Cigar boxes are nice for cars, being already very neatly made. You can get at the cigar stores, at small cost, if not as a gift, any number of boxes with square ends, that is, with the ends of the box as high as they are wide. After you have washed off the paper, get two boards, one a quarter or three eighths of an inch thick, and the other somewhat thinner, both being the width of the box. Saw off pieces three inches longer than the boxes, for platform and roof.
First fasten your trucks under the thicker board, which is the bottom. To do this, bore a gimlet hole exactly through the middle of each truck block; put a six-penny nail from the bottom, first through the hole in the truck block, then through the cast-off part of a spool (b, [fig. 5]), or half of it if too thick, or a small twist spool a half-inch high. Nail one to each end of the board loosely, so it will turn.
Now, carefully take apart your cigar box, and mark on each long side a row of windows, like a passenger car, and in each end piece mark a door. Saw them out on a jig saw. (If you have no saw you can paint windows on the outside.)
After cutting the windows and doors, put the box together again, with the brads which held it before, and laying it on to the platform board, so that each end of the board projects for a platform, nail them together. Then open the cover (which must never be broken off) and nail the roof board on to it in the same way; that is, so it will project at each end. Use brads for this nailing. The object of fastening the roof to the cover is that you may open your car and fill it with passengers if you choose.
TO MAKE THE COUPLINGS.
FIG. 4.
Take pieces of stiff copper wire three inches long, and with pliers bend over one end of each to form a hook, and the other ends into a small ring. Turning your car upside down, lay one of these wires in the middle of the end, with only the hook sticking out, and fasten it by a small screw through the ring ([fig. 6]); do the same at the other end, and then with some small brass curtain rings, which cost two or three cents a dozen, you can couple your cars nicely.
Baggage and freight cars you can make in the same way, only cutting one large door in the side. You can make the cars as showy as you please, with paint of different colors, and finish them with a piece of muslin glued part way over the windows inside for shades. And now last comes the engine.