Toy Train

I've always loved the ideas of handmade gifts. I think they are as much fun to make as they are to receive. For my oldest daughter's first birthday I decided to make her a toy train. I kept it pretty simple as I knew it was going to get a lot of playtime and I wanted it to last.

The cars themselves are made up a few pieces of pine that I cut to length and glued together. This formed the connecting mechanisms that you can see. In the front end I drilled an over-sized hole for the connecting dowel, and on the back end a standard hole for the dowel to be glued into for the trailing car to link to. In hindsight I didn't over-size the hole enough because I didn't account for enough of a gap to account for the paint and lacquer thickness. After painting I needed to do some sanding to take off all the paint on the inside of the hole, and then open the hole even more. Oops.

I then drilled the holes in the top of the cars to accept the little colored blocks. I made the dowels so they would be only slightly longer than needed after the blocks were placed on top. I also took the dowels to the sander to round over the edges for ease of putting on the blocks. I purchased the wooden wheels from a hobby/craft store and found a dowel diameter that matched to use as the axles. I cut them slightly long so the wheels wouldn't be rubbing on the side of the train car.

For the square blocks I used some 2x4's that I cut down to size, and drilled holes in. For the cylinder blocks I cut up a section of a larger dowel. The spheres I purchased when I bought the wheels. I then applied a couple generous coats of brightly colored paint, and then 3-4 layers of a spray on lacquer to help protect them.

It is a fun little train that both my girls still play with.

In the end this project cost was pretty low because I had everything except the wheels, spheres, and the three different sized dowels. All in all I bet it was under $10.