Only heard about this in reading the posts on various sites on the Nurenburg toy fair. Was in Hannants Colindale shop on saturday and they had one.



At £31.25 it sounds quite expensive, however it gives approx 60 X 18 cm of waterfront, all in injection moulded plastic. The kit contains 2 identical sections of Dock 30X18 cm and 2 sprues containing approx 30 peices each.



Included on the sprues are supports for the dock structure, tabs for joing the dock sections together, assorted mooring bits, / bollards / rings, rungs to make a ladder going down the dock front, the dock front itself, the same small gangway as included in with the MAS Boat crew, a lifebouy and some dock pilings.



The instructions come on a single sheet of paper with a parts map, exploded view for asembling the dock sections and fittings and placement guide for the fittings. The also show the forthcoming dock section with steps, which as the dock & dock front both have deeply grooved section moulded on the back, so I would assume the step set will include 1 dock section as per this set, with an additional sprue for the steps.

also included is a length of twine for use as mooring lines.





The only noteworthy ommission is either a section of raling, or stand fro the lifebouy. I also note whilst support for the structure is included nothing to box in the back / sides. This is no real hardship, as a simple job with some plasticard.

All in all I think this is a useful kit, it is fairly generic and could represent a dock almost anywhere in the world. The modular construction will amke it easy to assemble longer sections for S-boats and the like.

Si

Hi Simon,

Saw this one and thanks for the pics and info. It also looks like they intend to do an additional stepped section to fit in with the main dock.

I'll be getting one of these as the layout is very similar to what I had in mind for Pier 51 and would save me a lot of time and effort build wise. Also having a basic structure in scale is alwasy a great starting point for any additional building.

Am I correct in assuming those are railway tracks on top?

Cheers

Al

Hi Al,

They are tracks, I have not measured the guage, assuming they were most likely for a travelling crane.

They do intend to do a stepped section, and looking at the s-boat dio in some of the Nurenburg pics, maybe some other sections as well.

Si

Thanks Si.

Al

Hi folks,

A couple of pic from the Italeri web site:



and the extension



Al

Thanks Al,

top one looks very like the box art on the long dock set, so now we have a good guess at the box art on the dock steps.

For these sort of sets I think the built up photo is great box art, as does let you see exactly what you are getting.

If these sell well I hope we see some more variations / modules

Si

Hi Simon,

I have ordered one up to see if it might form the basis for my long over due Pier 51. The modular sections are pretty close to my original plan and I will see how they marry up to what's constructed so far.

Either way these should provide a nice alternative for many.

If they produce an end module of some sort that would be interesting and an untracked section wold be good too.

Cheers

Al

They are standard gauge railroad tracks, spaced at 41 mm for accurate 1:35 scale. Tracks for a crane would be much farther apart, more near the edges of the pier, as they needed to straddle the railroad spur. This is shown on an HO model pier built using Walthers plastic kits.



Unfortunately, Walthers was cheap so the pier pilings are quite short to save styrene, forcing one to model at high tide. To the left of the pier at the rear is a carfloat apron.

This is actually the work of a woman modeler in the U.K. She plans to add stained balsa edging to the pier in this manner.



Here is their terminal building and traveling crane, which I think could reasonably be used for WW2 modeling. Note the work this fellow has done to upgrade the edge of the pier. Some of you may recognize the ship as an ancient Lindberg item. One thing I don't understand is all those loading doors on the terminal building, when the pier is too narrow to allow a trailer to back up to them.



Here's a link to Walther's waterfront page.

https://www.walthers.com/exec/page/waterfront

If anyone is interested in some of this stuff, most of the time there will be lower prices elsewhere, although I just ordered a few items today that they had surprisingly low prices on.

This site is fairly good, but I don't care for their search function: http://www.hobbylinc.com/
This one often has the lowest prices:
http://www.modeltrainstuff.com/HO-Scale-Structures-s/1441.htm
And I just found this one today:
http://www.aawtrains.com/
For whatever reason, sometimes one store will not have the best price on all items.

This line was initially released in 1998, but has been unavailable - outside of very expensive items on eBay - for many years. I guess they decided that it had been so long they could move a lot of merchandise with a re-issue, and I'm not even sure if all of it is available yet. However, a number of German model railroad structure manufacturers also offer HO scale gantry crane kits - including a digitally-controlled operating version.

CMK offers a Europen steam crane kit in 1:35, but I find it rather ugly - mostly due to how they depict a lattice structure in shallow relief on the side of the boom, when it is in fact solid. I've never found a proto photo to verify or disprove their design. I generally like the operators cab and the counterweight, although I would have expected more fenestration. Also - that stack looks totally wrong for an allegedly steam-driven machine.



I'm wondering if all this HO infrastructure will send some of you scurrying to find all those old Lindberg 1:87 kits.
Largely unrelated, but as a teaser here are proto and model (heavily customized - most notably the access stairway and the safety railings) images related to Walther's bridge crane, used to quickly unload coal from the holds.






Even more massive, the Hulett ore unloaders were used in Great Lakes ports, and Walthers has a kit for that also. I noticed on their site that it's currently on offer for about half price. However, the photo below is not of the HO kit. It's of FOUR, scratchbuilt, N-scale (1:160) models; I can't explain the absence of ore in the hull ;-)





Now for some proto photos. The British woman is modeling the New Haven Railroad, and this is the CT state pier in New London; surprisingly, no rails of any sort here, and the photo isn't recent enough for them to have been removed / paved over. BTW - Walthers has a quite nice ready built water tower, spot on for the one in the background, for an extremely reasonable price. What would we do without those containers from China.



Here's a 1968 shot of CPR (Canadian Pacific Railway) pier B-C in Vancouver. Note the support of the gantry crane - all of the weight is carried by a single leg / rail via a heavy L-shaped structure. A second connection is made to a rail mounted off the side of the warehouse to provide balance - I would wager that there's some sort of locking mechanism to prevent the support beam detaching from the rail.



A variation of the Vancouver installion is seen in this photo I just found a few days ago of Westhaven in Berlin - did someone mention landlocked? See Google Images for much more material. The rail line has since been removed, and it's obvious that this arrangement was mandated by the pier and structure being built long before anyone ever dreamed of gantry cranes on tracks.

Charles

Missing Westhaven image:

Wow, this has set my wee brain working overtime
I've waiting for something like this for these

Thanks Simon

EDIT
just picked up both kits on Ebay for £44 with free P&P

Here ya go Torchy - scroll down to the bottom:

http://www.carendt.com/scrapbook/page72a/

Nice catch Andy,
Those fish are great. Have you seen the dragonfly?
cheers,
Julian

So many models and so little time....................

Thanks for the link Charles,some cool stuff on there
Julian.. these fish are fantastic kits,and yes, I've got the Dragonfly on pre order and I'm waiting for the Hornethopter to restock and this baby to come out
http://industriamechanika.com/shop/index.php?main_page=product_info&cPath=8&products_id=37

Ooohh my visa card,must do some overtime!!!
Andy

Andy, that website sure have some interesting resin kits. I'm eyeballing both of those 1/8 figures holding guns. I'm trying to resist but force is strong with those two kits...what am I to do

If you P/U both kits and added the extension in the middle, would the wood up rights and bollards etc. be spaced evenly or would they be too close together? Also, would this be an accurate dock side for a P.T. base in England? Have an idea for my Vosper but don't know about the dock.