In March and April, 2000, Charles Gerstenberger of Fremont, Ohio, wrote an interesting article on his scratch built models, which included a carousel, log cabin, machine shed building, barn, and a very nice home.

Here is the first revised "Blast From the Past" for the new edition of the Toy Tractor Times e-zine edition:

This is a scratch built and made, no instruction and no model to look at when building. Nothing to go by, I just built it out of the top of my head.

The carousel (see picture) took us more than a year to complete building and running it. The platform or desk that it sets on has 7 different kinds of wood. Every single piece is put on with glue, pressed, without any nails being used. The carousel stands 16" high, 34" round, and comes complete with 23 animals and two seats. The Carousel has 150 lights and the animals in the first 2 rows move up and down as the base turns and plays traditional carousel music. My wife was very talented for the painting of the animals and other parts of this carousel, as well as the cloth on the top of the carousel.

Throughout the years I have built a 1920's era old time 1 car gas station, 2 large churches, silos, corn cribs, metal buildings, log cabins, round metal buildings, chain elevators, gravity flo wagons, and implement buildings. Some people have bought several buildings from us and I build what the people would like.

Every building that I built is maybe just a little different than the other ones. There are not any buildings that are alike. Most of the buildings have lights in them. I tried to use as much redwood for building as I can.

We try to go to as many toy shows as possible and it is always nice to have people stop to look and talk about our buildings.

Until next times....