Thanks for the inspiration on the slink dog project everyone that contributed ideas. Having looked at this post a few times I thought I might try it out. Looked around a few stores figured with the new Toy Story movie coming out soon there might be something around; nothing at the Disney store amazing, but found a slink dog like the one on page 2 of this post with the hard plastic middle instead of a spring, cheap enough.
With limited resources with me while running my train display at the Thomas event at our railway museum I went to work trying to figure out how to make this work and get it running quickly for the show. I had a $1 store plastic colored slinky type toy, cut most of the plastic middle out of the dog, and cut the string inside in half, tied a thick rubber band to either end of the string and wrapped in tape so it would not untie. Cut a small hole at the top of middle of the dog front and back middle ends, then threaded a couple of loops of the spring inside. Punched a hole in the plastic ends that was the middle fake spring, and looped a couple of loops of wire through the hole and around a couple of loops of the slinky spring to keep it in place. Got some wood scrap thin enough to fit between some metal trucks between the wheels, a screw through the middle of the truck from the bottom up into the wood and used a couple of loops of zip strap around the middle of the truck to keep feet in line. Trimmed the feet so they were flat on the bottom and instant glued them to the wood then wrapped some wire around through the toes and wood to keep the feet in place. Tried it out on a Thomas train with a car behind; that derailed so I left it with no car behind the slink dog. Kids at the show running the trains approved, works fairly well, looks pretty good, it does not expand and contract as far as the video on page one of this post, but it does expand and contract enough for a good looking moving slinky dog the visitors really notice and like. Perhaps I will find the true slinky dog with the metal middle and try it out.
We have the Thomas the train ride event at our railway museum; a long weekend 3 days this past weekend and next weekend 2 days with 1000's of people coming through to ride Thomas and lots of activities and displays at our railway park . As shown I have a 12x12 foot display with 10 trains running with the LionChief controllers bolted to control boards mounted on the fence. The kids can control all the trains and press buttons for sounds and other animated stuff like the Lionel Gateman, Cranky the Crane and flying Harold the Helicopter + lots of other animated stuff. It is great having the fence crowded with 20-30 little kids and even teens running the Thomas the Tank engine theme trains. Enjoy the pics click on first photo for a larger view then scan scroll through them. Lets see your Slinky Dog projects, this took me a couple of hours and simple to put together.
