by David Austin

The RMS Queen Mary sailed from Southampton on 2nd March 1936 on her maiden voyage to New York. To mark the occasion, the builders, John Brown at Clydebank, on the Clyde, sent a model of the ship down to the departure port to be a centrepiece on the quay as the ship sailed. The model was built by Brown as an engineering design model to show the concept of the ship for Cunard, the customer. The journey was recorded in a Special Train Notice (STN) issued by the LMS in 1935. The notice informed the Southern Railway operating staff of a TCM well wagon carrying a large wooden crate and accompanied by an inspector riding in a brake van. The whole ensemble was marshalled next to the engine, and travelled from Glasgow to Southampton docks in October 1935. The crate contained a model of the RMS Queen Mary on a wheeled trolley and encased in glass and weighed 4.5 tons. The load was of such a size to cause concern about gauging conflicts on the SR lines.

The engineering model of the RMS Queen Mary at the Riverside Museum in Glasgow, and subject of the model in this project

Planning the model

The STN was summarised in an article by the late Norman Pattenden in the journal of the South Western Circle. Immediately, the modelling possibilities and challenges came to mind. The scene at the model railway club could be imagined: “oh, so you have built a large wooden box on a wagon with a sign RMS Queen Mary, not very interesting then.” “But, my friend,” say I, whipping off the side of crate, “here is a model of the model ship.” The information in the notice many be sparse but there were sufficient details to start planning the model. And planning is the most important aspect in this project. We know the type of railway wagon, and the dimensions of the wooden crate, but nothing more.

The STN states that TCM trolley number 157727 was used to carry the load. This type of wagon was originally built by the Lancashire & Yorkshire Railway with the serial running 27727, and was used to carry tramcars, and latterly for taking buses from the manufacturers to operating depots. The original arrangement drawings show that it was of the well type with a loading floor of 27ft and an overall length of 48ft. The height of the load floor was 2ft 4in with a width of 7ft 8in, lying within the side members of the wagon body to a depth of 9in. The wagon bogies featured a low ride height by having small 8 spoke wheels of just 2ft 6in diameter in a wheel base of 4ft 6in. The wagon is quite distinctive in that the bogies are enclosed in the body sides. In photographs of the later versions, the internal ramp and floor arrangement has been sheeted over to make the body sides flush with the top load deck giving a load height of 3ft 1in. The wagon was restricted to a load of 7 tons in the centre of the well.

The dimensions of the crate are given in the STN as 24ft 10in long, 9ft 6in high and 5ft 6in wide. This means that the trolley and glass case must have been about 22ft long, with the model at around 20ft allowing for reasonable internal clearances. A scale drawing was made of the wagon and crate with the known dimensions.

Side profile of the ship showing the number of decks and sheer in the bow, noting the shape of hull in the forefoot

A representation of the glass case, trolley and ship model was drawn in to try to visualise the clearances and relationships of the components. It is important to validate the information which has been used as a starting point. There have been occasions when potential modelling projects have proved to be impossible because of the literary looseness of the descriptions of the subject. The wagon and the packing crate were the only known constants, so these became the starting points of the project. It was thought that the wagon would be relatively straightforward and that the model ship would be the greatest challenge. The fundamental design factor was that each of the components, i.e. the crate, the trolley and glass case, and the model ship all had to fit together very snugly. So the key component in this model is the crate and since it was a new venture into this type of modelling, it was the first to be built.

The first and abortive attempt at a wooden crate. Even with strengthening battens the crate tended to warp and was too flimsy to hold its shape

The crate

There is only one way to model a wooden crate and that is to use wood. Coffee stirring sticks would not only provide the planked effect but also look very wooden. There are two considerations for this model crate: the thickness of the side walls, and the strengthening battens on the interior and exterior faces. For the sides we need to leave as much clearance inside the crate to accommodate the trolley and glass case. A selection of sticks was laid onto a glass pane, glued, clamped, and weighted until dry. The sides, ends, top and bottom were joined to form the box with the planks showing clearly on the outside faces. A wagon book revealed a picture of a large crate of similar size and, as would be expected for a one-use only crate, it was a very rough and ready item. My effort matched in it all respects for looks, so for this first effort, my model crate was looking promising.

It has to be possible to easily remove one of the sides to reveal the model ship. The built up crate turned out to be too flimsy and trapezoidal for this very precise action. So crate mark 2 was built using a sheet of basswood with scribed lines to create the plank effect. There is a useful benefit in using thin sheet as the crate walls are more in scale. The basswood is a very fine grained sheet and, stained with some tea and paint, looked very realistic. A removable side was engineered by making the reinforcing battens on the top and bottom panels extend over the sides. The removable viewing panel was a made a tight fit into the crate. With the crate now ready to accept the load, it was very timely that a discovery on the web produced a museum record of a QM model. It took a little while to gather data and photographs of the ship, then to realise that the model was, in fact, the actual model ship from 1936. Unfortunately the home of the model in Glasgow, at the Riverside Museum, was being redeveloped, so the only available information was a brief description in the online catalogue, but the essential dimensional data of the model ship was included in the record.

The model Queen Mary

The ship and the accompanying engineering model were built by John Brown & Co Ltd of Clydebank between 1930 and 1935. The model measures 18ft (5500 mm) long, 4.5ft (1360 mm) high, and 2.2ft (670 mm) wide. The scale of the model is 1:56.6 and it weighs in at just over 1/4ton (258 kg). Incidentally, a 1:48 model of the Titanic was built recently from the actual plans of that ship and cost £1.3 million, so there are not many models of this size around. With the model ship construction phase in mind, there were two more things to consider: existing models of the ship, and a convenient method of translating sizes of individual ship borne items from different scales. It seemed useful when scratch building a model to have another model to work from and a plastic kit by Revell was found and partly assembled. This was in the scale of 1:675 but provided important clues to the key features of the ship, particularly the characteristics which could be modelled at a smaller scale and those which can be ignored. With one virtual ship and three models in my model builder’s docks on the worktop, a calculating machine was to become quite essential.

The deck plans have been printed onto a single sheet of paper to ensure that each deck is dimensionally consistent with is neighbour. Deck E has been cut out of 1mm styrene sheet and has been placed into the template box to check length and width. The keel, lower right, is ready to accept the deck layers An Excel spreadsheet served the purpose well and with all of the principal dimensions for the subjects entered, it was possible to enter a dimension for any one of the subjects and to get an answer in the scale of choice. The model was being built for an O gauge layout to a scale of 7mm. The calculator gave this model as in the scale of 1:2,465 to the full size original and, at 5 inches (126mm) long, the final model was going to be quite small. The Revell model is sold as scale 1:675, but my calculating machine made the true scale more like 1:586. These are small differences in the prototype world but quite important in the modelled version. With a 5in long model of the model in prospect this build was going to be some challenge.

Ship profile and keel with layers of decks ready to be installed. Decks H to A were topped off by the promenade and sun decks

So it was this minimalistic target which taxed the thinking cells over the next few months. In the meantime a wheeled trolley was built using styrene sheet, and the first attempt of a glass case was made. In the absence of any photographs, the trolley was to be simple flat sheet with wooden edging for the glass case to rest upon securely. The wheels are recycled from an old model of a Sherman tank, being the track return idlers, and strips of wood provided the cradle for the model ship.

The model of the Queen Mary model

Above: In the background the Revell plastic kit is a very useful scale model, providing a guide to getting the hull shape in proportion and key features in context. The Dinky table-top toy at 1:1,250 scale, in the middle, shows how much detail can be built at the smaller sizes. The rough hull of the model ship model will be filled and shaped to perfection

Repeated filling and sanding of the hull has produced a reasonable hull shape. The topping off has started with the promenade decks and bridge installed

The most challenging part of was next. The original ship model was an unknown quantity so several reference books were borrowed from the local library and the all-important deck plans turned up on the web. With a mass of information about the ship in hand, the model was starting to take shape in my mind. The drawings and plans were copied to the correct scale and very conveniently, the height of the decks was found to be 1mm thick in 7mm scale. A set of paper deck plans, there are 13 of them, were cut out and pasted onto to styrene sheet. The side profile of ship revealed a noticeable upwards sheer from the bridge to the fore peak and a complex double curvature shape in the rather graceful stern. A copy of the ship's profile was glued to another sheet of 1 mm styrene and cut out to form the keel. The internal area of this profile was excavated to leave a thin bottom keel and the vertical posts for bow and stern. Attention was paid to the upward slope of the keel as this would give shape to the sheer of the upper deck. Slots were cut into the decks so that each one could be slipped over the front and rear vertical posts of the keel. The stack of decks were centred about the keel posts, glued together and clamped to preserve the shape of the hull, particularly the upward sheer of the bow.

While the ship model was curing, the first effort at making a glass case may have started really well but problems were soon apparent. An internal framework of 1.5mm L-shaped styrene was glued to the edges of clear plastic panes, and by a minor miracle, a box case was achieved without marking the glass. It was intended to cement additional strips to the outside edges to form the wooden frame. This approach seemed to work well up until the painting of the internal frame in mahogany brown which proved impossible without smearing the glass.

Back to the ship model and the basic shape of the hull was starting to look like the real thing. The layers of deck formed a reasonable shape of the hull and the sides were faired in by ladling modelling plastic filler over this skeleton. This exercise was repeated between bouts of sand papering and filing to finally arrive at the final hull shape. Close attention was paid to achieving a shape which resembled the Revell ship kit. A template former was made from the ship's plans to check that the hull was symmetrical.

Ventilators and lifeboats made from styrene strip. Each item was individually cut and shaped with files and finished off with nail polish boards. The anchor is 2mm wide. The foredeck fittings and foremast with derricks has been installed. The hull shaped and finished is ready for painting. The trolley and cradle is at the painting stage

The completed model is ready for painting. The masts and ventilators can be detached for painting

Having arrived at a satisfactory hull shape, it was a reasonably simple matter to top off the ship with the top deck items. The seemingly endless forest of ventilator stacks was made from styrene strip. A short piece of 2mm x 1mm strip was glued to the top of a longer length of similar strip to form the head of the ventilator. The back of the head was filed and shaped to create the curved shape of the ventilator head. The length of strip was cut off to form the ventilator shaft. A series of holes was drilled into the deck with a hand drill to accept the ventilator shafts. The ship has three sizes of ventilator and these were built up from the appropriate sized strip.

The lifeboats were constructed from 4mm x 2mm strip and shaped to form the hulls of the boats. The set of boats was fixed to the top deck on a small spacer of 1mm square rod. The opportunity to make davits and wire ropes was passed up in the interests of sanity and time. The masts were made of plastic rod which had been thinned at the top by rolling it in a fold of very fine abrasive pad. The anchors, capstans, hatch covers and other model-able maritime equipment were scratch built from scraps of plastic sheet.

Railway construction

The model was now starting to look like the real thing and all that was required now was the railway wagon to finish it off. The TCM trolley is a well wagon with enclosed bogies and a very low profile. Even though the bogies are hidden from view, the construction is further simplified as the wheel suspension units are inside the bogie frame. The bogie frame is a box of 1mm styrene sheet measuring 38 x 26 x 9mm, with reinforcing plates for the hornblocks. There is very little space to fit a bearing such as brass tube, and as the model will be more static than running on long trains, a hole in the plastic is used for the bearing.

The floor of the railway trolley wagon is stepped to bring the load floor as close to the rails as possible. The wagon floor is a single sheet of styrene. The framework is made from 2mm x 1mm strip and will be filled with lead shot to give the wagon a low centre of gravity so that it is stable on the track when marshalled in a train. It is important not to use PVA to secure the lead because of the possibility of chemical reaction causing an expansion of the weight. When the bottom floor skin is fitted there will be 4 air breather holes in each of the squares

The initial look at the low floor of the well wagon seemed to indicate that the internal structure of the framing would need three separate box sections. This would have made the build more complicated than hoped for. But, happily, drawing out the wagon outline and internal floor arrangement on a sheet of graph paper showed that just a single floor would be needed as the basis for the frame. The arrangement layout also showed a conflict with the low floor height and wheels. This was easily sorted with cut outs in the floor for the wheels.

The rails in the trolley floor were covered by plywood boards when not being used for conveyed tramcars. These are modelled with sheets of basswood, and the load securing frame is made from Ibeam shaped plastic. The wooden crate has been treated with tea and paint

The approach to the wagon build is a single floor layer of 1mm, a box section below the centre load area to form the well, rising ramps from the floor over the bogies to the buffer beams, and sides to cover both heights (bottom of well to the top of buffers), for the full length of the frame. With this outline design, the components were cut out. The floor is 1mm sheet, 135 x 59mm, buffer beams of 1mm and the side plates of 0.5mm were glued to form the basic box of the frame. The bogie pivot points are formed by U-channel section placed across the floor to reinforce the floor ends between the wheel cut outs. The bogie pivots are plastic tubes telescoped together with the outer tube opened out to provide a degree or two of wobble to allow the bogie to ride over track imperfections. A screw and nut holds the bogie in place.

The wagon ends were fitted with buffers and coupling hook. In this model a large bottle shaped coach buffer is used, complete with oval head, to depict a wagon which had been photographed in the 1930s. It appears that some wagons were turned out of the Horwich works by the L&Y with any old buffer sets. The other noticeable feature in the photograph is the rows of prominent rivets along the sides where the floor is reinforced by angle iron and joined to the sides. In the model these rivets are simulated by cutting off the heads of plastic rivets and gluing them to the sides. These rivets are available from the military modelling community.

The floor of the wagon is assumed to be metal plate and had rails inset into the wagon floor to carry tramcars, Later these were covered by sheets of plywood, which are modelled with sheets of bass wood. There is no record or note of how the crate would be secured to the wagon. The crate is a hollow box and is unlikely to have the strengthened strong points for straps or chains. A photograph of a similar size crate is shown to be held in a steel cradle with the attachment points in the bottom corners of the crate. So to model this feature, a cradle was made out of lengths of I-beam plastic and secured by small BA screws to the wagon floor.

The STN notes that the load would travel to Southampton in October 1935 for the maiden voyage of the Queen Mary in March 1936. This implies that the wagon and load were stored in the open air for the duration of the winter of 1935. It would be reasonable to suppose that a protective tarpaulin would be used to cover the crate and the glass case. This creates another problem for taking off the viewing side of the crate, and took much thinking and experimentation to resolve. The tarpaulin was made in the traditional way using a brown envelope painted various colours of grey and black. The tarp is longer than a normal open wagon and it would lie in the trough between the battens running across the top of the crate. The effects of the English winter weather were simulated by painting puddles of water in these troughs with gloss black paint. To access the viewing side a system of ropes with quick release attachments was devised. The main ropes have a hook of nickel silver wire which is attached to a ring on the cradle. A web of thinner gauge rope is attached to the tarp and is tensioned by elastic thread which runs under the tarp. The ropes use Amati rigging thread from the sailing boat modelling world. The whole ensemble can be whipped off in seconds to open the viewing side panel. The STN noted that there was the possibility of gauging conflict at the top corners with the Southern Railway gauge limits. This assertion was tested by drawing the model against the loading gauge. There was at least 6 inches clearance at the corners of the crate. This seemed to indicate that the LMS had built in a margin of safety, or had allowed for a worse case of having a railway wagon with a high load floor being used to transport the load.

Completing the model

With experience of building the first glass case, another attempt was made using an outside framed frame. The new build method was to fit 1.5mm L-shaped strip to the outside of the glass panels and to build up the box case without any internal framing. This approach was altogether more successful and the case was assembled and the frames painted in a mahogany colour.

The ship model was painted with Humbrol gloss enamel to bring out the highly polished finish of the hull. The painting of the fittings needed a very small brush and high magnification, but the decks presented a different and frustrating problem, and it took some experimentation to get the viscosity of the paint appropriate. The completed ship model may have looked ship-shape but it was lacking that famous characteristic feature of ocean-going liners. The rows and rows of portholes along the side of the ship is the clue to passenger carrying capability of the vessel. To model the portholes was going need a feat of patience in painting or sticking hundreds of dots in very straight rows on the model. Once again the military modelling community provided the answer. The range of Archer transfers includes various rivet and weld detail. The rows of rivets were the perfect size and spacing for the lower deck portholes. The weld detail was cut to size to represent the long vertical windows of the upper deck and the wheel house. The transfers were applied and the ship model was transformed into a real ship.

Acknowledgements and Sources

1. Hospital Ships, Queens Alexandria Royal Nursing Corps: http://www.qaranc.co.uk /hospitalships.php

2. Queen Mary, Wikipedia

3. Julian Hill: http://www.sterling.rmplc. co.uk/history/maiden.html

4. http://www.clydewaterfrontheritage. com/johnbrownsshipyard.aspx

5. The South Western Circle

6. The Curator, Glasgow Riverside Museum