Scratchbuilt River Boat Inspired by the African Queen

[robert goslin]

I'm going to need another boat for my upcoming Jungle Cruise inspired mini exhibition layout.
Like Walt Disney's Jungle Cruise ride, I'm taking inspiration from the movie, The African Queen, staring Humphrey Bogart, of whom I am also a big fan.

The prototype is 30' long (actually mentioned in the movie) so I've scaled mine to be the same.  And I've roughly worked out it's about 8' wide. So quite a bit smaller than my other boats.





This boat sits very low in the water, so this time, instead of a foam core, I've just laminated two pieces of 2.5mm mat board together, and then added a 1mm balsa deck.




I then scribed in the deck boards with a mechanical pencil


I'm hoping to use this boat to circle the lower, river portion of the layout.  The previous La Quila boat I made to do this function is a bit hit & miss.  Sometimes comes off the magnets.
So I have added the magnets underneath, and also four tiny 7mm ball rollers to smooth out the ride.



These little rollers let the boat sit about 1mm above the water surface, and roll in all directions.