I have set aside the Sphinx model for awhile as I move into a new project.  Ryan contacted me with a suggestion to make some wooden trains for the twins.  He was thinking the expensive yet trivial wooden trains that run around on a track like hot wheels.  The boys apparently like trains.

Well, that trivial train set is not going to happen, but it has given me a challenge.  I am going to make a couple of toy train sets for Noah and Charlie that they can really enjoy.  One is going to be a circus train and the other a logging train.

I found some basic plans but am adjusting them to use the wood that I have in my inventory.  Starting with the locomotives.

The locomotives will be a classic 2 – 6 layout.  Two bogie wheels in front and 6 drive wheels.  I was thinking of making a Hogwarts locomotive but that is a 4 – 6, and the boilers I have made are too short.

The wheels are made from maple, from a wooden plaque that I saved from being thrown out when Petro-Canada took over Gulf Canada in 1985.  I saved a dozen plaques at the time, walnut and maple. They were going to be discarded.  This is the last one.  A beautiful wood.

As you see, it is a work in progress from the first picture.  Total of twelve drive wheels each with 11 holes drilled precisely and then cut to make the spokes.  Lots of trimming to be done.

The other picture is of the two boilers for the engines.  Now that has a story.

In 1969 Aunt Mona gave Pat a rolling pin as a shower gift.  The background for this gift is that I had made my famous breaded pork chops for Aunt Mona and Uncle Jim when they had dinner at our place.  In those days, you did not buy bread crumbs in a box, you toasted bread and rolled it into crumbs.  Aunt Mona was very impressed and gave Pat the rolling pin so that I could make that meal for her.

We used that rolling pin for the next 40 years.  But it was one of those pins with the handles on the side that rolled on bearings.  Eventually the roller shaft could not be cleaned, and we decided that it had to be retired.  We did not throw it out, it went into my scrap pile.  Look at the picture.  A perfect locomotive boiler.  They will look better on the model.

I am enjoying this.  Lots more details to follow.