These two drawings are offered on one sheet each at 1/48 scale (1/4” = 1”). General arrangement profile and half breadth plans are included. There are no hull lines but the hulls are relatively simple in form.

GENERAL HISTORY

The Rideau Canal was constructed between 1825 and 1832 between Kingston and Ottawa to provide a strategic waterway which would be immune to incursions by United States forces in times of conflict. However, because Canada and the U.S. were never thereafter in conflict, the canal became an artery for peacetime commerce.

 A wide variety of mercantile craft plied the Rideau waterway in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Among them were the self propelled and towed barges, which carried a number of types of bulk cargo. The self propelled barges were steam powered and generally carried a crew of four, a master, mate/deckhand, cook and engineer. The power plant was simple, consisting of a scotch boiler and single expansion steam engine.

These barges were used by the hundreds to supply the Kingston, Ottawa and Montreal tri-angle up to about 1935. So competitive were they that the steam coal for the railway operating from Smiths Falls was transported there by these workhorses.