Scratchbuilding a B&O stick lighter: Pt. III
so I went lightly on the deckhouse. How- ever, any unpainted areas of the barge would be quite weathered unless you are modeling a brand new lighter. From the photos I have seen, the marine units of the B&O (and most other railroads that had marine fleets in New York for that matter) seem to have been quite well maintained, probably since the crews were more or less permanently assigned to each tug or lighter. The stays are next. You will need sev- en altogether, all the same. They are made up as follows, from the bottom: a shackle, four feet of chain, a four foot turnbuckle, and the stay itself. The stay is pre-blackened stranded copper cable from Clover House. The chain is also from Clover House. I used Tichy plastic turnbuckle castings with brass wire eyebolts glued into each end. The shack- les
are white metal castings from
Charles Brommer. I’ve had these for years and don’t know if they are still available. If you can’t find suitable shackles, you could use a small loop of wire to attach the chain to the chain plates. Assemble the turnbuckles and check that they are straight. Cut a piece of the cable about three inches longer than needed. Slip one end through a turnbuckle eye, fold the end over, and lash it to the main cable with some very fine wire. Clip the excess, roll the fin- ished splice to compress it, and force
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any loose ends to lay tight to the cable itself. At the other end of the turnbuck- le, use some fine wire to tie one end of the four feet of chain to the turnbuckle eye. Add the shackle to the other end of the chain, using the wire. When all seven stays are complete,
spend a few minutes removing any kinks from the wire. This is critical, as the straighter your stays are, the better your model will look. The stays should be installed in the following order. Port and starboard forward stays, then port and starboard after stays, then port and starboard stern stays, and, finally, the center stern stay. At the top of the mast the forward stays each have their own eyebolt. The after stay and stern stay nearest it share an eyebolt, and the cen- ter stern stay has its own eyebolt. Slip a bit of wire through one side of the shackle, then through the eye of the chainplate, then through the eye on the other side of the shackle. Feed the end of the cable through its related eye at the top of the mast. Pull it upwards gen- tly until it is taut, then fold it down and crimp it with a pair of needle nose pli- ers. Lash the end to the main cable with fine wire. Touch the joint with cyano- acrylate, and then trim the loose ends. Work slowly, switching from side to side until all seven are installed. Try not to pull the later ones too tight, as this will put a sag in the already completed
stays. It’s tricky, but take your time and it should come out alright. Remember, this is the most visible part of the mod- el. Ideally, all the stays should be equal- ly taut. During the next steps you may be able to tighten the stays up slightly. Now is the time to sit down and as- semble the materials for the running rigging. There are four drums on the hoist, and each is assigned a specific job. One, of course, is the main lift fall,
that is to say the one that does the actu- al lifting of a load. Another is the boom fall, which lifts or lowers the boom as needed. The other two are both on the same shaft of the hoist but work in op- posite directions, that is, one is taking in line,at the same time the other is let- ting it out. These two falls are the ‘vangs’ (pronounced ‘vane’ according to my dictionary). These two lines are used to slew the boom to one side or the other of the barge. The attachment point on the deck varies for these lines. As the boom end is raised higher, the attach- ment (purchase) point on the deck needs to be moved further aft. At any rate, there are four sets of
tackle that need to be rigged before we can call the model complete. First I prepared all of the blocks. This in- volved wrapping fine wire around each block and using this wire to form either one or two eyes. The number of eyes de- pends on how the block is used. Every
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