Part 1: Introduction and planning

I have a small harbor on my home layout and it has always needed a boat of some kind in it. As luck would have it, someone gave my club a scratch built model of the CPR passenger tug, SS Kelowna. I don't have much information on the prototype, but there is a slightly smaller boat preserved in Penticton, British Columbia. That one is the SS Naramata.

These tugs were built in the early twentieth century. Lake Okanagan in the Southern Interior of B.C. is about 100 miles long, but only 2-3 miles wide at its widest point. Lake traffic consisted of barges and paddle steamers. Many of the barges were pushed by tugs like this one. Unfortunately, I do not have a good picture of the original SS Kelowna, but I have two pictures of the original scratch built model and a picture of the Naramata. Mine is a freelance version of both of them.

It is a fairly large tug by lake standards, but it did have a number of cabins for passengers.

The first thing I did was start to draw up a set of plans based on the original model. I mostly did this for the first and second floors and the wheelhouse, since they are the major parts of the upper deck.

All dimensions in this article are in scale feet. This is so modelers in other scales can use the same measurements, if they wish.

The first deck is 62' long and 7' high with a slight curve along the bottom, to allow for the curvature of the deck. It is 8' wide in the front and 12'6" in the rear. The second deck is 24' long and 7' high, with the wheelhouse portion taking 8'6" of that length up to 11' above the first deck roof. The second floor is 12' wide in the rear and 5'6" in the front. Each window is 2'8" high and 2' wide. Each door is 2' wide and 5'6" tall. I'll leave the actual placement of the doors and windows up to each builder, since it's not an entirely accurate model.