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Fictional four-stack ocean liner - RMS Allemann - LDD WIP (so far)
Murdoch17 posted a topic in Special LEGO Themes
This ship was designed to replace my original micro scale ocean liner from 2011. It's not intended to represent any real liner per say, though I was inspired a tiny bit by the Queen Mary (located out in Long Beach, CA) and a lot inspired by the Olympic / Titanic / Britannic sister-ships that were sadly scrapped / sunk by iceberg / mined in WW1. Here we see the RMS Allemann at sail at night in the mid-Atlantic sometime in the late 1920's. (this LDD picture was edited to give it a night-time feel. If only the portholes glowed!) The font of the ship (also called the "bow".) features three printed 1 x 6 tiles should spell out the name ALLEMANN on the left and right sides, and along with the stern. The light gray "hatches" at the fore and aft sections of the ship are for loading cargo into the various holds. Statistics: Ship Name: RMS Allemann Ship Type: "Gigantic" Class passenger Liner Owner: Red Star Line Ship Built: 1919 – 1921 Capacity: 400 Crew, 270 First class, 630 Second class, 1,000 Third class Lifeboats: 20 regular boats / 4 collapsible boats with 80 people per boat each (1,920 people total capacity) Builder: Strong & Steele Shipbuilders of London Propulsion: 24 Boilers, 2 turbines, 4 steel propellers Top Speed: 30 Knots Fuel: Diesel (originally Oil) The rear of the ship. (also called the "stern".) The raised portion of the deck is for the docking bridge when the ship is backing into port. The ship features a modular approach to it's construction, allowing for separation of bow and stern for storage ease... and in case I want to build a wrecked version in the future, I just disconnect the four Technic pins to remove the desired section from the rest of the vessel. Also, I thought about Gateway LUG holiday displays, which usually include light-up models in some form, usually modular buildings. These potential lights are now addable via the open bottom of the ship for a neat effect through the portholes. The pennant flag of the Red Star Line as originally used on the RMS Allemann. The RMS Allemann was first proposed in 1914, but World War One prevented it's construction by Strong & Steele Shipbuilders to start until 1919. The ship was modified from it's original proposed engine design to burn oil, and was completed in February 1921. The ship could hold 1,900 people total, with 400 being Crew, with 270 being First class, 630 in Second class, and 1,000 being the steerage, or Third class. The ship sailed it's maiden voyage in July 1921 from Southampton to New York City. The ship was English-owned, and as such, was immune to the new American anti-alcohol laws of Prohibition. The ship took off-peak season sailings (informally known as Liquor Cruises) around the Atlantic, returning to the American port of origin within a couple days. The ship managed to hold a steady service record, and remained relatively full-up until the Great Depression really took hold in 1931. The ship's owners, the Red Star Line, managed to stay financially afloat long enough to get the ship through the worst of the Depression, until the ship was requested by the English Navy as a troop ship in late 1939 for use in World War Two. The Allemann's fancy woodwork was put in storage and the ship was turned into a troop ship relatively quickly. The ship was strafed several times by enemy aircraft during the war, and narrowly missed being torpedoed in 1943, but it survived the war not too much worse for wear. When it was handed back over to Red Star Line, it was given a complete overhaul mechanically and electrically. The whole ship was rewired, and the oil burning engines converted to diesel. The Acadia's woodwork was painstakingly restored to it's original grandeur, and she was ready for for sailing by 1948, almost a year after being handed back to it's original owners. In the early '50's the ship began sailing luxury cruises to the Mediterranean from England and the United States, in addition to it's usual scheduled Atlantic crossings, and had it's third class re-designated as Tourist class. This was because the decline of the Atlantic immigrant traffic pattern was nearly complete. The ship began showing it's age by the late 1960's, when it's original glass dome began to leak badly. A handful of cracks in the reinforced glass caused the ship to be dry-docked, but before it could be fixed the huge dome collapsed in on itself, causing the grand staircase to be heavily damaged. Luckily, the accident happened in the middle of the night, and no one was on board at the time to get hurt by all that broken glass. The ships' dome was replaced, but only because the ship's owners knew of the ship's heritage and couldn't bear to see the old girl scrapped. (Not to mention it would have cost more to scrap the ship than fix the dome) By 1975, she was last four-stack ship in existence, and the owners were planning the grand lady's 55th Birthday for the next year. The Allemann celebrated July 1st, 1976 as her fifty-fifth birthday, and as part of the celebrations she was given to a preservation group dedicated to keeping the ship sailing as an "ambassador of history", as a peek into the way things were and how the men and women visiting and working on the Allemann went about their lives through each period of this ships stoic history. Many former passengers and crew detailed their experiences on the ship in writing or on film for the beginning of what later became known as The Allemann Living History Museum. Today, the ship features a feature-length film that chronicles the story of the ship and it's many passengers and crew through out the ships commercial and wartime lives. The film is shown in the Second Class movie theater, built into the ship in 1947 after World War Two, flowing seamlessly into the 1920's flavor of the ship. The ship still sails, making stops in New York and London (substituted for Southampton) at least twice a year. NOTES: The bow is either a bit too long or the stern too short, but I can't seem to fix that correctly to be "in scale". In fact, it's pretty much assured there is NO scale used with this ship, as I just built what looked good to me. The model will have to be bought sometime in Autumn of this year, as even though it has most of the parts from the 2011 ship inside it, (these have been removed the from the parts list to save money) it still will cost almost (US) $200 to purchase the remaining needed parts to have it done by the Christmas-time show later this year. Any thoughts, comments, suggestions, or complaints on this ship?