Ralf Schnurbusch

Wilhelmshavener Modellbaubogen Verlag

TSS Olympia

1. History

On 16th April 1953 the Olympia was launched on the shipyard S. Stephen & Sons, Glasgow, but at this time without a name. The ship was ordered by the Transatlantic Shipping Corporation Monrovia. On 12. October 1953 the ship was given the name Olympia. She made her first trip from Glasgow to New York on 15. October 1953. In November of the same year she started the regular service from Bremerhaven to New York. In 1968 she was regristered unter the Greek flag. From 1970 on she was used for cruises only.

In 1982 the Olympia was renamed to Caribe and transferred to Hamburg. In Hamburg she was modernized. The outside form and the engines were changed. On 29. June the Caribe I started for cruises on behalf of the Commodore Cruise Lines.

On 14. May 1988 the Caribe I arrives in Norfolk, Virginia where she was again modified. The ship also received a new smoke stag.

2. The Construction

This is the first model of Wilhelmshaven that I have seeing that is varnished with a satin glossy coat. This is rather unusual. It looks nice and adds strength to the material. When you first cut it you will realize that it reacts differently. The added strength makes it less flexible

I first laminate the bulkheads on 0.3 mm cardboard. I glued the base plate first on thick cardboard to stabilize it. Usually in all Wilhelmshavener Models the next step after creating the bulkhead structure is the adding of the decks, but in this case the instructions calls for adding the hull. It has the advantage that you still have access to the hull, which in the traditional way of construction is not possible. This way I could still correct the caving in of the bulk, which always happens on some bulkheads. Disadvantage is the you apply the bulkheads at the time than the bulheads are still not as stable and can still twist around the longitudinal axis. This can be prevent by applying the decks first. This is again one of the typical problems of card modeling, you can not have one without the other. It would be useful to find a design that allows a bulkead construction which would be stable enought to attach the bulkheads before the deck. Nevertheless in this scenario it work out fine. I had not problems with stability because of the lamination of the bulkheads, which are quite thick. I also eliminate gluing the flaps of the longitutional bulkheads, which are bent left and right intermittently and cause instability of the bulkheads.

The hull has a lot of windows, which cut out or if they are portholes, I stencil them out. On the backside of the windows I glue a transparent film, which I have printed with a light shade color. This process takes quite some time, because there are lots of windows. I also cut out the hawse hole, which is a risk as the bulwark has a backside will be glued with the printed backside as the extension of the deck and you can never be sure if the hawse holes will match from both sides. I can not necessarily recommend this modification but it is worth a try.. The hull has in the front and back a horizontal cut line, which allows the bending of hull. I glue them together with vertical stripes of scotch tape, which is thin enough to allow flexible bending. The outside of the hull is divided in three parts for both sides. The instruction suggests that these pieces glued together first. The middle part has a mark which should align with the corresponding bulkhead structure. From my experience I have to assume the length of the outside hull stripe does not always fit exactly. Therefore I decided to first attach the back and front piece, giving me the possibility to adjust the length of the middle piece if necessary. Unfortunately this way I could not use the marking for the alignment.

In the picture on the right you see the model with the main decks applied. You can see the shiny coat deck color has. I did not apply any color or varnish. The only change I made was the lamination of the decks on 0.3 mm card board. Difficulties I encountered were due to the modifications to the railing. I cut out the printed railing from the hull but I had to leave the column between hull and the deck, which became quite fragile.

The ships has two swimming pools. On the picture below you can see the modifications for the swimming pools. The basin is a basic cube and I glued a clear styrene sheet on to. On top of the sheet I applied UHU glue, do make it more look like water. On the right below you see the second swimming pools after the installation of the water layer and the frame. This picture shows the model in the stage with partly applied railing from a photo etch set from Moduni. On both sides of the swimming pool you can also see the same window techniques as applied on the hull.

In the pictures above on the right you can see the assembly of umbrellas. The model include 20 sun umbrellas. One needle is needed for each umbrella. The needle is fixed with head up 6 mm above the table part. The instruction recommend to shorten the needle. I do not recommend that you shorten the needles as you need a sharp end to poke through the deck. At some locations at the upper swimming pool it is required not only to poke the needle through one deck, but you

will soon find out that you will not get through the deck underneath as well. It is therefore helpful if you have the whole needle with the sharp end to get through this layer. In the pictures on the right you see the parts to assemble an umbrella and on the left the first one assembled on deck. In the left picture you can see the assembled on the deck around the swimming pool.

The step was the assembly of the smoke stack. In the picture below can see the main part. The top and bottom part have to laminated to have enough strength. In front of the smoke stag in the black part I have cut out the opening, which were coloured with white outlines. It was therefore necessary to color the cutting edges black. The top of the smoke stag had to be formed into conical shapes. The eliminate the white folding lines I painted the entire top black. The emblems had to be laminated threefold and glued on both sides.

The next step were the ventilators, which were not difficult. I did not like that some of them used in front were only two dimensional. The ship has a lot of railing and I cut all printed railing of and replaced it with photo etch railing from Moduni. For a ship like this a complete sheet is required.

Picture Gallery (click on the picture to see an enlarged Picture)

Picture 1

Picture 2

Picture 3

Picture 4

Picture 5

Picture 6

Conclusion

The Wilhelmshavener Modellbaubogen of the Olympia allows you to build a very nice model with a good amount of detail. The ship has a very specific shape that will stand out in a ship model collection.

Summary:

  Return to the Main Page