S.S. Houston (progress)
I just started my new summer project and thought I'd throw it up here if anybody is interested.
In the early days of container ships Sea-Land got a lot of cheap WWII vintage hulls from the government and converted them to container ships. They had C-2s, C-3s, C-4 troopships, and T-2s and T-3s. The T-2s were the Houston, Jacksonville, Summit and Tampa.
I'm doing the Houston because I have one good picture of her and a few slides of various details from when I was Third Mate on her back in the early '80s.
Starting with the Revell Esso Glasgow kit, I cut off the rise where the hull meets the midship house, then built up the sides of the hull with styrene strip. I'll use PE railing from Tom's Modelworks, so all the moulded railing comes off, as well as a lot of the moulded on detail like the anchor windlass.
The main decks are discarded, but the foc'sle and poop are used, and the deck under the bridge structure is kept to marry that to the after house. This is pretty much what they did to convert the real ship.
Anyway, here it is so far. Any suggestions would be appreciated.
Just put the first primer coat on the hull to show up flaws, and it looks like I have some more filling and sanding to do. The new main deck and hatches are on. Hatch # 1 and # 8 are opened up for access to the screws which will hold it down to the base.
Also done are:
scratchbuilt anchor windlass, breakwater, stack, squared the bridge windows and mated the midship house to the after superstructure. I modified around the stern to show more of a propeller aperture. This seems to be an unrealistic waterline. A real ship would never be on an even keel at such a light draft, but other than sand the whole bottom off I don't know what to do about it.
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