The lake steamer URI was named after the Canton (county) Uri, which borders the large mountain ringed lake of Lucerne, Switzerland. I had the privilege of seeing URI steaming across the lake whilst travelling on a sister-ship, the STADT LUZERN, during a tour of central Europe last year. Needless to say I was grabbed by paddle-steamer fever! I wanted a model of such a steamer in my collection, but alas the only model kit I knew of is the GOETHE Rhine steamer from Revell Germany. Nice enough but a bit too modern and definitely not Swiss! While in Berne (capital of Switzerland) I saw in a model shop some ready built models of the steamers in 1/400, full hull, nice enough and not that expensive, alas which one should I choose? I dithered about, in the end thought I could always mail order them at a later date, yet back home in the UK sense prevailed (they were costly) and no paddle-steamer collection was purchased! BUT then, I came across a model of URI on the German arm of E-bay, advertised as waterline, slightly damaged. It was a 1/400 model from the Hamburg firm of ‘Collecta’ (I believe no longer trading) who produced a series of high quality cased collector’s models from sailing ships to paddle steamers! The URI was built of a die-cast hull furnished with an entirely photo-etched superstructure, and some canny and intricate design features which sadly prevented me from ripping the model apart totally to make it finer, especially the rails.

The model arrived with the aft awning damaged beyond repair, mast broken and various bits missing and damaged. The lettering for the name was all but invisible, flags were clunky and flat, the windows were unglazed, the seating was a strange colour, the paddlebox overhangs had no supporting struts, the deck overhangs had no struts, the funnel was devoid of steam pipes etc. It all looked like a quick easy and fun project.... and it was! I wanted to depict the vessel steaming along the lake with her decks crowded with passengers. This meant I had to lever open tins of paint in bright colours that have been sealed for decades! I even had to buy some bright colours to allow me to 'clothe' the multitude of passengers seated and standing. Waving at people on shore is common, so many of the 'saluting' GMM figures had their arms parted from caps to wave, whilst the remainder had to be bent to various seating poses, ladies had bare upper-arms, some in short skirts! The large canopy frame was re-made from brass wire and then covered with thinned white glue to represent the canvas awning. Note that some of the steamers have had the semi-permanent 'canopy' replaced with gray painted aluminum sheeting, so these should be represented as totally flat, much easier to model using styrene sheet! URI still retains the original canvas style. The flags were made on my PC using an Alps printer onto decal-sheet over aluminum foil. The lettering for the name was also made in the above manner, two decals being made, one in black and one in gold then overlaid on the model to produce the shaded effect; I am sure that a skilful PC user could combine this operation in one decal. The model was set onto a artists textured watercolor paper ‘sea’ (lake!) and rigged with sprue in my usual manner which I have described at length in the HOW-TO section at www.modelwarships.com. It has made a most unusual model, which was a great change from the more warlike shipping I usually build.