Scratchbuilt Pile-driver Barge
Built mid or late 1970s
I scratchbuilt this water-born pile-driver after seeing pictures of a Fine Scale Miniartures kit in a model railroad magazine. Only some years later did I discover that the great modeler E. L. Moore had originally created a model of this kind on which the kit was probably based — and written an article about it. Not realizing that Moore had created a model, I wrote a how-to-do-it photo article on my version for the March 1977 Railroad Modeler.
Since I wanted the steam boiler and engine to show, I did not, like Moore and FSM, cover them with a house-like structure. I scratchbuilt everything except the steam boiler, engine, watertank, metal parts to tie the barge to a dock, Campbell barrels, and Preiser figures. The hammer (or pile-driver weight) was turned, using an electric drill as a lathe, and since I didn't know then that one could purchase bolt-head castings, I used the heads of straight pins to represent them. [GPL].
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