Ob was the flag ship of a series of Russian Antarctic expeditions. She was built in Holland with supervision of soviet engineers in 1953 with her sister Lena. The ships were built specially forsevere arctic weather. The hull was strengthened, the propellers were solid stainless steel. The vessels were 130m long and 18.8m wide. They were diesel-electric ships. 4 diesel generator provided the power needed to operate. They could speed up to 15 knots.
In 1956 Ob joined the Antarctic expedition. She brought researches and equipment and landed them on ice. After some time, her sister brought more equipment. For the following years, Ob made frequent voyages to Antarctic region to deliver supplies and change the crew. She also visited many other countries and became a very popular ship in science society.
One of the visitors was Norwegian scientist Thor Heyerdahl, who proved his theory that ancient people could make long sea voyages by constructing a balsa raft and setting sail from south America to Polynesian islands. It was called Kon-Tiki expedition. In 2012, a movie was made about this journey. Click here to see.
First mate Victor A. Tkachev opened a small museum onboard Ob and he displayed minerals found in expedition, stuffed penguins and some more relevant items. There were also Japanese woman and child figures and a traditional cherry tree on display, which were donated by Japanese icebreaker Soya’s crew, the ship which Ob saved from ice earlier.
The blueprints have an issue. The place of the frames (or ribs) are not shown on the profile plan. But seems like with equal distances, it will be alright. I did not try or measure, but it seems like the plan is enough to build a scale model replica of this great vessel.