[Jeroen]

I thought some of our members might be interested in this:

I visited an RC model event. A couple of times a year they organise a tugboat event. Anybody with an RC tugboat can come and sail it at the club's beautiful little lake!

Modelbuilding is a huge industry, with many different models, topics, scales and what have you.

There are quite a few people who build model boats. Statis and or floating models. From the very small to the very large.

Within that group, the tugboat model boat folks take a very prominent position. Tugboats have always been popular in the Netherlands. In the 30-50s ocean-going tugboat skippers were famous. People would follow their adventures. All long before the internet. This was by talks on the radio and articles in newspapers, magazines and so on.

The Dutch have always been BIG on ocean towage and salvage. For decades there was immense competition between two companies, Smit and Wijsmuller. There was never a job too big, too dangerous, too complex or Dutch salvage teams managed to succeed.

There is even an excellent book, considered proper literature, about this fierce competition and how an independent tug boat captain tried to break into the market. The book is called "Hollands Glorie". Dutch Glory. Even today "Hollands Glorie" still stands for whatever outstanding achievement the Dutch have and or do.

So many people are interested and there are several model-built boat kits out there. Many builders will not build a kit, but get hold of the original ship's drawings and build everything from scratch! Whatever, pardon the pun, floats your boat.

Here you see part of the club's pond. Pretty big. A huge model of a NedLLoyd container vessel. Not sure if this one is made to sail under its own power, or whether it is there to be towed.



This is the Smit Rotterdam. One of the last ocean-going tugs Smit was built in 1974. About 75 meters long it packed 22000 HP. Which made it the most powerful oceangoing towing tug in the world. She had a sister ship, Smit NewYork



Seen from above:



It is a model kit, provided by the famous brand Billing Boats,

https://www.billingboats.com/index.p...smit-rotterdam

Billing boats are always wooden boats. The hull is made up of many ribs and bulkheads and you place small wooden planks horizontally across them.

People build them as just a nice static model to be displayed. Or like here, put an RC kit into it. These days that means two individually controlled main engines, a rudder, bow thruster. working radar, towing winch, anchor winch, lights and engine sounds!!

Here something quite different. A proper steam tug, with a real steam engine, all Radio Controlled!!









There were a few other types of boats on display as well. Next to towing, dredging is the other thing the Dutch are famous for. So there are people who build model dredgers, that fully functioning. To the best of my knowledge, there are no model kits, so this is all completely hand built, from drawings, or perhaps even just old photographs.



The club puts out these market stalls where everybody can display their pride and joy, when not sailing!



This is one of the most popular kits around, the SmitLLoyd 109. I have sailed on her twice. The so-called original 100-Series of SmitLLoyd were very famous in their days. They are so-called suppliers/Anchor Handling Tugs. Extremely robust, and capable of handling ice conditions, with about 14000 HP they were far more versatile than the dedicated oceangoing tugs such as the Smit Rotterdam.



Notice the big anchor on the deck. This is an anchor used by an oil rig. The oil rig would be anchored to the sea floor with 10-16 of these anchors. It was the job of vessels such as the 109 to run out those anchors and retrieve them if and when the rig had to be moved. Very tough and very dangerous work! I loved it. As one of the engineers, I would work the winches or help out on deck. Working with the massive anchor chains also involved welding and a lot of cutting with acetylene torches and later plasma cutter. Enter little "ol" me! On a rolling and pitching deck!

As I mentioned, a very popular model. Many people have built it, in various forms. Some have used a different model, e.g. 112, or 117. Because they sailed on it, or because they liked it better. All these 100 boats had some small differences from one another. SmitLLoyd and Smit were separate companies for a long time. At some point in time, they merged and the typical SmitLLoyd pink chimneys were painted in the Smit colours. Real SmitLLoyd crews hated it. But it got worse as they ultimately merged with Wijsmuller as well, and the company and ships became known as SmitWijs.

Here you see the 109 in original Smit-LLoyd colours and the later and short-lived Smit colours.



I liked this cute little tugboat. I chatted to the owner. It is a complete fantasy boat. He built it from all kinds of scratch materials. He has three more like this. But the finish and attention to detail is fantastic!!







Also a lot of harbour tugs. Very often Smit harbour tugs. There are a few more harbour tug operators, but Smit has always been the biggest and most famous one.



These are the sort of tugs that assist the largest container vessels and tankers in Rotterdam harbour. Look at the detailing, under the waterline as well.





I did not see any today, but I know there are RC model tugboats that have proper model Voith Schneider propellers.

Here is another oceangoing tug I sailed on, very briefly. It was called Happy Hunter at the time. Again, taken over by Smit. Next to the Smitlloyd 109 the Happy hunter is probably the second most build model kit. Both are plastic or rather polyester kit. The hull comes in one piece. Even so, building a boat like this is very labour-intensive and it will take hundreds and hundreds of hours. A rough estimate says less than half of the model kits bought are ever finished. You can buy many of these kits, half or less finished at online marketplaces!



This particular club, the host of this event, has fantastic facilities, you can see the pond, the jetties and so on. But they also have a roomy clubhouse, workshops and so on!



One of the few Wijsmuller boats out there today. Very nice model. The Wijsmuller boats are often very very pretty



This size of RC model boat can weigh up to 20-25 kilograms. They all take a lot of weights, just to sit low and correctly in the water. The RC equipment and batteries are not heavy enough by themselves. All these boats have a lot of lead on board!



For every 10 minutes of sailing your RC model, it takes 20 minutes of fiddling with the electronics and so on.



I love these steam-powered tugs!





There is entertainment for the kiddies too. They always have some boats that can be sailed by kids!



Lots of very proud owners. Most of them have built their own boats. Some buy them ready-made from others.



I have been here before and I usually run into old colleagues. Not today though. There were also fewer boats than usual, not quite sure why.

Leaving you with another very nice model!!



This is a video from last year, all in Dutch Im afraid but nice images!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kwMaBPYdYYo

And another video where you can see some huge models of more modern/current AHTs

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KibyZL1btyg

Jeroen

[Aditya]

Thread moved out from the Assembly Line. Thanks for sharing!

[handsofsteel]

Absolutely brilliant!
From my brief visit to the Netherlands nearly 15 years ago, I gathered that the people loved boats and cycles. The number and types of watercraft (privately owned) and cycles (complete with baby trailers or even push ahead carts) there were mind-boggling. The only other place I have seen the general populace so fascinated with a certain mode of transport has to be Japan and their obsession with trains.

[srini1785]

Beautiful!. I have some collection of battery operated ship toys but these things are real. From the photos I guess the power plant would be a wilesco type boiler piston + propeller combo with servos to control the direction.

RC planes are a thing in India and there are a good number of clubs that one can join, if interested. Ships on the other hand, I am not sure. Probably because of cost and lack of good lakes makes this hobby a non starter in India. At least for the time being.

[BlackBeard]

Originally Posted by Jeroen

The Dutch have always been BIG on ocean towage and salvage. For decades there was immense competition between two companies, Smit and Wijsmuller. There was never a job too big, too dangerous, too complex or Dutch salvage teams managed to succeed.

I did not see any today, but I know there are RC model tugboats that have proper model Voith Schneider propellers.

Very interesting hobby and thank you for posting the same.

You forgot about dredging, Boskalis is a world leader along with your neighbours Jan de Nul.

I don't know if people here have seen the documentaries regarding the salvage & recovery of the Russian submarine Kursk from the Barents sea and the cruise ship Costa Concordia in the Mediterrenean sea, done by the Dutch. Will give you an idea how complex, difficult, dangerous and expensive such a mammoth undertaking is.

Voith Schneider and azipod propulsion models will be a treat to see, no doubt more complex and expensive.

[Jeroen]

Originally Posted by srini1785

Beautiful!. I have some collection of battery operated ship toys but these things are real. From the photos I guess the power plant would be a wilesco type boiler piston + propeller combo with servos to control the direction. .

The boilers are all home made, but are usually far better than a Wilesco boiler. A Wilesco boiler is just a kettle. Which is fine to run a static steam plant for a few minutes.

The folks building these will painstakingly built both the steam engine and a proper boiler to scale. You need some real power to propel these models and a Wilesco set up simply won’t do.

Some of these boilers come equipped with high pressure feed water pumps too, so they can extend the sailing time of the model. The one thing where most builders will make concessions is the fuel. Most boilers will run off a little propane tank. There are some models that will run on real coal too. It is impossible to automate a coal feed into these model boilers. So power control and range is quite limited.

Have a look at this model tug and its steam plant:



See also: https://www.team-bhp.com/forum/shift...therlands.html (Visit to the Steam Engine Plant at Steyl | The Netherlands)

I will be visiting a massive “steam festival” in a couple of weeks time. There will be lots of models too. In the mean time I will see I can dig up some more photographs of model steam plants of these model vessels.

Jeroen