by Rob Kernaghan
1/700 Atlantic Jamaican (Loose Cannon Productions)
When I bought Loose Cannon's Atlantic Jamaican, I was a bit surprised about just how small it was. From this point, it seemed to be as though it would look better as part of a diorama. Not really having anything suitable, I set about buying accessories that would suit the era of the ship. Useful finds were the range of buildings from Cruiseline Models; the large crane, floating crane and modern vehicles from BJ Modellbau.
The barge is from BFM and the small tug from Ozmods, both leftovers from other projects. I played around with the layout and composition using BFM quay sections, but couldn't make it work as I wanted to so I scratchbuilt the quay using 3.2mm Evergreen square section and plasticard to cover it.
Atlantic Jamaican was somewhat of a struggle to build as my example was rather miscast, so I replaced a great deal of it with scratchbuilt parts. Once the ship, quay and small vessels done, I sprayed everything in white acylic; apart from the crane which was sprayed yellow.
I then picked out the details on the buildings and painted the quay in a medium grey applied with a sponge to give a mottled appearance. Once dry, this was further accentuated with several washes of Payne's grey gouache.
I completed the vehicles, railway trucks and crane and added them to the finished quayside.
Attention then turned to finishe the vessels. I completed the painting, weathering and rigging, replaced the containers on AJ with my own scratchbuilt examples and permanently attached the vessels in position. I then painted in the seascape use a thick mix of green, brown and white acrylis, varnished once dry with PVA glue.
As to feedback on the items I used, I was very impressed with the PE vehicles, crane and floating crane from BJ Modellbau. They were tricky to fold neatly, but do look great once done. The buildings from Cruiseline were excellent, beautifully cast and reasonably priced The Ozmods tug is a useful little item and nicely done, as is the BFM barge.
All-in-all a fun project and a nice splash of colour in my collection of (mostly) grey ships.
