I needed to get back into Blogging some things I’ve been doing and this is a good one to use to get going again. I had built a small little model train layout for my grandkids in Oakland. I actually built it under a deck to protect it from weather (mainly strong winds) and to keep it off the lawn. The last time I did that, the results were pretty bad.
So, I dug out a pretty old Playmobil Train that my son played with, 20 y
ears ago. Some of the plastic is pretty fragile, but I used a lot of CA cement on it, and it seems to be holding together. Frank Davis (of the MCMRR&HS club) and I converted it to battery powered with a remote control. You can see the Engine and tender that we converted plus a couple of cars for the consist. The remote control is right in front of the engine. The sound has a steam engine chuf synchronized with the speed, a whistle be blown, and bell chimed. That part came out ok, but the real test was whether the kids would be interested and be able to do run it without me.
This movie clip shows what they did. You can see my two grandsons and their two cousins in the clip. The operation of the remote control was so easy that my grandsons just were loading and unloading things (actually erasers that looked like little animals) while their older cousin took over the control. They wouldn’t even let me play!! But, it’s documented now, so everyone can see that it does what I hoped it would do and I was able to reuse some old toys with just a few modern pieces!
I’ll try to do more Blogging…