number 5 as it is an easy number to hand paint with a fine brush and I had some good pictures of it .
I decided to built the elevator base as a tower in .3mm steel with spare PE around it and on top of it.

The vacuum machine and the machine housing were built .3 mm styrene around a 5 mm styrene cylinder.


The large pipes are evergreen styrene rod and I used some copper piping for the funnels. The smaller lines are likewise evergreen and then I added ladders, railing and a crew.
Graanelevators were painted in a medium to dark gray with white numbers. I drybrushed some lighter grey on it as elevators were covered in wheat dust.

Next is the large ship, Llanover. I had wanted to use one of John Bowens’s drawings as a basis for scratchbuild for a long time and his trunk deck ship would fit the bill as they and the similar turret ships were still very active in the wheat trade to Rotterdam in the early 1920s. Miramar gave the history of the ship he had drawn and photographed as Marionga D. Thermiotis in the late 1930s.
Backdating to 1923 she became SS Lllanover, owned by Evan Thomas Radcliffe of Cardiff. Her original name was Clarissa Radcliffe. Clarissa Radcliffe was built by Ropners’ in Stockton on Tees as a trunk deck ship in 1904. Trunk deck ships had a small middle ‘trunk’ deck and larger wing decks to keep bulk loads like wheat from shifting in heavy seas without having to leave a substantial amount of space to shifting boards and air spaces . It also just happened to be the case that those upper spaces were not taken into account in the tonnage measurements for the Suez canal, unlike the empty spaces left when using shifting boards in conventional hulls. So trunk deck ships had a built in discount on canal fees when carrying bulk cargoes. Earlier Doxford in Sunderland had started building ships with similar advantages in safety and canal fees called Turret ships and had patented the design. Doxford’s was not pleased but did not take action as long as Ropners’ was building trunk deck steamers for its own fleet. In 1904 however Ropner’s started selling to prominent Welsh tramp owners like Evan Thomas Radcliffe and Doxford took Ropner’s to court over the subject of this diorama, SS Clarissa Radcliffe.
This may not have been the smartest of moves. Fighting a very public court case over a patented way to lower Suez canal fees brought the issue to the attention of the august directors of the Suez Canal Company and in 1911 the rules changed. Turret ships and trunk deck ships ceased to be built. The shelter decker took over the tramp trades and the first modern bulk carriers started to be build, which are essentially trunk/turret ship with an outer shell to get a higher freeboard. The turrets and trunks kept sailing though. They were very strong and seaworthy ships and those who did not run into a a German submarine led very long lives. Clarissa Radcliffe was scrapped in Milford Haven in 1952.

For building my usual styrene over balsa technique was used except for the open cargo space in front of the bridge which was simple square box. Much easier than that Doxford design.



For winches and other fittings I likewise used John Bowens’ techniques which scale quite easily from 1/1200 to 1/700. Boats were from a 3d print set for Britannic, masts are by Model Master and rigging in stretched sprue. Vents mostly by Starling Models.
The only real headaches were in planning my painting sequence as the trunk deck and all the nooks and crannies of the superstructure had to be painted before finishing the build. Painting and detailing was very much ‘inside out’

Graanelevators would be surrounded by a large number of inland barges to get the wheat to Germany or elsewhere in Europe. In 1923 this was still a combination of sailing and towing barges.
I started by stealing a kempenaar from a stalled project and put her behind a small tug.

Fully loaded barges like this would be towed to another basin to be combined form 5 to 10 barge tows behind a large paddle steam tug. Time and space constraints kept that tug from being in this diorama I may do one independently at some point as they were fascinating ships in their own right.
Maritiem Digitaal again gave me drawings for some other scratchbuilds in styrene.
I started with two large towing barges (Groot sleepschip). One of them had an open cargo space and would be put under the elevator.


I added an older ‘ Groot Rijnschip’ which had originally been designed for sailing rather than towing and a Friese maatkast.


And I converted the two barges from the Starling tug and barges set into a koopvaardijklipper.

And a Stevenaak.


The tugs from the Starling set were not right for Rotterdam in 1923 so I used some others in the spares box. Both were owned by separate companies called ‘ Smit’ .
As Rotterdam had three towage companies called Smit at the time they were called by the color of the funnels. The big ocean going tugs of L Smit en Co’s Internationale Sleepdiensten were called ‘ Blauwe Smit (Blue smit) ‘ and are not in the diorama. The harbor tugs of L Smit were called Rode Smit ( Red Smit). I modified a Niko Models tug to put a red funnel Smit tug in front of my kempenaar. And I modified a ships’ steam cutter to a small Maashaven class tug of the Yellow Smit (Sleepdienst P Smit jr) to move my klipper about.

I’m ending this series with a sign of the time to come. Nosing around in the corner is a yacht called Nymphaea, one of the first large diesel engined yachts built in NL. Nymphaea was owned by Albert Goudriaan. Goudriaan, along with van Uden and van Beuningen was part of a group of Rotterdam shipowners who were building up a fleet of modern shelter deck liners to challenge the dominance of welsh tramp shippers. By 1930 they had succeeded in becoming dominant in the LaPlata-Rotterdam trade. Nymphaea is stil in existence, I’m cycling past her every week or so. It has its own biography with some basic drawings and pictures. Good enough for a small scratchbuild.

That is really neat! The vacuum machine is particularly eye catching!

_________________
Martin

"Tomorrow is the most important thing in life. Comes into us at midnight very clean. It's perfect when it arrives and it puts itself in our hands. It hopes we've learned something from yesterday." John Wayne

Ship Model Gallery

Thank you Martin. If you are ever in Rotterdam and Graanelevator 19 is around (check the maritiem museum website) you should visit her in the Leuvehaven and check all the tugs and barges. Apart from Llanover most of what you see in this diorama has been preserved in working order and can be visited on a museum ticket. Nymphaea is privately owned in Amsterdam and is not available for visits.