That is one gorgeous vessel. I love the style and period, they are definitely rarely seen in LEGO. So many details on here, they just really bring it to life.

The usage of a pneumatic system, for the wheels, is really impressive. So is the steering wheel system. Awesome work, and marvellous ship!

http://www.mocpages.com/moc.php/281001 mines up,but the photos don't do it justice

hey would you guess i have lossy based my ship on the Sirius from the beginning! and thanks for all the help,i appreciate it!

Look at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steamboat#Ocean-going_steamships click on each of the sailing steamships and look at their sail plan. You can see that the first ones are three masted full rigged (square-rigged) ships, but as time passes, we see "hermaphrodite brigantines" like the Zavala and the SS Sirius http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SS_Sirius_%281837%29 then multi-masted schooners, then lose the paddle wheels for propellers. Hope this helps. I'll check it out! enjoy kurt

thanks! from your comments in the age of sail chats i get the impression you know a lot about sails,for a steam sail ship do you know what kind of sails it needs? and maybe you could check out mine once its finished?

I am glad you like it! There are a few others: http://www.eurobricks.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=23991&view=findpost&p=412135 Each of the two mast are at the bottom double stacked 4844 & 2537. You can see here: http://www.mocpages.com/image_zoom.php?mocid=87302&id=/user_images/18066/12309234651 enjoy kurt

This is an awesome ship! i am currently building a side wheel paddle steamer,and this is the only Lego model of one i could find,do you have any tips for me? and also this ship is magnificent the detail and technical abilities are marvellous,and the sails are done nicely too.but what pieces did you use for your mast?

I am glad you like it. The RTS Zavala is approximately minifig scale, it’s 1.2 feet per stud. The scale was set by the width of the hull center pieces with two rows of inverted slopes on each side. That set the beam width width, and on the original Zavala that beam width was 24 feet. Working off of the drawing from the INA article: see image above. I then could know the length and width of the model in studs, I could then figure out how many hull center sections. When you have an accurate drawing and you follow it, to scale, fairly closely (with a few calculated changes), I do think you get a better looking model. The early fast packet steamships wanted to go as fast as possible, to achieve this they made their in-the-water hull very long and narrow. Why? because the speed of a hull through the water is proportional to a constant (called a Froude number) times the squareroot of the length of the hull at the "moving" (not resting) waterline divided-by the width of the hull (ie. drag). The Zavala was built in 1836 as a "fast" (for her time) packet steamship named the Charleston she had a hull waterline width (beam) of 24 feet and a waterline length of ~190 feet, ie. very long and narrow. However from port outside paddle-wheel shell to outside starboard paddle-wheel shell (measured from the scaled drawing) was ~50 feet.

A wonderful example how well the combination of technic and system can work out without much sacrifices on either side! Even though the use of prefabs seems at least odd on that scale, it does have a certain charm to it.

Now that's what I call a ship. It's huge and beautiful!

Wow, a beauty of a ship, this one is actually what inspired me to try (and badly) to do my paddle wheeler, back when I saw it on eurobricks:D

I am glad you like it! That video question is asked here: http://www.mocpages.com/group_conversation.php?id=2600&topicid=34185 I used the embed and pasted it into my page.

AMAZING!!!! how do you attach the video to the page?

Hi Mike! Building a LEGO model of the USS Constitution is VERY serious task to take on. There are two good examples that I know of, Ben Fleskes at http://www.bigbenbricks.com/ben/lego/ussconstitution/index.html and Phred's "Work-In-Progress" at http://www.eurobricks.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=10234 . Have you build a number of LEGO ships already? If not you might build a few to warm-up to that task. Try my small ship here: http://www.mocpages.com/moc.php/87809 (has instructions) and/or build along with Capt. Green Hair at: http://www.eurobricks.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=30622 . Enjoy kurt

im thinking of trying to bulid the u.s.s. constitution id like any help you can give me.

I am glad you like it! More "realistic" is OK, but "not out of LEGO" is not. I don't need to simulate spokes, the paddle wheels have spokes! There are few old early photos of the paddle-wheels here: http://www.brickshelf.com/cgi-bin/gallery.cgi?f=225622 Those wheels were too large in diameter, and I had shrink them, 8 studs as I recall. You do understand that the real ship Zavala had paddle-wheel shells, and that my models' paddle wheels turn when you run the engines? kurt

Truly an excellent creation! Well worth the 1st prize! (Congratz)

ummmm, apparently u have a good camera and a bad one. nice, the wheels should be round and real, not made of bricks. but for having brick wheels u did an excellent job on them

It may well have been, but my model has adjustable valve gear timing. see http://www.brickshelf.com/cgi-bin/gallery.cgi?i=3592076

The ship is great, but the engine seems to be starting the strokes at the wrong time.

Thanks for the high praise! "if it floated" (it wouldn't weighs to much, LEGOs are to dense, and it would leak!) and it would need to better sails, like plastic sails that RC sail-boats have. So if it was a RC sailing ship model of this exact shape, yes then I think you could sail it.

This is astonishing! You don't see many Technic ships, and the complexity of this one explains it! Awesome detail in every part, could be nothing other than a (very rare) 10/10 P.S In theory, if it floated, could it sail?