The Rail Bike Lives!

The rail bike made the maiden voyage yesterday. It runs down the tracks pretty much like it was made to, surprisingly enough. The outrigger wheel could be out just a little more to center it up on the rail a little better and the wheel on the bottom of it seems to be a little noisy but it works.

Here's the rundown on the bike set-up. I started with a Schwinn Varsity girls bike that a former student gave me. I read somewhere on the internet when I started contemplating this project that a girls bike is the way to go because of the difficulty getting on and off with the extra height of the track. This one wasn't much of a prize with all of the chrome being pretty rusty and the wheels rusty to the point there wasn't any chrome left on them at all. Because it had nice horizontal dropouts, I converted it to a single speed. You don't really need much of a speed selection on railroad tracks because the grade that a train can navigate normally doesn't exceed about 3%. I put a couple of other wheels I had laying around on it and bought two new tires. I also put a couple of new brake cables and some better brake pads I swapped out from one of my other bikes.

The outrigger upright is made from a piece of aluminum tubing and a caster wheel I had in my box of misc. wheels and casters. The arms are 1/2" thinwall conduit. They are bolted to the bike frame in three locations with ears welded to the frame. The front guide is made from 1/8" sheet metal with old skate board wheels used to keep it aligned to the track. The wheels are adjustable for width to get a snug fit on the rail. Two other wheels ride on top of the rail (see previous rail bike post for photo). This assembly is connected to the bike fork by a couple of angle iron arms bolted to a boss on each fork leg. These will allow it to pivot upward if I get around to adding the lifting rod and handle.

Total cost for the whole thing is probably less than $30.00. I remember the tires were ten bucks each and the 1/2" EMT is about $1.25/stick. If I wasn't such a junk collector it still wouldn't cost more than $75.00 as long as you had a donor bike. If you had to pay someone to fab all of this crap together, it would be a different story. If you figured in research time on the internet and engineering time, it would be a whole lot less than cost effective. However, one of the great benefits of being a shop teacher is being able to work on this goofy crap on company time or at least using the facility whenever you want. If, after putting a few miles on the thing, it seems like it's going to hold up alright, I'll get some yellow paint and rattle can the rest of the parts to kind of match up with the bike color and to prevent it from rusting. Actually, as bad as the bike looks, it wouldn't hurt to paint the whole thing.

So where to ride the thing? There's a train museum not too far from here that offers excursions. They have about ten miles of track that runs from their yard to another little town. They only run Saturday afternoons from May to October and the occasional extra on Sundays. The track runs through some nice bucolic country and there's only a few grade crossings. Spend an hour or so each way with a couple of photo stops and it will make for a nice Sunday outing. The outrigger will unbolt and fold flat against the side of the bike. With a little more work I can rig up a couple of brackets to hold it in place easily enough. That way I can fold the thing up and ride the bike to a restaurant for breakfast, then put it back together, throw it back on the tracks and come home. It should be fun.


The screaming you hear at the end of the video is the Missus hollering at the cat. The cat wanted to climb up the Missus' leg because I interrupted her lunch so she could video tape my maiden voyage and the cat smelled the bacon she had been eating.

Gleanings

The bicycle is the Scorcher model from Antbikemike. The ANT stands for Alternative Needs Transportation. It's a really nice looking bike that he'd be happy to build for you. He's got plenty of options, including the old fashioned cream colored tires.

He's also promoting a working vacation at his shop. You spend a week and $2,500 and come home with a bike frame that you built, plus the chance to work along side someone who really knows the bike business. If you like that, he'll let you stay longer for a substantially larger sum of money and you'll come home with a half dozen frames and about everything else you need to set up shop as a custom cycle builder. When I first looked at the money (20 large), I thought no way, buddy. But after thinking about it, I see my students enrolling in trade schools and going off to college and they invest sums as large or larger than that. If you want to build bikes for a living, it might actually be a bargain. You can learn the skills needed and get plenty of insight into what it's like running your own custom frame making business. Me, I'd love to build frames and cool bikes. I just wouldn't want to deal with customers. Just put me in the back with my tools and I'd be a happy camper.























I found this at Knucklebuster. It's mostly motorcycle chopper stuff but he's been posting some old how-to articles that are pretty good. He's put up a lot of vintage bike photos lately as well. He's got an article on soldering and a real good one on heat treating if you check the September archive. If you click on the picture, it should be big enough to actually read. If not, check out his site. It's definitely worth a look, anyway.

Check out the sites and see what people with "hands-on" skills are doing these days. Buy a bike and build a vise.

Rail Bike and Glove Dryer

I'm finishing up the rail bike this week. Should be pretty close to being able to test drive it this weekend - of course there's no telling what else will show up in the shop before Friday. The photos show the guide that keeps the front wheel of the bicycle centered on the rail. It still needs a little welding and grinding but I'll take care of that when I add the arms that fasten it to the bicycle fork. I'll still need to make the pivot rod off the handlebars but that can come later. The pivot rod will allow me to raise the front guide up if I come to a switch or a some other break in the tracks but I might as well see if the whole rig stays on the tracks before I try to engineer that.

We're also making a glove dryer for the gym. Things get pretty sweaty and stanky if you don't keep the air circulating. Jimmy made one out of pvc but it's not holding up too well. This one should be hell for strong. It's designed to fit into a corner so it won't take up too much floor space. It should last forever or as long as the fan holds out. Good job for a high school kid to fab up. Because the pieces are galvanized, we're brazing everything together. Not a whole lot of call for brazing any more but it's a good skill too have. If you've got a set of tanks and can gas weld and braze, you can fix and fab all kinds of stuff. I'll post some photos as the job progresses.

Project of the Week

Was busy hanging wallpaper today. I got up this morning and turned on the Chicago Marathon, screwed up my courage and got after it. I usually do a pretty good job with the paper hanging but I'm not very damn fast. Of course, there's not a straight wall in the house and there's plenty of corners and a stairway to go up. At least I'm getting something done around the shack. The Missus wants things tightened up inside by Thanksgiving. I'm thinking that's possible but the new trim is going to be a little time consuming. I'll keep plugging away - I want this one off the list. The winner of the marathon set a new course record this morning, by the way.


















I got a little more work done on the black powder shotgun this past week. I made the trigger guard and did some filing on the tumbler. It still needs some more work but one more session and it should be about ready to go. I need to order some 5-40 screws before I can do much more on the lock. It's about time to order a piece of chrome-moly tube for the barrel as well. I'm going to machine the muzzle end for a removable choke. Not exactly your traditional muzzle loader, mind you, but good lathe practice.















The shiner's looking pretty tasty a week after the fact. I got quite a few comments this past week about it. Seems funny that I went to the doctor Monday afternoon and he didn't mention it. I'm beginning to think he just has me come in because I've got good insurance. At least the photo quality is better this time.

Lot's of project work lined up for next week both at school and at home. Getting ready to strt on the log splitter and a couple of things for the gym, which the Missus now refers to as the shiner shack, by the way.

Boxing on Saturday Night

We had another boxing show/fundraiser for the gym Saturday night. All the newly painted chairs looked pretty good in there. We had a sell-out crowd again and most of the matches were paired up pretty well. Big Dave fought a guy about half his size but took it real easy on him. I went against a young guy who just wouldn't stop coming at me. I showed a little bit of my potential in the first round and let him throw a few at me in the second. I told Jimmy to have the kid go easy the last round and we would work on a couple of things. Of course, Jimmy told him to turn it up on me. He managed to sneak in a couple of shots and gave me a little something to remember him by. Kind of a crappy picture but the do it yourself photo session at 11:30 (photo taken Sat. night) was about all I could muster up. Like all shiners, they take a couple of days to really look their best anyway. We took a picture of Ernie, Jimmy and myself after Monday's workout and sparring session that's a real doozy. Jimmy just got a mouse under his eye from sparring, Ernie's nose is bright red from some nice uppercuts, and I'm sporting a two day old shiner from Sat's exhibition. All of us with big grins and battle scars. The things guys do for fun!

That's going to be it for me boxing. I shouldn't have been in there anyway with my previous head injury. I'm definitely going to miss it. Anyway, the gym is doing well, I've got about 25 more chairs to paint and the van to start working on. I'm going to have one of the boys at school put a rack together for the medicine balls as soon as I get a moment to draw up a sketch and we still need to get the chin-up bar mounted. Always lots to do.

David Bradley

When I took the grandson to the steam/power show last weekend, I saw a bunch of David
Bradley tractors and accessories. Since yours truly, Shop Teacher Bob, is the proud owner of one, I took particular interest in a couple of the sulky carts that I saw.

The David Bradley two wheel tractors were very popular in the fifties and they had a huge variety of implements available for them. I've got a push blade, snowblower, planter, plow and cultivator for mine. They also made a couple of types of mowers, both sickle bar and rotary, you could get. I picked my stuff up from a guy I used to work with. He had bought it at an auction, but like me, he's always got so many irons in the fire he figured he'd never get around to making it work or do anything with it, even if he did get it running. Plus he owed me a couple of favors so he sold it to me for what he paid for it, which was a real bargain. He's a big fan of the small tractors, though. He said "If grandma had one of these, she never would have left the old country". Probably right about that.

Mine was stored in my old barn and I needed to get it out of there prior to the demolition. I decided it would be a lot easier to drive out than push out. I had a plastic gas tank from an old mower that was almost a direct bolt on to replace the rusty one, put some new points, plug and a condenser in, rebuilt the carb and it runs surprising well now. It's not one of the pretty Art -Deco sheet metal covered ones but it's a work horse, especially with the new belts. So I drove it to the other barn and there it sits but I have been fixing up the implements for it. But if I had a sulky cart, I could ride behind it down the lane to pick up the newspaper or the mail. Kind of like the mini-bike I made a few years back. It usually takes me about twenty minutes to get the thing running because it's been so long since I've started it and only five minutes to walk down to the mailbox, but that's the trouble with all the infernal combustion engines. If you don't run them on a regular basis, they won't run on a regular basis.

So maybe I'll add a sulky cart to the long list of projects for the school year. It will be a little more utilitarian than the one in the photo, though. Since I shortened up the list this summer a little, what's the harm? As long as I don't start on it, that is. I've still got to finish a few others.

If you're interested in David Bradley tractors, check them out here. If you look up the different models, mine's a Super 600.

The tractor picture is just because I dig old tractors and if you're going to have tractor porn, why not make it a Cockshutt.

Swamped

It happened again. Just about the time I get caught up and start to think I'm getting ahead of the game, it hits the fan.

I had the grandson down for the weekend to try out the midget and spend a little bit of fun time. The midget was quite the experience. I tied a rope to the back of it to make sure he didn't run in to anything, put him in the saddle with a few words of instruction and he put it to the floor. Even though I put a throttle stop on it, it still runs a little too fast for the boy. And grandpa, who was running along behind him tugging on the rope to slow him down. I'm going to change the sprocket on the back and put some kind of stop directly on the carb linkage to get him down to a safer speed. But it runs and he had fun. So there you go.

Sunday we went out for breakfast and then to a steam/power show. Lots of old trucks, tractors, fire trucks and stationary engines. Everything and old man and a young boy wanted to see. It was a beautiful day and we had a great time. The young-un is old enough now that he's a lot of fun to spend time with. So that was the upside of the weekend.

I was going to cut the grass before the grandson came down but the mower quit on me. Like someone turned off the switch, quit. So I decided to check the switch and something didn't look right. I just figured I'd jumper around it and finish mowing and check it all out later. Bad idea. Instead of the starter cranking but the engine not running, now it doesn't do diddly. Also Saturday, Jimmy showed up with our "new" folding chairs he found for the gym. We got 63 free chairs but they're all rusty and need to be painted - before next Saturday's exhibition. So today, myself and a couple of my aces took the wire wheels to the chairs and then I went back after work and painted. So far I've got 27 of them painted and 9 more ready to paint. I'm shooting for another 18 or so tomorrow and the same on Wednesday. What a pain in the ass. Plus the grass is still growing and I had to have progress report grades posted by eight in the morning.

I've really got to start leaving myself a little breathing room so I don't have to go into a panic when the unexpected comes along. Because the unexpected, always comes along.