I knew from the Faller HO mine on my layout that the wheels needed to be about about 50mm in diameter. I cut 2 pieces of 2mm plasticard 60mm square and one slightly smaller. I then scribed them all using a common center and drilled a small hole in that center point for alignment purposes. Next, I scribed a circle using the center point on the larger squares that had a 50mm diameter. I did the same thing on the smaller square but with a 45mm diameter. I then cut out the circles of plasticard and filed the edges smooth. Sandwiching the smaller circle between the larger ones (and using the drill bit to center them on a common shaft) I super glued all three together. (Take the drill out a.s.a.p!)

I marked the holes (see the diagram below) ready to cut them into slots and began drilling. Disaster! The drill slid all over the place and wrecked the wheel. Back to square one. What I needed was a template. I made one out of a piece of 4mm mild steel. I cut a square, made it into a circle, drilled the center, large and smaller holes and filed the large and small holes into a slot.

I then went through the plasticard process a second time, but now trapped the plasticard wheel behind the metal template and held them in the vice and drilled the holes in the top hemisphere. Then I did the bottom hemisphere.

Now that all the holes were drilled I used a scalpel and a fine file to convert the holes into slots. This process produced what I had envisaged at the beginning when I was thinking about the problem, so I repeated the process and made the second wheel. I then painted them gunmetal grey.

The slotted perimeter of the wheels is wide enough and deep enough to take the thick cotton that I used for the winding ropes and the whole rig looks if not elegant, then certainly prototypical because, like the pit head 'sticks' all over Britain, there were endless variations on a theme and that included wheels.

Copyright © Peter Baddeley 2005