Historical River Barge Willi H0 Scale for Display or Model Railway

This is the model of an old river barge named “Willy” which had a long working life and is now preserved as an active museum ship. It is a rather small barge on the European waterways – contemporary barges are much larger – and will have been at home on large rivers as well as small canals.
I constructed the model as part of a challenge in a modeler`s forum and I used images from the internet as the only plans. Fortunately there are just enough online images available to get a good look from all angles, and only very little was left to guesswork.

The model is in H0 model railway scale (1:87). I designed it in Tinkercad and have printed my copies on a Bambu Lab X1C printer using PLA filament. I wanted the model to be realistic, hence some parts have become tiny and may be beyond the precision of some printers. Ships have curved shapes in all dimensions, and this one is no exceptions. Therefore, curved parts have to be printed with supports – there are no even surfaces where the parts can be safely placed for printing.

Some parts are multi-colored. Use a multi color printer or paint the parts after printing.

The joints and part fittings are designed with tolerances of 0,1 to 0,2mm, so they will fit rather tight. You may have to cut and file some edges after print.
The model is medium size – about 50cm long and consists of little over 100 parts. Some of the tiny parts are a challenge for assembly, especially with clumsy fingers like I have. But it is worth it. It will be a nice display model or fit nicely on a model railway with a river/port theme.

I have included all STL files plus a .3MF file for Babulab printers which also contains all the colors. Also a PDF with step by step assembly instruction is included.