As promised, Darin and I would come and repair the train bell again if we had to. I was hopping the last fix would do the trick, and it did for a while. But a couple weeks after the last repair I drove by and saw that the bracket was broke. Not wanting to deal with it then, we waited until people started telling us that it was upside down again before we took action. This time, I'm pretty confident we won't be back for a while.
Darin was surprised and said, "We're not working with amateurs here!"
Our bracket was found nearby, lying on the ground.
The orange color is the quick rust of the cast-iron. That's the main reason why it broke. When cast-iron is used in a position that it wasn't created for, it just looks for a reason to break. No doubt kids jerking on the rope didn't help.
Rocking it hard enough gets the arm stuck between the bracket, upside-down.
New idea: put some half-circle clamps with some bar-stops, keeping the bell from rocking too far.
2 3/8" tubing and 7/8" sucker rod should do the trick.
Just weld them up.
Drill some holes.
And bolt them together.
When the arm rocks, either way, it has a pretty hard stop to deal with. We should be safe for a while.
Back in black.
The fun is starting to wear off of fixing this train bell. But one thing about Catholic Cowboys, we don't quit. If something goes haywire again, we'll be back to tend to it. Until then, ring on Buffalo. Ring on.
No comments:
Post a Comment