Santa’s New Sleigh

In the book Albert's Christmas, the sleigh he used existed only in my imagination. In order to show it from many views, I needed to build a model of it to be sure my drawings stayed consistent.

Sled with Rollbar To create my model sleigh I used a 1-liter plastic soft-drink bottle. I strengthened the fuselage inside and created the wings with foamcore. The sleigh is covered with red felt.
Santa’s new sleigh has many modern conveniences and safety features. The high seat back protects his neck and the shoulder and lap belts keep him in place for those times when the reindeer are overly enthusiastic about takeoffs. The roll-bar is also an important safety feature, besides it looks great.

The lunchpail is within easy reach for Santa when he gets hungry in flight. Sled with lunchpail

Sled with gyroscope In the event the computer goes down temporarily, Santa is equipped with a traditional means of navigation, a starmap. The dashboard panel also features a gyroscope.
The motherboard for the computer is under the hood.

The windshield keeps the stardust from building up all over Santa’s nice red suit.
As with all aircraft, Santa’s sleigh has running lights: green under the right wingtip, red under the left. The sleigh proudly displays the emblem of the North Pole.
Sled showing lights

Computer Of course the most significant change would be the addition of the computer. Here we see the split-screen feature: The scroll screen holds in its memory the names and locations of all the children Santa will visit. The bottom screen is the wondrous new RFC with touch-screen capabilities, leaving his hands free to reach for a cookie. No more hanging onto all those reins all night long.

HOME PAGE | BOOKS PAGE | GALLERY | KIDS PAGE | TEACHERS/LIBRARIANS

In the book Albert's Christmas, the sleigh he used existed only in my imagination. In order to show it from many views, I needed to build a model of it to be sure my drawings stayed consistent.
	To create my model sleigh I used a 1-liter plastic soft-drink bottle. I strengthened the fuselage inside and created the wings with foamcore. The sleigh is covered with red felt. Santa’s new sleigh has many modern conveniences and safety features. The high seat back protects his neck and the shoulder and lap belts keep him in place for those times when the reindeer are overly enthusiastic about takeoffs. The roll-bar is also an important safety feature, besides it looks great.
The lunchpail is within easy reach for Santa when he gets hungry in flight.
	In the event the computer goes down temporarily, Santa is equipped with a traditional means of navigation, a starmap. The dashboard panel also features a gyroscope. The motherboard for the computer is under the hood.
The windshield keeps the stardust from building up all over Santa’s nice red suit. As with all aircraft, Santa’s sleigh has running lights: green under the right wingtip, red under the left. The sleigh proudly displays the emblem of the North Pole.
	Of course the most significant change would be the addition of the computer. Here we see the split-screen feature: The scroll screen holds in its memory the names and locations of all the children Santa will visit. The bottom screen is the wondrous new RFC with touch-screen capabilities, leaving his hands free to reach for a cookie. No more hanging onto all those reins all night long.
HOME PAGE \| BOOKS PAGE \| GALLERY \| KIDS PAGE \| TEACHERS/LIBRARIANS