1/400 Split hopper barge Bengel (scratch built)
|
by Roel Van de Velde |
1/400 Split hopper barge Bengel (scratch built)
This is my scratch-built model of the Split hopper barge Bengel.The vessel was ordered by the DEME company together with her sister vessel Deugniet (both are words used for naughty kids) to serve the largest Cutter Suction Dredger in the world Spartacus. They are therefore larger than the previous class of Split Hopper Barges Sloeber and Pagadder (also names for naughty kids). Generally split hopper barges are used in conjunction with dredging vessels (backhoe dredgers, cutter suction dredgers) since they can not dredge themselves. They are generally used when a floating pipeline between a dredger and a reclamation or dumping area is not feasible (long distances, traffic constraints etc.). Although called barges, the latest and larger versions can navigate on their own, go into very shallow waters to discharge and they can discharge very rapidly by simply splitting their hull and dumping the load. They operate in pairs to avoid a lot of waiting time for the dredger.
For this model I shifted from my normal 1/700 scale to 1/400 since the vessel is relatively small and I wanted to improve on my airbrushing skills. I later on also decided to go for PE since I feel a model in this scale does require it. I used generic PE from a company called Aber. I used the slanted railing, regular railing and stairs sets and am quite satisfied with their products (not so much with my application of it though). The railing has small pins on the bottom, so you need to drill holes for that. There is a small, straight, jig foreseen in the frame of the PE, yet for my purpose, where I had a lot of stairs and angles, this is not so easy to use. I therefore opted to cut off some of the pins and bend the others 90° to use as support. Of course this is visible on the model. On a regular merchant ship, with long straight sides I would opt to use the jig and drill the holes.
I decided to build her as a sort of desk top demonstration piece. It therefore represents the ship in open condition with the soil falling from the hopper. The model was scratch built using my regular technique of making a skeleton of styrene sheet and use epoxy filler at bow and stern for the curved parts. The difficulty was of course to build the hull in two parts and have them match under the correct angle. The sand was applied using a mixture of sand, acrylic gel and water using a low sand concentration on the vertical plate. I then started a little higher with each additional layer of this sand mixture to create a more dense view towards the hopper. A similar mixture was used to fill the hopper and bottom plate of the stand, although the sand concentration was much higher in that mixture. I later on filled the puddles in the hopper with acrylic gel mixed with brown acrylic paint to simulate the flooding of the hopper when the ship splits. All in all it took me a little less than 1 year to complete this model. It could have been faster, but the engineering challenges (how to fix the vessel to the stand under the correct angle, how to finish the sand in the hopper without ruining the rest of the model as well how to connect the “hydraulic” cylinders between the hull parts) delayed construction.
