¹⁄700

Battlecruiser, HMS Queen Mary

The funnel bases were somewhat bare-- study of plans and the aforementioned drawings showed them to be festooned with cover plates over vents--easily represented with squares of brass/paper I though, further investigation revealed that the cover plates were removed when the vessel was underway... so I now had to simulate the vent grilles... after some experimentation I used old GMM stairs with the handrails trimmed off into suitable sized square vent grilles. Although obviously somewhat over scale, the overall effect is pleasing to the eye on the finished model.







The first level of the forward bridge on the real ship was also open aft and housed some large cable reels etc. The solid casting of the kit was ground out from underneath and the stairway apertures cut in.
The entire structure turned into quite a project in itself - the cast solid splinter shields were cut away and replaced with PE railing to be filled with White glue to represent the canvas covered railings. All the connecting stairs were installed and when solid the lower mast was drilled true and installed-so as to give the structure some stability. The upper bridge had a taller 3-bar railing--I culled this from an old 1/600 GMM Merchant ship fret-the difference in scale giving the taller railing effect perfectly! The platform aft of the conning tower was cut from brass and was furnished with railings and stairs.