For wheels you need a lot of rather large spools with quite thick
shanks, unless you can afford to have brass or wooden ones turned for
you. The best spools come in the shops of New York, with French sewing
cotton, and next best are those which hold the knitting silk, so much
used nowadays by ladies.
Ask your mother and sisters, and all your fancy-work loving friends,
to save their spools for you, and it will not be long before you have
enough.
Saw each spool into three pieces, as at _a, a_ (_fig. 5_). The outsides
form the wheels with their flanges _c, c,_ and the middle piece _b_,
you will need later.
Now for axles, the best are cheap lead pencils (cost one cent each),
but you can use common skewers such as butchers use, whittled down to
fit. The axles are to fit tightly into the wheels, and turn with them.
Now take a block an inch thick, four inches long, and two and a half
wide, to hold the wheels. In each corner of the underside of the block,
three quarters of an inch from the end, screw a very light wire screw
ring (or screw eye) with a ring a half-inch in diameter.
The axles run through these rings with the flanges of the wheels next
to the block, to run inside the track.
Next comes the car itself.