Side Wheeler

Lindberg made a kit of an American paddle wheel steamer from the mid - 1800's. They built it about 1/120 scale. I am going to convert it to a World War Two era German boat. My friend Randy from Fidelis Models purchased the model, used and assembled, a couple years ago. It has been bouncing around my garage for all that time. These are some of the bits I removed from the model.

I tore off all the cotton bales, and tanned hides and most of the upper superstructure. The kit was so old that the plastic was a bit brittle. I am updating the ship by 100 years, changing it from American to German and increasing the size from 1/120 to HO scale.

At one point, the kit was pretty well done. The model had rigging and lots of other details. I had to remove most of them, and the previous owner used big globs of glue.

Once the upper works are removed it has a very smooth clean line. I am planning on plating over the upper deck with new sheet plastic to give a deck surface similar to the lower deck.

The ship model looks much like an old derelict ship, docked in a backwater harbor someplace. Removing the upper works took a long time, then the residues had to be scrapped off. This is going to be a long term project.