Towboat Model is afloat by my Milwaukee Road pontoon bridge

Painting the exhaust stacks before nailing them to the boat

It's too big to build on my little work bench. I just plop my tools on the river side board.

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I glue down some small wood craft-size clothespins to hold the wires from tangling.

So far, it is built as a 1 x 2 tow (1 barge wide, 2-long) and that's 5-1/2 feet long in H-O scale I could make more barges to widen the tow to 3 x 2 for use in my basement, and that is the largest that I have space for.

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Now the drawbridge is swung open and the tow is passing by.
I got lucky catching all the lights 'on' as they blink off and on.
I like the deck lights, they reflect off the blue plastic bags like water, just like the real boats.

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And they come back later in the day the other direction, as seen from the bluffs of Iowa.

On my railroad, all the walking aisleways are make-believe rivers. The whole tow is on a pedestal which rests on a skate-board size wheeling board on the floor. I didn't clone blue water to hide all of the aisle way. I will prop up more blue paper sheets (2 for a dollar at, where else, Dollar Tree). Then I will try a better picture. Same place those nice deck lights came from, a dozen miniature LED's on a 2-wire string with a 2-battery plactic box and an on-off switch (batteries not included). Sometime, I will have to take a better panoramic, either in-camera, or with more than 2 pictures stitched together. It's best to avoid a wide-angle for panoramics, but the basement is small and there's little space to stand back to use a better 50mm lens angle.

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