Meet the dedicated band of park pond admirals keeping the art of model boat building alive - even if their families don't always understand...

Published: 22:02, 14 August 2026 | Updated: 22:02, 14 August 2026 We are well into the forenoon when the Macduff-registered twin-rig trawler sets sail into the wide blue yonder. Pretty soon, odd things happen. Firstly, a lighthouse hoves into view appearing too tiny next to the fishing vessel.  Then, a giant swan twice the height of the trawler’s masthead looms menacingly in the distance. Tiny lighthouses and giant swans – the sea can sometimes bend perspective in strange ways, but this is Gulliver-esque madness. Luckily, a flick of the controls and the trawler is scooting happily back towards land and away from the colossal fowl. Calm is restored to the bridge. A few more dinks to port and starboard and the boat soon responds more confidently to my novice command. The truth is, of course, that the swan is normal size – everything else, including the trawler and the lighthouse, part of the scaled-down fantasy world of radio-controlled model boating. The trawler I am navigating round a historic boating pond in Glasgow’s East End is just one of an impressive flotilla of tugs, fire tenders, Royal Navy warships and even a CalMac ferry which sail under the flag of Richmond Park Model Boat Club. It doesn’t take long before the vessel I have been loaned is gliding effortlessly through the water, dodging boats and other obstacles, and this avowed landlubber is master of the high seas – or at least the wee pond. ‘It’s quite therapeutic, isn’t it?’ said club committee member Douglas Coupethwaite. Certainly, it’s hard not to smile. And like a fish on a hook, one more fan has been captured by the beguiling charm of this increasingly popular hobby. Enthusiast Jim Hainey carries out work on a boat Once bracketed with unfashionable interests like kite-flying and flower-pressing, the pastime of building and sailing model boats appears to be undergoing an unlikely revival in the digital age. A hundred years ago, Scottish parks would have echoed to the sounds of men and boys racing model yachts across their local boating ponds. Propelled by Scotland’s proud shipbuilding and sailing heritage, model boats were once a vital part of industry as miniature blueprints to test the designs for new vessels, from battlecruisers and merchant steamers to luxury liners. With shipbuilding on the wane, the rise of computer games and high-octane outdoor pursuits were bound to take their toll. Yet somehow model boating has survived the onslaught. And far from being consigned to black and white images of yesteryear like so many of the shipyards they once served, Scotland’s model boat clubs are quietly thriving. From Glasgow’s city parks to Largs, from Stobsmuir Pond in Dundee to Anstruther in Fife and Aberdeen, membership is robust. Richmond Park, for example, has around 70 members from many different walks of life, bound by a common desire to mess about with boats. ‘We’ve had lawyers, doctors, joiners, electricians, painters, and it doesn’t matter if you earn 60 grand or 60 quid a year, at the end of the day, we’re all the same in that club,’ said club chairman Ronnie Morlan. The current crop includes a retired Shell operations manager, a former steelyards worker and an unemployed factory worker. Like other clubs, they also have women members and the odd junior member although, again like other clubs, the demographic is firmly skewed towards men of a certain age. It is soon obvious that heading out to the boating pond offers the kind of camaraderie many miss from the workplace. For some it is a chance to get out of the house and socialise. ‘It is so important,’ said Mr Morlan. ‘Long gone are the days when men would go to the pub every night. They can’t afford it or they don’t feel safe going out at night any more.’ Mr Morlan, a former shopfitter, has seen the rise in interest after turning his hobby into a job, running the Uddingston Model Shop in the Lanarkshire town. ‘At the end of the day, it is a bit of escapism, isn’t it?’ he said. His own interest started as a boy with trips up to the legendary Clyde Model Dockyard hobby shop in Glasgow to spend his pocket money with his fellow hobbyist father. ‘I was just blown away by all the colour, all the artwork and the packaging,’ he said. It never left him. Mr Morlan admits conversations with fellow hobbyists are different to the chats he would have with his wife: ‘If I was to sit and talk to my wife about how many gun turrets HMS Hood had, she’d be like, “Are you having a laugh?”’ He added: ‘She thinks we’re all mad, but she’s got her knitting classes and it’s the same thing; the girls all have a natter. That’s their bit of escapism.’ While the clubs have a vibrant present, they are rooted in the past and the time when the shipyards dominated Scotland’s heavy industry. That includes Dundee, whose club can trace its history back to 1885 and the heyday of the jute trade. Hugh ‘Shug’ Stevenson at the Richmond Park Model Boat Club in Glasgow Its president, Niall Thomas, said many of its 65 or so members are ex-Navy or Merchant Navy and include a bomb disposal squad diver and a naval police officer. He got into it after the death of his father, a modeller who built an American battle cruiser, USS Newport News, from original plans which cost him 12s and 6d. ‘After he died, I got it going and sailed it because it had never been on the water before,’ he said. ‘That’s what started it, something to remember my dad by. ‘It doesn’t get sailed very often because it’s my pride and joy.’ It was built with anything his father had to hand, like buttons and cotton reels. ‘When I point details out people are amazed, like the buttons he covered in cotton wire mesh and painted black to turn them into radar,’ said Mr Thomas. Of course, building the boats brings much of the joy to some. ‘It means learning about electronics, about radio control, about turning a drawing into a miniature replica of a real boat. And people really enjoy picking up all those skills’ said Mr Morlan.  ‘There’s always someone on hand who can help with the electrics or sorting a mast or whatever.’ There is a real thrill being at the helm of a finished boat as the public will find out tomorrow when the club hosts its annual summer regatta. A crowd of at least 100 is expected. ‘Being in charge of a radio-controlled boat, you decide what’s going to happen, making sure you don’t crash into other boats but taking it wherever you like,’ said Mr Coupethwaite, who spent his career with Shell and now commutes from Gargunnock, near Stirling, to follow his passion. The 79-year-old, who served in the Royal Naval Reserve in his youth, has strong family connections to the John Brown shipyards at Clydebank and fondly recalls the times when workers and their families would be invited to walk round a vessel they had just finished. ‘It seems this might be in my DNA,’ he said. Modern-day boats, he points out, now use wifi instead of the old CB radio bands which would often interfere with local taxi services to the distraction of the local taxi dispatchers. He shows me round the old boating pavilion which now serves as the clubhouse for their Wednesday and Sunday meetings. It features a workshop with fret saws and bandsaws and clever sanders, and a kitchen and recreation room where the air is filled with the heady scent of glues and paints. ‘Some of the guys are more into building boats than sailing them and others like both,’ he said. Hugh ‘Shug’ Stevenson, a member since the club was founded 40 years ago, sits at his usual seat working away on yet another war machine, this one a Second World War landing craft he is converting into a US river gunboat from the Vietnam War. It’s a running joke among fellow club members that ‘anything Shug builds has to have lots of guns on it’. This one does, filched from a tank. Richmond Park Model Boat Club committee member Douglas Coupethwaite He’s a dab hand at fashioning a radar dish from the lid of a drinks bottle and aerials from offcuts of brass wire. ‘I once made a wee survey submarine out of a Coke bottle,’ said Shug, who worked in fire safety. While they all strive for accuracy, Richmond Park scorns the so-called ‘rivet-counters’ – po-faced perfectionists who won’t let even the tiniest error go. We run into Dianne Quinn, who is preparing for the maiden voyage of a tug boat she has transformed into a glorious, technicoloured fantasy vessel, complete with fire-breathing mythical beast and dragon-wing sails. It is quite unlike anything produced by the men. The crossing goes without a hitch. It’s her first boat. ‘I used to come with my husband Alex and when he died a few years ago, I just kept coming. Mostly, I enjoy sailing the boats and drinking coffee,’ she laughed. John ‘JP’ Park, a sprightly 79-year-old former steelworker, has been coming for around four years, as he sought a way to cope with his wife’s mental health issues. ‘She’s pretty bad with depression and my daughter was telling me to find a hobby to take my mind off it. I was just passing the club and had a go on a boat,’ he said. JP now has 30 of his own: ‘It’s like a disease; you get hooked on it. But it’s helped me as my health was going down as well. They’re a good bunch of guys and it’s been like therapy for me.’ Most members own multiple boats. Even Bobby McGinty, who only joined a matter of months ago, already has four to his name. ‘It took me a long time to join,’ said the 68-year-old former Scottish Water worker. ‘I was quite happy to watch but they kept saying, “Have a shot”, and I knew I would get hooked.’ He added: ‘It was a good way to get a walk with my dog.’ For others, it is a way to escape the drudge of unemployment. David ‘Junior’ Howey, 42, a member for 13 years, is between jobs, having worked in factories and call centres. All he wants to talk about is his beloved Flying Fulmar tug which was once owned by the late Commonwealth gold medallist, Lachie Stewart – the closest thing model boating has to celebrity. ‘The Falmer was originally based at Greenock where I’m from. It came up at auction and I would have paid any price for it, but got it for £350,’ he said. That apparently is a good price for such a detailed model. Some can cost more than £1,000. Others can be dirt cheap if you start off with some scrap wood and do all the work yourself, but that can take years. Model yachting on a park pond in days gone by Others have embraced modern technology and are using 3D printers to ‘print out’ boat sections and details from scale plans using plastic filament, reducing the build time to as little as a month. One ambitious 3D project involves creating a replica of the massive Mein Schiff 2, a 315-metre, 16-deck luxury cruise liner. ‘Some regard it as cheating, but it still takes a lot of work to smooth down the joints and fit it all together,’ said Mr Coupethwaite. The renewed interest in model boats has even led to the revival of the famed Glasgow Model Dockyard, which began life in 1789 designing model ships for the Admiralty before evolving into a hobby shop. It closed its doors in the late 1970s but Glasgow School of Art graduate and lifelong modeller, Christian Pomeroy, bought the name and now produces high-quality model kits from his workshop on the Isle of Arran, in the Firth of Clyde. One best-seller is his clinker-built wooden model based on Swallow from Arthur Ransome’s Swallows and Amazons. Mr Pomeroy, who started making Airfix kits when he was six or seven, recently paid himself a small wage for the first time since starting the business, testament to the growing popularity of model boat owning. He maintains getting to play God in your own watery universe will never lose its appeal. ‘You can just sort of inhabit the boat without incurring berthing fees and the Lloyd’s Register tariff when you accidentally crash it,’ he said. ‘That’s what they say about having a real boat, isn’t it? It’s a hole in the water into which you pour money. ‘The other one is that the two happiest days of a boat owner’s life is the day he buys it and the day he sells it.’