Building a train Day 21+

I am not sure if I mentioned it before. The instructions referred to short and long rubber bands. All my bands were of equal length. Well, my build today required the short band, as a drive belt for the flywheel.

There were no rubber bands in the house, so I was unable to complete today’s build which involved securing all the gears in place.

As the gears from the rubber band drive unit were now connected, I thought I would give it a test run. It was a little bit sticky at first but started to smooth out when disaster struck.

The cocktail stick holding the bands in place broke. It was awkward rethreading the rubber but I found by using a bit of drawstring I could pull the blighter through.

By this time, I had purchased a bag of assorted (colour and sizes) rubber bands, and completed the build. Well, nearly.

Although I keep all the pieces, including scrap, in plastic boxes, the four tiny pieces that keep the final gears in place had vanished.

Luckily, two of these pieces were available as extraneous cutouts on board 4. Some of the bulk fiddly bits have an extra cutout, don’t know why. The final wheel I was able to secure by trimming a bit of scrap wood.

So with the gears all in place, I wound up the mechanism and it moved along the carpet!! My next attempt resulted in a large crack as the cocktail stick holding the bands snapped again. Rethreading again, I could see the securing stick was bending and soon snapped again.

I have now replaced the stick with a nail. It works fine now except it needs a lot of winding to actually get it to work. I’m now worried that without the stick as a safety valve, the cog upon which it rests may snap in two. I will keep you posted.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.