Homebrew Drum Computer

I'm looking at what it would take to make a barebones "museum piece" bit-serial computer along the lines of an LGP-30 or maybe a Bendix G-15. I don't want to do the whole vacuum-tube-computing trip, so I'm limiting my madness to discrete bipolar transistors, specifically the 2n2222. To keep it interesting, I want to use only components available to mortals in 1963. And the keep the project within budget (i.e. none to speak of), I'm further limiting the number of transistors semi-arbitrarily to 256. Of course there will be a pile of si diodes, resistors and capacitors involved, but the idea is to keep the number of active components down -- if only so this beast will fit in the boot of my car! I've scavenged the web for information on bit-serial magnetic drum machines of the Elder Years, and I think I have a pretty good notion of how they worked (mostly very slowly). What I haven't been able to get a handle on is how to make a serviceable magnetic drum. I reckon I can do some simple prototyping with some CMOS 64-bit shift registers so I don't have to debug both the logic and the magnetic read/write electronics, but beyond that I have only a hazy idea how to proceed. Certainly I could trash a few old cassette decks, or even get some floppy R/W heads to experiment with audio recording tape super-glued to a soda can, but I really want to get at least the performance the old machines could produce, so that means a reasonably fast drum RPM, somewhere around 6000 RPM, say. Any ideas?