Upgrade Garden Wooden Loco With Coal Tender Planter

In this Instructable I will show you how I replaced a very tired and sad looking train loco and tender garden planter with an upgraded version:

The original was bought as a gift some time ago and sadly its nearing the end of its day's, what with losing a wheel and propped up with a plant pot it's time to get this Loco sorted out!

This is one of those quirky little things you just like to look at what with birds landing on it and such, so I'm going to build a new Version and possibly revamp the old.

I have a pallet with a plywood top so the timber should be great underneath the ply-wood.

It will be very cheap to build.

I will use all the technology at my disposal to make the Locomotive and Tender purely from a speed point of view, but any wood saw, Hole saws etc and a drill with a few screws will do the job.

Ensure all the correct PPE is in place when working with machinery

With no further ado, it's full steam ahead with the build.

Pallet

Wood Glue

CA Glue

Fence/Shed paint

Foam brush or any brush w

Assorted wood screws.

Band saw.

Thicknesser.

CNC machine for the wheels 80mm

Big hole saw for the windows in the cab

Router to round off the wheels and cab windows(outer side only on the cab)

The hardest thing with Pallets is splitting them, With my homemade diy pallet splitter the job is made a lot easier, if the nails come out with the slats then its easy just to knock the nails back through the wood and using a claw hammer to extract them.

I put the de-nailed slats of pallet wood through the thicknesser, this tool is a god send and saves hours of sanding, just ensure all nails are removed, I recently did a job for a friend with some old floorboards and he ensured me that all nails were removed, sadly some weren't but to be fair they were buried in the wood, you just end up with grooves in the wood which need to be sanded out.

I'm copying the existing train planter so the dimensions are taken from that, these don't have to be exact as its a rustic garden feature at the end of the day.

With all the wood planed and cut we can now move onto building the train and planter.

The Pallet wood wasn't quite wide enough for both the Locomotive and Tender base so I used an old floor pine off-cut I had lying around.

I started off with the base of the train first, cutting it to the size I wanted, then taking the corners off and finally routed the edges, this wasn't done on the existing one, I just thought it would make it look nicer, you will notice in one of the photos that there is a recess in the base, there was some bad areas of wood so I just cut it all out.

The boiler part of the train is simple, its just 2 pieces of timber with corners taken off at one end and sanded, I did think of making the boiler cylindrical but I didn't have anything suitable, this option will do a job.

The next job is to make up the cab of the train, this will have holes cut in each of the 4 pieces, the side holes will be lower than than the front and back for roof over hang, this was achieved using a hole saw, then I routed the outer edges for a more pleasing look, the front and back pieces are measured and cut and then the corners are taken off at the top only, this will form the base for the roof pieces, the 2 side pieces of the cab are cut so they are at the bottom of the cut off pieces on the front and back pieces of timber(If that makes any sense) this can be seen better with the photos.

The roof of the cab is made up of 3 sections of wood, for this I'm going to use thinner pieces of timber these overhang front back and sides, and are screwed in 2 positions each slat.

The original train never had a chimney, I will make a chimney out of a length of brush/broom shaft I had from an earlier build.

All the components can now be assembled, I glued both the boiler and cab components, clamped and left over night to dry, I will use some Hot glue to secure the roof sections initially then some panel pins for added strength.

The tender part of the train is a piece of timber for the base, the same diameter as the engine, and the sides are sloping out upwards from the base, with front and rear pieces of wood cut to suit on the band-saw.

4no drilled stand offs will be used on the underside of the base for the wheels.

The same off cut for the Locomotive is used for the Tender, then pallet wood used for the front back and sides,

The bottom of the sides will have a 10 degree taper to make the Tender wider at the top and the ends are set inboard of the sides, this was achieved by tilting the blade on the table saw to 10 degrees, everything was then screwed together.

Onto the wheels, the original wheels are 80mm and thought the easiest option was just to design some circles in Vetric Cut2D and cut them out on the cnc machine, using the router to round off the edges worked really, and I also created a hole in the centre to screw them to the stand offs.

With all components made it was a goodtime to fit the wheels, I made some stand offs for the wheels to attach to, these were positioned so the wheels were just about flush with sides of both the engine and tender, they didn't need to turn which was good.

Onto the paint:

With it been dry old pallet wood, the first coat will just soak straight in so its going to need 2 coats at least, if only on the external parts of the timber.

I removed the cab to paint internally as it was only screwed in place and made things a lot easier.

The first photos are after one coat, the latter photos after a 2nd coat, this will afford some protection from the elements for some time (hopefully)

All there is left to do now is place it on the decking in it's rightful place and populate with some colourful little plants.

It always surprises me what very worthwhile things can be made from basically nothing at all, and in a very short space of time.

We had an old pallet what was probably outside for at least 2 years or so at least, after it was split and cleaned up, and with a few tools you can turn something out which in all honesty doesn't look to shabby, and would grace anyone's decking or garden.

With some spare pallet wood left over I thought I would quickly build a little garden wheel barrow planter as well, most of it was just cut on the band saw and just putting a slight angle on the bottom of the sides to bring the top out a bit, the wheel was cut out on the cnc machine, and held in place with a steel pin and CA glue to secure.

I think if I was to do one again I would definitely make it look more like a steam train, with a cylindrical boiler, In all honesty I'm guessing that this one was designed on an old tank engine design as in the photo, very loosely of course, but who knows, and who cares, its just a bit of humour after all.

There you have it, not perfect by any means but will do the job perfectly, and I enjoyed making them.

I hope as always that you enjoyed this Instructable and thanks for looking in.