This model is the USS (United States Steel) William A. Irvin, built in 1938, in service until the 1980s, and now a museum ship in Duluth, Minnesota. It is 610' long, 60' in beam, and held many records for tonnage, speed, and loading and unloading until superseded by the 735' Fitzgerald class (also near production). The model is so long (46") that it exceeds my photo setup, so this picture was taken on the living room rug, with the background masked out in Photoshop. Some mast details were lost in the masking. I will be building a larger photo setup! The eighteen hatches of the six holds are the correct size and spacing for the loading docks around the Great Lakes. The deck, hatch coamings, and hatch covers are cambered (curved) as the camber was a distinguishing feature of the Lakers. As shown, the hatches are removable to show the holds beneath. The model features custom photo etch railings and stairways, and many custom-built details, including windlass, winches, deck ventilators, quadrant davits, life boats, skylights, and much more. A built-up model, custom painted and decaled is $1850.00 US, plus shipping and insurance. A complete kit containing all details (but not commodities like paint and glue) is $625 US, plus shipping. These will only be sold to customers who recognize that the cambered hatch coamings and hatch covers are finicky but still within their modeling capabilities. The styrene parts come in sixteen sheets of up to 48"x 12" in size. I will be showing this ship at the N Scale Convention in Milwaukee in late June. More information from peterknolan@gmail.com. My web site is in production. I'll have more pictures later.
I love this model! Well done Pete...excellent work. What a great centerpiece for an LDE on somebody's layout! Keep up the great work and much success to your venture! Cheerio! Bob Gilmore
Yes, but not for a while, and perhaps not as a kit. I have to figure out how to cut it. I'm working mostly with flat sheets of styrene, and the unloader might be best built from structural shapes. I've built many bridges and cranes, so for me it's very doable from structural shapes. I think I cannot make a kit from the shapes.
I'm figuring sales of ships this size will take about 3-4 years to pick up. I'll sell a few to folks who already have an ore dock or room to add one, and a few more to collectors. Aside from those early sales, it will take a few years for folks to gain an interest, plan a layout, and then actually buy a ship. That's just the nature of the market. It's not like I'm introducing an ore jenny--although I fully appreciate the effort that goes into each and every ore jenny introduction. Just think of an ore carrier as about 400 or so ore jennies.
Yeah... Well, it's nice that somebody is doing this stuff. Non military ships are pretty rare in any scale, really.
I'm sure the ore docks couldn't handle 400 ore jennies in a line at a time. If you figure a jenny at 24', guess what, that's the center-to-center distance between the ore dock chutes. So 18 jennies would span the main deck of the Irvin. So you are actually more than halfway there. Of course, there were often two or more tracks for unloading. While ships are huge, they are a great reason for lots of train activity. A big bulker would need 10-20 trains of 18 jennies to load just once.
Are those Atlas with added extension sides? My collection peaked at about 30 and stopped. Maybe someday it will go further.
Pete, the ore docks did handle several hundred cars at a time. Some of the docks are 2400 feet long and could hold 400 cars ate a time. There were 4 tracks, two for each side (multiple boats could be loaded at the same time). There is also room to hold extra cars in yards close to the docks (Two Harbors and Proctor are good examples). The William A. Irvin held 14,000 tons of taconite pellets. The ore cars supplying it held 77 tons of taconite each (earlier cars held 50 tons each). It took 182 car loads of taconite pellets to fill the Irvin once.
Well, if one models Escanaba post 1960s, as I plan to, you don't even need to worry about the hassle of a conventional dock. Just a dumper shed, conveyor, and some storage piles.
Oops, I thought the Irvin could hold 28,000 tons, hence 364 car loads, which I rounded up to 400. I'm afraid I wasn't clear: I said 400 cars in line, meaning on one track. I am aware that the docks had multiple tracks, and could load more than one ship on each side, but they weren't 400 cars long on a single track.
