This steam tug is a familiar site in Vancouver Harbour and the surrounding waterways as she is still seaworthy, but her towing days are long behind her. This wooden hulled vessel was built as a tug during 1922 at the Vancouver False Creek Shipyard and was tasked with towing barges loaded with gravel, building stone…
I admit to being a new convert into the world of r/c model boats, despite having a long standing interest in modelling all modes of transport, mostly railways, but also some ships and aircraft. A local vessel which I have had affection for since a child is the Steam Tug Kerne which was preserved in…
ROBIN BUCKLAND visits a new display An article in Model Boats in July 1990 covered the production of a children’s TV programme called ‘Tugs’. That feature closed with the words, ‘Now shooting is long over, and before perhaps a second series, each of Clearwater’s precious tugboats have been carefully packed away in boxes and locked…
ANTHONY ADDAMS converts his fishing boat into a tug When Ron Smith said he was arranging a special day at our pond for tug towing, I said: “I do not have a tug’! He said that so long as I could add a hook for towing to any of my model boats, that would at…
BRIAN ROBERTS modifies the Caldercraft kit Having built two Severn class lifeboats and other sundry vessels over the years, I decided in 2009 to go down the tug route and build an Imara tug by Caldercraft. After a challenging but enjoyable six months work she was completed, so looking for a new project it seemed…
Pic 1: The tin tug well on the way to being restored. I became interested in model boats in the late 1950s after building what was then an almost compulsory KeilKraft Ezebuild balsa model. It was then I joined the Hull Model Boat Club as a junior and my horizons became much wider, as I…
Welcome to this months Focus on Scale. This time we will be paying a visit to Grays Thurrock MBC at Belhus Park for a warship day, visiting Barleylands for the Essex Country Show and continuing the build of a Springer tug. Grays Thurrock MBC Warship Day Belhus Park in Essex is a few miles from…
This month we will be concluding our weekend at the Weymouth International Maritime Modelling Festival, pay a visit to the Floatplane and Model Boat Show at Child Beale Wildlife Park near Reading, and do some more work on the build of a Springer Tug. The Weymouth International Maritime Modelling Festival 2007 The displays within the…
Whilst on a cruise on the Black Prince, I saw Voe Venture, a tug/workboat working at one of the outer Scottish islands. Unusually she was being used as an intermediate landing stage between the ship’s tender and the quay, owing to the low tide. I took a couple of pictures because she was so interesting.…
The tug Ayton Cross currently serves on the River Tees in the North of England and is owned by Wijsmuller. Bryan Ward of Mobile Marine Models asked if my colleague and I would build a plug from which he could make a master mould and thus produce grp hulls. The hull for which the timber…
