Some of you may have noticed that I have not posted any new projects for quite some time. It is not for lack of making one. It has just taken me nearly three months to develop a new Legacy Train idea, sketch up a design, put it into PowerPoint, scale it, and plan for the fabrication and assembly of parts. I have close to three hundred hours in it all told. In April or early May I posted a small toy train for my grandson that runs on wooden track, but I wanted something fancier for him to remember me by and so I came up with the idea for a special Legacy Circus Train. It is a toy to be sure, but not really one to play with, especially for a three-year-old. This will have to go on a shelf until he is old enough to appreciate it as art. As do most all of my projects, it has a measure of recycled parts that seem to meet and fit into the overall scheme of things. This train is patterned on the old Circus Trains from the early 1920's. It has an engine, coal car, Giraffe car, Calliope with an electronic music box, a Big Top storage car, Lion car and a Caboose. Some of the special parts include an on/off switch and battery holder from a broken wind-up flashlight. It has three positions so I have a red LED in nose of the locomotive and a separate white LED in the cab of the engine that can come on. I used a winding wheel from an old disposable camera as the face of the engine boiler as well as a metal wheel that once held a hard drive in a PC on the front of the engine. Other parts inside the cab are from electronic circuit boards and colored wire from other electrical devices. The electronic music box is pretty cool. I wanted the Calliope to play circus music, but I could not find any pre-programed electronic or wind-up music boxes so I got this one and it is programable. I edited the Clown March, Man on the Flying trapeze and The Thunderer by Souza songs into an MP3 file and loaded that into the player. It is really nice!
While I was in the middle of making this train, Dremel offered me the opportunity to test out one of their Mdl 3100 Rotary tools. I can tell you that it came in very handy indeed. I have a Mdl 4300 variable speed tool that I use in my Dremel drill press, but it takes time to pull it on and off in order to use the tool by hand, so the new variable speed 3100 was a nice addition to my tool set. I would also say that it is incredibly quiet, fits nicely in your hand and the variable speed switch is actually much handier than the rotating switch one on the 4300. I like the tool! So, the train is made from maple on the cars, walnut on the roofs, black locust on the boiler and redwood for the car bases. There were many trials and errors and a lot more to making it than I can say here. When you make something like this there are no instructions for assembly and it is very easy to put things together too soon and cause you trouble later in the process. Like the switch for the Calliope. It is a simple square hole and I could have done it in a few minutes if I had left the walls of the car alone, but I had glued them together and put them on the base before I remembered that I needed a hole. It took about two hours to cut and square the hole with an X-Acto knife. I wanted a vintage look and so I got some amber tinted shellac to finish it with. Overall, I am pleased with how it turned out and I think he will like it when he gets older.
