Horseless Carriage

The US Army, National Guard, and militia have had automobiles almost from the beginning.  This is a toy car I got decades ago, and it is such an early motor vehicle it has wagon wheels.  White rubber tires were an early development.  Tires are black because they added carbon to the rubber to make it stronger.  White tire rubber was common until about 1916.  

This is my lego type version of an early horseless carriage.  

The bricks I got at Dollar Tree..

This one is missing a wheel, but I will either resin cast a replacement or switch out to a different kind of wheel.  These lego type cars will be for my troops and the blue one will be a civilian car.

Horseless Vans

I am  working on my horseless carriage truck.  These are the pins from lego type bricks.  I drill a hole in the center after I cut them off the brick.  The pins are used as spacers between the wheel and the chassis and as the wheel hub.

One of the pins that has been drilled and is waiting for the bottom to be sanded smooth.  Later I realized it was easier to drill the pins before cutting them off the brick.

Large, medium and small trucks, all are van types.  The engine is facing the the left.

Doing some figure conversions.  Making the seated men into horse riders and the horse riders into seated men.  The blue guys will become wagon drivers and the white guys will be unarmed riders, probably correspondents for my armies.

Truck wheels and seats before the pins are removed.

Two pins waiting to be drilled.
 

Making Scratch Built Cars

Here is most of the car body.  The base is a large 1/2 thickness brick.

I put a bit of plastic tubing on the center of the clear plastic disc so it would accept the plastic coated metal rod that was used as an axle. 

I glued the wheels, centered them and then trimmed the plastic sheet to the specific size and shape of each wheel.

Small jewellery findings were used as the trailer hitches.  They are a metal wire with a loop on one end.  I used pliers to open the link enough to make a trailer hitch.

Painting the driver figures and using a clamp to hold the wet paint off the desk.  Wheel axles and hubs glue are drying.  The steep learning curve was very time consuming but actual construction did not take all that long, considering I was making four cars at once.  I intend to make more, and paint some as civilian, and police.  I also have many more wheels in different sizes so I will likely make different models.  Most cars in those days were very limited production, so a lot of different ones is okay.
 

Horseless Carriage Construction

Small visitor outside stopped by to check out my painting station.

Inside working on the horseless carriages.

Made up of generic Lego type bricks, plastic covered wire, sheet plastic, plastic tubes, and clear plastic.

I built all four at the same time.

I tested several glues to bond the clear plastic to the plastic rings.
 

Towing Artillery

Early automobiles for the Army were often using tires that looked like a bicycle tire, that's because bicycle tire companies knew how to make rubber tires, which had more traction than wooden or steel tires.

I simulated the spokes by just using a clear piece of plastic for the spokes.  I added a trailer hitch to the back.

A horse might travel for ten or more hours per day but a car could travel 20 more more.  At even 4 or 5 miles per hour that could get you 100 miles down the road.  Very impressive for the early 1900s.

Even from the earliest times motor vehicles were used for scouting, carrying machine guns, small cannons or towing artillery.  Here a US 3 inch M1902 gun is towed by the motor car.
 

Horseless Carriage

Until about 1915 automobile tires were white rubber.

The tires were improved by the addition of new chemicals to make them more durable and it also made tires black.

Here is one of my scratch built 1900ish military scout cars.

Early cars often had a tiller arm rather than a steering wheel.

They were often not very aerodynamic.

This is a 1/72nd scale pilot figure, maybe from Airfix.

In those days pilots and drivers both wore special headwear to protect themselves and to keep warm in the open cockpits.