A Diesel Ducy of his own

As many parents of Fragile X know, our guys (and girls!) can be a little obsessed with things.  The professionals call it having high interest areas.  For years, Drew has loved watching elevator videos.  I used to think it was strange, but now when I go to a hotel, I find myself thinking, Hey this is an Otis, or, Oh, it's a Schindler.  I bet the door close button doesn't work. Who knew?!  Anyway,  he watches these videos of elevators on YouTube.  There is a user with the username DieselDucy.  These are some of Drew's favorite videos. DieselDucy actually holds a train in his hand at the beginning of all his videos. Like this:

 
Drew, of course, has picked up on this and adapted it for himself.  I have talked with many Fragile X parents, and another thing our kids have in common is the need for props.  If you are watching Horton Hears a Who you need to hold a flower.  If you are watching Rosie and Jim, you need an accordian.  So, when you are watching DieselDucy elevators, you need a train to hold.  We don't have a train just like DieselDucy's, so Drew has taken to holding Thomas the Tank Engine while watching the videos.

I was out Christmas shopping one day, and was having a hard time finding things for Drew.  I stopped and thought, What does Drew really like?  Elevators.  And then I thought maybe I could get him a DieselDucy train.  I looked at all the Thomas trains and Chuggington trains and the generic ones, too.  They weren't just like it, and I thought if I was going to try to make one, I had better get the train part right, anyway.  So, I found out who DieselDucy is and contacted him about what kind of train it is.

He was very nice and we had a great conversation.  He told me that they are fairly easy to find on Ebay.  They are Matchbox brand and were made in England in 1978, I believe.  We bought two.  I got some paint and set out to duplicate DieselDucy's trains. This is what they originally looked like:
 

 
Eric roughed them up with some sandpaper so the paint would stick better.  Then I used this photo as my guide:

And this is what I came up with:

I know he is going to love it!  I love when things turn out how I envisioned them.