Yorkshire man spends 4,000 hours painstakingly building six-foot replica of North Sea ferry

Carl Barlow, 57, has been working on the laborious project to create a 6ft model of the MV Norstar for the last three years – and he still hasn't put the finishing touches to it.

Carl has painted every component of the replica, whose real life counterpart operated between Hull and Europe for almost three decades, by hand to a scale of 1/150.

He has even deviated away from the instructions in the model kit and extended the ship by eight inches to keep it to scale of the original ship which was "stretched" by 21 metres.

Carl, who has been making models for more than 40 years, just has the small matter of finishing 33ft of hand-railing around the model, which he hopes will be complete by August.

He said: "Everything has been made separately and painted then put together. I got the kit in 2018 but put it on the back burner a bit. Last year, I picked it back up and really got into it. I’ve done an hour or two at a time after work and spent time on it at the weekend. It has taken a long time and there’s still 33ft of handrail left.

“All the easy bit has done, it’s just the hard bits now like the hand-railing, which itself takes about half a day to to just one foot because of the detail involved. It would have been quicker to build a real ship.”

Carl, a gardener who lives with his wife Beverley, 68, in Todmorden, said the project was "time consuming, but well worth it".

He used to make Airfix models of planes as a youngster before moving onto larger models as he got older and has his own modelling room where he keeps his creations.

The hull of the boat is made from fibre glass, which he cut in half before inserting an additional section to extend the length of the model.

The decking is made of a wooden superstructure which was inserted into the ship and each hole for the hand railing has had to be drilled individually.

Carl added: "I have done a few ships over the past 30 years on a smaller scale but it has been a while since I’ve done a boat. I’ve always loved models and fixing things, I used to go to antiques fairs as a kid and buy a dinky toy and put it together, restore it and sell it for a profit. I could make a living out of it, but then it wouldn’t be fun anymore.

“I found a guy online who started making kits of car ferries the first kit he produced was the spirit of Amsterdam. He put online that he was going to produce the Norland and my ears pricked up because I have been over to Rotterdam a few times on that ferry.

“When I saw it had the blue and white livery, I realised it was the ship that had been stretched by 21 metres so I knew straight away it needed to be longer. He designed a centre piece which was twice the size I wanted so I had to cut that down.

“I did the same thing with the model that they did with the actual ship, I cut it in half, added the centre piece, then glued it back together. I stretched it by eight inches to make it to the scale of the original ship. It was important to me that it was exactly to scale.”

Carl, a former Army reservist who has two twin sons and two step-daughters, will keep the delicate model on display in a special room at his house.

It is designed to be a radio-controlled ship that can be used on water, but it is too delicate to sail due to the modifications, he said.

Instead, he hopes it will one day be on display in the P&O ferries terminal in Hull, where the original ship used to set sail from on crossing to Holland.

He added: “It is a radio controlled model, but it won’t be sailed as it’s too delicate. When it’s complete, I’m hoping to get a glass casing for it to be on display like a museum piece. It will stay in my display room, the wife won’t have it in the living room. I might even get in touch with P&O ferries to see if they want to have it on display at their port in Hull for six months of the year.”