Narrowboat models

[davee52uk]

These are my first attempts at designing and building card narrowboat models. They are semi scale models based on boats used on English canals. I used Google Sketchup and Paint to design the cards.

They are very much beta versions which need quite a lot of development, but hey, you've got to start somewhere.

[Bluenoser]

Looks pretty successful to me.

[paulmontague1976]

Originally Posted by Bluenoser

Looks pretty successful to me.

Very nice models and a very good start.

[Herbert Pockett]

They don't look too bad at all. Nice job.

[Kevin WS]

Look good - but perhaps not the big chimneys?

[Herbert Pockett]

Originally Posted by Kevin WS

Look good - but perhaps not the big chimneys?

The thick chimneys are for the boiler smoke and engine exhaust steam: Those are steam narrow boats.

[Miles Linnabery]

Dear Herbert:
Nice start, to me they are too skinny but I go to the cannal museums along the Erie Cannal in Up State New York where the first cannal was 40 foot wide and 4 foot deep. how wide is the cannals there? do you want some drawings of erie cannel boats to make models of?
Thanks,
MILES

[Papercaptain]

Good afternoon, Dave!
These are quite nice beginnings - hopefully we may see more of your designs.
By the way, the renowned swedish cardmodeler and architect Gunnar Sillén has designed a cardmodel of an Oxford Canal narrowboat. You'll find it here:
with a Narrowboat on the Oxford Canal
As many of the british canals were dug in the 18th and 19th century, they were narrower than later constructed canals, and so were the boats.
Kind regards,
Papercaptain

[Herbert Pockett]

Originally Posted by Miles Linnabery

Dear Herbert:
Nice start, to me they are too skinny but I go to the cannal museums along the Erie Cannal in Up State New York where the first cannal was 40 foot wide and 4 foot deep. how wide is the cannals there? do you want some drawings of erie cannel boats to make models of?
Thanks,
MILES

Miles:

Thanks for the compliment but the boats are the work of davee52uk, not me. The prototypes were that narrow because of the seven foot width of some of the locks on the mainly English canal network, although there are many wide locks (fourteen feet). My local canal, the Lancaster canal is a broad canal, as was the canal that once connected the River Thames, at my home town of Gravesend, with the River Medway at Strood, opposite Rochester (where Short Brothers once built flying boats). The Thames and Medway canal had a very brief life as it used two very long tunnels that were subsequently incorporated into the route of a double track railway which is still in daily use. The canal basin at Gravesend remains as a marina. However, that at Strood, which I once lived adjacent to, was filled in about thirty years ago and built on.

English narrowboats are noted for their ornate decoration and are very picturesque, largely because the boatmen's wives invariably lived aboard with them. Canal holidays are very popular although expensive.

[Kevin WS]

Herbert - was thinking of more recent boats. I was not aware they had steam boats with such large chimneys!