The car was undamaged except that the flange of a wheel was split
off.
Of course, Bill was as mad as a hornet at Dutchy, and expressed his
feelings in no mild terms. But his anger was somewhat tempered by the fact
that Dutchy received as bad a punishment as he had inflicted.
[Illustration: The Start of the Gravity Railroad.]
Testing the Track.
We had to cut a new flange disk for the broken wheel, and to prevent the
flanges from splitting off again we nailed a batten across the inner face
of each wheel extending down to the very edge of the flange disk. This
batten was fastened on across the grain. When everything was completed the
car was started down the track empty to see if it would keep the rails. It
went beautifully as far as the bridge, but was too light to run much
beyond. The next time we loaded it up with stones and had the pleasure of
watching it sail down hill, across the bridge and vanish out of sight
around the shore of Kite Island. That was demonstration enough. We knew it
would carry us safely and it did. The next time we tried it four of us
piled into the small car, and in a moment we were off on a most thrilling
ride, which ended right in front of the log cabin, where the car came to a
sudden stop after riding off the end of the rails and plowing through the
sand for a short space.
Pages:
228
229
230
231
232
233
234
235
236
237
238
239
240
241
242
243
244
245
246
247
248
249
250
251
252