Ideas for building wooden railway flatbed cars?

[M A V I C]

My kid really likes his wooden railway set. He doesn't really care for all of the gimmicky stuff they try to sell, but would rather build his own "story", if that makes sense.

I want to get him a bunch of cargo cars so he can haul stuff around on them. But it's nearly impossible to find those cargo cars on their own. I found one on Amazon for $30. Insane. I'd just buy this set http://www.amazon.com/Thomas-And-Friends..._7?ie=UTF8&qid=1358020713&sr=8-7&keywords=thomas+box+car for $5 less. Don't care about the chicken aspect of it.

So the type of car I'm talking about is the one on the left here:


I'm going to visit some hobby shops to see if I can find a base chassis to use, or at least some wheels and axles. Otherwise I'll try to make my own.

The other thing I want to do is build my own crane. There's Cranky http://www.amazon.com/Thomas-And-Friends...B00000JICT which... woah, that one's on sale right now for about $20 less than I found it before. Well, anyway, that one is pretty poorly built and doesn't have much range. Plus I'd rather build my own so he can see how it works.

Anyway, as you can see in that pic there's also blocks that go into those cars that have magnets. I'm going to build a bunch of those as well. And I'm going to build a cargo ship. There's this one http://www.amazon.com/BRIO-33061-Cargo-H...-and-games&ie=UTF8&qid=1358021154&sr=1-1&keywords=brio+cargo+harbour+set but it only holds two blocks at a time. Plus he really doesn't care how fancy it looks. He found a complexly folded cardboard box that he's made his own cargo ship out of for now. I'll make him a basic wood one.

Any suggestions on where to find parts? Magnets, wheels and axels are things I can't just build out of wood.

As far as tools, I've got:
- Table saw
- Circular saw
- Jigsaw
- Drill
- Sander
- Dremel

If I had a drill press and a bandsaw it'd be easier, but I'll make due with what I have. Ripping a bunch of train car frames and cargo boxes should be easy on the table saw.

Thanks

[space-time]

what about magnets, about a year or so you wanted to buy him some magnets to play with, what did you get?

[Racer X]

MAVIC, Stone Way Hardware. They have a decent selection of magnets. And they are a small privately owned local store. I love that place. Second location is at the Ballard side of the Ballard Bridge. At the Ballard store, they are on aisle 15, halfway down on the left. At the Stone Way store, on the front wall. They might have wheel-like stuff. Further south on Stone Way on the west side, is Rockler. Great woodworking supply store.

Anyway, good luck. That kid has great parents!

[Acer]

Buy a mixed lot of used rolling stock off ebay, use the chassis, and build/kit bash your own new tops. That way you get the wheels and the magnets.

[Dennis S]

It's a different project, but I saw a space station a kid made from styrofoam packing inserts - all kinds of crazy shapes.

[flareslow]

These might work for the magnets:

magnets

[M A V I C]

Thanks Racer X, I'll check that out.

Acer, that's a great idea I hadn't thought about. Almost all of our stuff is used anyway. The only new stuff were a bunch of track splitters we got on their own for a couple bucks each.

space-time wrote:
what about magnets, about a year or so you wanted to buy him some magnets to play with, what did you get?

I never ended up doing that.

flareslow wrote:
These might work for the magnets:

magnets

Looks perfect, thanks!

[Racer X]

Yeah, those magnets in general have lots of possibilities.

[Mr Downtown]

Have you looked on eBay?

Seems like I see a lot of "Brio-compatible" knockoffs in discount and dollar stores.

[M A V I C]

Looks like all of the ebay ones tend to be $$$. I'm trying craigslist took. Upon further inspection, the chassis section is the same on all cars. Going to try to find some beat up ones, but thus far I'm finding more stuff for collectors than beat up.