Train Project
The initial inspiration for this project came from some filming I did for an assignment shot on the old Cranbourne to Leongatha train line. This line closed in the early 90s leaving almost all its track still there and intact. Being two engineers with multiple months on our hands, my then star of the film Marcus and I realised that these tracks could possibly be used again by some sort of small train cart.
Upon further researched we discovered that across both Victoria the surrounding states, there is a vast network of disused railway lines. These have often close due to lack of passenger demand compared to cost of upkeep; or poor harvests and droughts making freight unviable. This sad fact did however mean there were hundreds of kilometers of track left unused and often overgrown throughout Victoria and often New South Wales and South Australia. In a bid to hopefully rediscover some of the lost history of these pipelines of industry, Marcus and I made it our mission to try and once again take a train down these rails. However first we needed to make ourselves a train.
Unfortunately most existing trains happen to be large, heavy, rather expensive and usually in use. So we had to think of a way to build one pretty much from scratch. Luckily over lockdown we had decided to pickup welding for a previous project meaning fabricating a frame which was both light and portable would be possible.
The first step was to figure out the wheels, due to reasons such as size, weight, cost and inability to move something that large, normal train wheels were highly impractical. This meant either finding some small wheels from something like a mine cart or making our own. We did consider creating some the wheels by getting some steel and turning it down on a lathe. However there were also issues with this mainly cost and access to a lathe. Luckily before we had to bodge together something we were able to acquire some small wheels off a cart.