Little Vehicle Train

In addition to the cars I also made a train for this series.  Same design principles as the rest of the series.  It was basic enough to make several and just enough to challenge to learn and try new things.

The main learning came from the large dowels.  I needed to put a flat surface on them.  The last time I did this I attached it to a board and ran it through a band saw.  This worked ok. It did not remain as flat after I sanded away the tooling marks.  This time I had a plane, but I did not have a sturdy workbench or reference plane.  That is where the table saw came in.  it is a flat surface with a ripping fence.  It worked great.

The holes on the chassis for the cars also proved to be a challenge.  One is ¼” and the other is 9/32” both should be drilled at the same time.  I really did not want to guess which side to put the groove.  I ended up only drilling part way through.  This way the side that was not drilled, was the side I grooved.

I really liked how the train turned out.  It is 22 inches long and about 4 ½” tall.

My first Train

Here is the prototype of the train that I have been discussing in the design process.  The good news about the prototype is that it can be stained and used.  If I was going to make an actual one it would be out of maple and walnut.  However this would be very cost prohibitive for a prototype.  This train is made out of poplar and oak dowels.  There are other woods used  because they are purchased parts.
It was a fun little design project. From start to finish it took about 8 weeks.  This includes drawing and building times.
This is the complete train.  Six cars and each car is about 9 inches long.  In my humble opinion it looks great.  In designing this train, I wanted something durable and age appropriate for the 3-8 year old range.  I also wanted to use only basic tools that a toy maker should have (scroll say, table saw, small router, drill press, and belt sander). The only tools I used in addition to the list was a miter saw and band saw.  Both I could have used other tools but for ease I used the others.  It passes the durability test.  My kids used some of the cars as a riding toy. It is big enough for the kids to put things in it and push it a long. 

 

The Locomotive 

The great thing about this engine is that I did not need to buy a lathe for this project.  The bad thing is that I was not able to buy a lathe for this project.  The boiler is a turned part that was provided to me from Lowe's at a reasonable price.  My second option was to buy a wood rolling pin and cut it to size.  It just would not have looked as good.  Hardest part of the locomotive was proportions.  I wanted to make it the biggest car.  but it did not look right until it was reduced in length.  The cabin was made slightly larger.  I tried putting bigger wheels on it and that didn't work.  So this is the final design.  The roof and the cow catcher are the only parts that I used the band saw on.

Sorry for the green in the picture.  It is not that green in the person.  It is the light and poplar.

The Tinder Car

This was a relatively easy car.  There is not anything fancy about it

The Box Car

This was a fun little car to build.  There really isn't anything fancy about it.  The door is big enough to fit things through and the top has a roof to put things on top.  This car is where I realized I should have offset the sides.  If I made the middle section and top different sizes, the middle would not have looked so crooked.

Cage Car

I thought this was going to be an easy car to assemble.  I drilled everything together so the holes would line up and all the dowels were cut to the same size.  The problem was the dowels are a tight fit and not perfectly straight.  It took a little bit of work but it came together.  Next I will round over the ends of the dowels so the go in easier. It is an easy process of chucking the dowel in a drill and running the end at an angle on sandpaper.

Flat Bed Car

Another pretty basic car.  It takes the roof from the box car and puts it on a chassis. 

Caboose

No matter how hard I tried to make this the smallest car it wanted to be the same size as the others.  The main feature I wanted on this car was the balcony.  It also proved to be the most troublesome.  I ended up changing  the balcony in the final drawings so the two corner posts do not go to the roof.  When trying to assemble the balcony I broke it twice.  I ended up drilling the thru holes larger then the dowel so that I was not pushing it through. That solved the problem but it was still a pain to remake parts.

Here are a couple of pictures of some of the details on the train.

Top roof detail of the cage car and caboose

Decoration around the wheels

I drilled through the floor to set the dowels.  It made it easier to assemble.

Fun little design.  It is a little bigger than I thought. Each car is about 9" in length.  Pretty much all the joints are re-enforced with dowels.  I was surprised of how much dowel I used.  It makes for a very strong toy.

The Workman Train

Finished another train.  This one was also featured in the Sacramento train museum.  Sorry the picture is so bad.  If you want to see the picture better copy and paste it into MS Word and play with the bright and contrast buttons.

Here is the complete train it was fun and a challenge to build.  It was worked on along with the train in the previous post.

There are a five cars to the train and some are suppose to have moving parts.

The locomotive and tinder are made out of pine.  The boiler is actually made out of cypress.  I was given a turning blank from a co-worker and this seemed to be the project to use it on.  Just a note, I did an initial turning to cut it down to size and get to rough dimensions.  I missed a week of class and in two weeks the wood had warped where I did the plunge cuts.  Lots of sanding on the lathe and the parts remained a little over sized.  It still turned out though.

This is the crane and taker.  The tanker was pretty easy the crane however was the last car finished.  the crane does move but not very well.  I don't know if I could design it better or I just like that it sort of works.

This is the side dump car and the hopper.  The side dump car really works.  The hopper was made on the band saw.
There are a couple of cool features with these trains. The General,  Diesel, and this train are all interchangeable cars.  This means that one of those long trains that blocks traffic for a while can be made out all three of these trains.
On a side note.  if any of the people that I have given blocks to have a block that has this profile to it:

Can I please get it back.  I miss counted how many wheel covers I needed and I am about 16 short.  I may have used the block all up so I don't know if it made it to the scrap block give away.

The General Train

 

Well I completed another train.  I thought I was done with trains and this was in the Great Book of Wooden Toys.  I had to use a lathe so I completed the engine in the class I took a while ago.  The cool thing is that I was able to see this train in the Sacramento Train museum last year while I was making it.  

 

This is the complete train.  It only has four cars and not that hard to make except the engine.  The hardest part was the engine.  The engine looks like a deadly weapon with the cow catcher on it.  

 All the round parts for the engine was made out of a single turning.  Fun to do but it was a trouble to make sure the smoke stack, sand pipe, light and bell all in the same line.  The cow catcher was one of the last parts I made because I needed a bandsaw.  I really enjoy using the bandsaw and it makes the smaller cuts a lot easier.

 There are three passenger cars to this train. These are the baggage and passenger car.  

The final car is the observation deck.  It was a lot of small parts and drilling.

The train is made out of pine and walnut.  There is some birch, maple and beech because they were conveniently the correct size scrap.

Another Train

 

It has been a little while since I have posted a completed  project.  I have been busy doing a lot of things, however I have been asked to build a couple of trains for Christmas.  I just completed them after 4 months.  I can't say they were all that easy even though the design was fairly straight forward.  In all there are seven cars and and and engine.  Three of the cars are "learning  cars", pictured below.  There is one train in walnut (shown) and the second is in oak.  I was hoping there was a little more contrast between the oak and the maple but it still came out nice.  The plans came from Making Toys that Teach.  I have done a couple of projects from the book (my favorite the dominoes).

The first car is a fraction car.  This consists of four dowels: one full length, one cut in half, another cut in thirds and the last cut into fourths.  The shape care has three shapes that fit into cut-outs.  The last car is the color car.  This car consists of ten slabs of five different types of wood.  Each wood is a distinct color.  I am proud that I could do this without any stains or dies.  The woods in order are: Purple Heart (Purple), Walnut (brown), Poplar (green), Oak (light brown), Maple (white).  

I learned a few things on this train that I would not have expected.  First, I love my airbrush I bought a couple of years ago.  It made finishing these trains less time consuming and easier.  In the past I uses a 1/2" paint brush and finish toys because of all the small parts and crevasses.  Very tedious and a pain in the neck.  Second, wood swells in humidity.  I knew this, however while making these trains I drilled axle whole 1/32" larger than the dowel.  I was assembling them this past weekend when it was rainy.  To my horror the axles had expanded so the wheels would not spin.  Cars are no fun if the wheels do not turn.  Since I only had one set of wheels on, it was easy to re-drill all holes.

My son also helped my assemble the trains. 

There is a better video but apparently it does not want to load.

He also had fun carrying around the hammer and eat glue.  He is also apparently vary afraid of my cordless drill.

And as always, leave it up to the 18 month old to find the flaw in the design.  Who even said a round peg doesn't fit in the square hole.  After that discovery, the square peg didn't have a home and the round peg took up residence in the square hole.  It even looks like he is saying, "Dad, this is not suppose to work!"  Got to love kids.

My First Train

This was the first time I had ordered plans from a catalog and it was worth it. The plans are from Playstar but I found them on Meisel Hardware. The plans are copy righted so I will not be posting them. I made these a while back because I thought they would be good Christmas gifts and I could donate some to toy drives at Christmas. Well it was a large project to make five of these and it took longer than I thought it would. All the sets were donated mostly to family but I only kept the one for myself. One day I will probably make more.

The plans were great. Full size and all dimensioned. Most of the lumber is standard and can be purchased at a local hardware store. The wheels can also be purchased from Meisel Hardware but I prefer Bearcraft. The only tricky part was the groves for the linking pins. This was done on a table saw with a dado blade. I needed a reason to buy some more tools and I got one.

To let you know a time frame, I made these when my wife and I were dating. She may have applied the finish to these. I would consider these great baby toys. They are big to grab, no small parts and easy to make. One note: there are pegs on the flat bed to rubber band logs to, don't put them on and don't make the logs; kids put their toys in them and haul them around.

There are also two truck series that go with this train. I personally liked some of the trucks but some of them seemed a little plain. These will be on another post.

The Desiel Train

This is the first train and second toy that I made after I started only making toys. I still make other stuff but found a real niche in toys. Toys also don't take up as much room as furniture. The interesting part of this train is that I did it during an adult woodworking class. Last year I decided to take the adult woodworking class at Chaffey High School. Basically I had access to all the tools and was under the super vision of a teacher. This train actually changed my view on toys.

I will talk about the boring stuff first though. It is 54" long and is made out of walnut and pine. It was mostly scrap from previous projects. The plans came out of the Toys, Games , and Furniture book by Reader's Digest. The book has some good ideas but I really was not impressed with the drawings and dimensions.

I don't see this train as a toy. It is more of a model. I see an eight-year-old playing with this train and it was around our tree at Christmas because it looks really good. I don't say that to boast because it really is not to scale and has some blemishes. This train is more of a showing piece. Two of the cars have small ladders. The wheel coverings are thin and can break easily and the box car door really moves. The links are wire hook and eye screws. I read an article in The Wood Magazine about toy making that I have embraced. A toy is something that you take to make well and may only last the amount of time that was put in to make it before it breaks. But it brings a smile to a child's face and a glimmer to their eye. I would be disappointed if this train broke therefore I do not see this as a toy.

Interestingly enough I gleaned a fair amount of knowledge from this project. I learned how to use a band saw to re-saw wood (take lumber and cutting it to different thicknesses). A lot of the parts to this train were 3/8" thick. It would be a huge waste of wood to plane 3/4" wood to half it's thickness. This is where the re-sawing comes in, I cut the standard lumber in half. Please also note that I could not do this without being in the class because I had access to an industrial band saw and an industrial planer. This project is also where I learned that a little bit of color goes a long way. My accent wood is walnut and it makes different details stand out and the entire project look that much better. The walnut used was all considered scrap. This was also a project that was a confidence builder for me. It was fun to make but I don't know what I am going to do with it. Right now it is sitting on a shelf behind other toys so that when children come over they don't see it.

The Passenger Train

This train was made along side the train mentioned below just that this finished first. This one really tested my skills at the scroll saw (and I am still not very good). All the windows and doors had to be cut out using a scroll saw. I thought it was a clever idea to double stick tape the faces together so that I was cutting two pieces instead of one and I have matching parts. I did not realize how much of a pain it was to remove double stick tape. However I would do it again. I made two of them, the picture below shows all six cars and has a walnut roof. The one above has mahogany roofs.

If you are wondering why I make multiples of projects it is for this very reason: It is just as easy to make one as it is to make two or three. I can always find some child to give the extra to (Lately it has been for baby showers).

Here is a note on the materials used. The sides are made out of a veneered MDF which is why I am hesitant to give this train away. Some MDF contains chemicals known to cause health issues. I typically don't use MDF but I received this for free so I wasn't going to waste it. I am sure it is fine but when purchasing furniture and wooden toys for kids try to stay away from MDF and particle board. As long as the children don't eat this train it is fine and will cause no problems.

This also came from the book Making Heirloom Toys.

My latest train

This is the last train I made. For the most part there was nothing that was really complicated except that I was making very small parts. The wheels and smoke stack were purchased; thank goodness for that. The pattern came from the Making Heirloom Toys. I did however learn how to cut a flat bottom on a dowel. That was interesting. It is outlined in the book but essentially glue the ends of a dowel to a scrap block and run it through the table saw. The other way is to hand plane it. My nephew picked this train out for Christmas last year.