Great Lakes Scale Modeler                        Check out all the images here!!

M/V STEWART J. CORT in LEGO           Also his website!!  "Bricks for Brains"

Introduction

I have wanted to model the CORT for many years.  My interest in her has many angles, including her status as the first thousand-footer and the uniqueness of her design among thousand-footers.  Little did I know when I first considered it years ago that when I finally got around to actually building a model I would be using LEGO as the modeling medium. 

My LEGO modeling experience goes back more than thirty years to my childhood. I recall several instances of building an aircraft carrier with my siblings, maybe two or three feet long, complete with mini aircraft stored below deck.  When we had tired of it we would “sink” it with torpedoes, represented by “D” batteries, sliding them along the tile floor the entire length of the basement and watching the bricks fly as they penetrated the hull. That was probably the early 1970’s.  Fast-forward to 2003: I had married and had two sons, so I made a call to my mother requesting that old box of LEGO.  I didn’t hesitate to point out that my household contained the only grandsons (girls play with LEGO, too, I know, but I was going to get that box even if it meant playing dirty to get it!)  When it finally arrived, I ran my hands through it, recalling the unforgettable sound of all those plastic bricks crashing against each other. My sons and I immediately started building with them, and nothing we built was big enough for me, even the five foot-high model of Seattle’s Space Needle.  I needed to build something bigger.  It was then I remembered my dream of modeling the CORT.  This officially marked the end of my “dark ages” (the period of a LEGO hobbyist’s life that lies between playing with LEGO as a kid and picking it up again as an adult), and the beginning of this project.

A Brief History of The CORT

For those who are not yet familiar with the interesting way this ship was built, a little history is in order.  The CORT’s bow and stern were built at Ingalls Shipbuilding Corporation in Pascagoula, Mississippi, in 1970.  They were attached to each other in a configuration nicknamed “Stubby.”  In 1971 it was sailed up the Atlantic cost, up the St. Lawrence river and through the lower lakes to Erie Marine in Erie, Pennsylvania.  At Erie, it was cut apart (as instructed by the Ingalls workers who had painted a dashed line and the words “Cut here”) and joined with seventeen nearly-identical mid-body segments.  It made its maiden voyage in May, 1972, during which it surpassed the previous tonnage record, held by the ARTHUR B. HOMER, by a very impressive 20,000 tons.  Since then it has spent most of its life carrying taconite pellets from Superior, Wisconsin, to Mittal (who acquired International Steel Group, who acquired Bethlehem Steel) at Burns Harbor, Indiana.

There were many “firsts” that were faced by designers of the CORT.  For example, they had to address issues such as turning ability, navigation, stopping distance, and shaping the stern to allow enough water to flow to the screws and rudders.  These issues resulted in some design features not yet seen on the Great Lakes, such as dual thrusters at both the bow and stern.  One unknown that could not be addressed except through practical experience, was the ability to pilot a ship through the St. Mary’s river while stationed an unprecedented 850 feet abaft the bow.  To avoid this unknown dynamic, the pilothouse was placed at the bow.  All subsequent thousand-footers have their pilothouse at the stern, leaving the CORT as the only thousand-footer with this familiar profile.

One interesting feature of the CORT is that designers provided a cargo hold that would hold enough cargo as to cause the CORT to draw a draft of 29 feet, should this depth ever be implemented within the Great Lakes ports.  The current standard is 27.5 feet, which has been temporarily (hopefully!) reduced due to below-average lake levels over the last decade.  To allow the CORT to carry this amount of cargo, the only alteration necessary would be the addition of sixteen more hatches (one additional in the spaces between each of the existing seventeen hatches).

Building the Model

Design

Many years ago I corresponded with author Mark Thompson, who had included a good amount of technical information about the CORT in one of his books, and received from him a very good technical document that included some very useful details.  This was very important to my project, as I wanted the model to be as accurate as possible since it would be part of my educational work (hands-on LEGO-building exhibits).

Using LEGO as a medium for a scale modeling introduces an additional level of design work and scale mathematics compared to other mediums.  For example, I was working with both typical dimensioning, such as inches-per-foot, and also LEGO dimensioning, such as studs-per-foot for horizontal measurements and bricks-per-foot for vertical measurements.  Also, the LEGO bricks placed limitations on me that do not exist with other media; I could not simply cut my material to the desired length (many LEGO modelers consider brick modification a criminal offense).  Every dimension must be a multiple of studs (horizontally) or bricks (vertically).  Actually, the smallest vertical unit is one-third of a brick, as three of the thin plates stack up to the thickness of one brick.

The selection of a scale for this model would be determined by some particular feature of the ship and how it would be built.  This is typically driven by one or more issues, including strength, economics (cost of parts) and ability to present accurate detail.  For this model the scale ended up being 1 inch = 9.8 feet, because this led to the length of the mid-body segments being sixteen studs in length (for-aft), which would be convenient and economical, and allow for enough deck space to show some detail.

Once the scale was set, I continued designing the rest of the ship.  Some amount of design on the mid-body segments had been solidified during experimentation, but much work was still to be done.

Mid-body Segments.

The cross-section of the CORT’s mid-body is nearly rectangular; a fifteen-inch radius curve at the bottom corners gives it a “block coefficient” of 0.98.  Therefore, the exterior was not complicated to build, thanks to the equally-rectangular LEGO.  However, the cargo hold within the hull is an irregular, partially-flattened hexagon, which is not an easy shape to create with LEGO.  To accomplish this, I turned to the Technic line of bricks, which are “one-by” bricks with lateral holes in them, allowing for the attachment of Technic bricks to each other using friction pins.  This allowed me to orient these bricks at angles, and they became the support beams, to which the walls of the cargo hopper were attached.

As with other large or complex models I have built, this process involved working with parts I did not yet have in my collection.  To overcome this, I used a software package called MLCad to experiment with different designs.  This is a free product that allows the virtual construction of LEGO models.  It contains a library of nearly every LEGO part ever made, and allows the user to arrange parts in both structured and free-form orientations.  Once I had the design to a certain level of completion, I acquired the parts necessary to build one mid-body segment, and then fine-tuned my design by hand.

Bow and Stern

The bow would be built using a staggered (stepped) technique, as I did not yet want to wrestle with the difficult technique of building a the walls of the bow at an angle (as Abraham Lincoln once said, “One war at a time.”)  Because the CORT’s bow has roughly a 45-degree angle, this worked out fine for now.  At some time in the future I will attempt a better bow design.  The stern threw me a bit of a curve, as the gunwales are tapered over the last ninety feet of the ship, and the bottom of the hull curves upwards to form the cavity that includes the screws and rudders.  Fortunately, for this taper, I was able to use the wedge-shaped bricks and plates that LEGO began producing back in 2002.  For the upward curve of the hull, I used a series of stepped plates, varying it as needed to give the S-shaped profile.

One problem with the bow was that the model’s width is an odd number of studs - thirty-five - which introduces many inconveniences for the LEGO builder (there are no odd-sized parts larger than three studs).  While this is the case throughout the model, it was especially bothersome when working with the pilothouse and other detail at the bow.  To relieve myself of this problem, I introduced a single-stud decrease in width at the very start of the bow taper.  By mating single-hole 1x2 Technic bricks single-hole 1x1 Technic I was able to take advantage of the different hole positions to create a shift of ½ stud at each gunwale, for a total adjustment exactly one stud.  This reduced the width to thirty-four studs, leaving me with even widths from that point forward.  Because this occurred at the very beginning of the bow taper, it looks very natural and I was able to do it very inconspicuously.  While I was pleased to have found the solution on this model, I have been known to swear that I will never again build an odd-width model, regardless of whether scale and accuracy dictate it!

Hull Completion

Each of the nineteen components – bow, stern, and seventeen mid-body segments – include four 1x1 Technic bricks on the surface facing their neighboring segments.  Using the friction pins in these special bricks, the segments are snapped together and easily taken apart for storage and transportation.  This feature also allows for the bow and stern to be connected to form the “Stubby” configuration.

Other Notes

Current Disposition of the Model