06-12-2011, 09:19 AM
all of the Hayes bumpers that I've seen around here are bent up from old rail, and welded to the rails at the end of the track. They also don't use a strap going over the top, but have two more pieces of rail welded to each rail going up in a triangle to where they are welded to the bent rails just behind the "bumper." I think I suspect that the railroads find it cheaper to use either left over rail, or old rail that has been replaced rather than buying structural steel to make bumpers with. The only piece of structural steel I've ever seen on a Hayes bumper here is the flat bumper pad that lines up with the coupler. I thin if I were going to make a Hayes bumper, and I suspect I will be making a bunch of them, I'd just cut and bend up code 55 rail and solder it in place, then cut the rails just in front of the bumper and fill the cut with plastic bread clip material to insulate the tracks. A small square of brass soldered to the end of the rails would make the bumper pad itself.
To go back off topic briefly, my biggest complaint with metric as a retired mechanic is that there is no international standard for metric hardware! Japanese metric is a different thread pitch than European. SEA hardware has fine and coarse threads. Metric has fine, coarse, and medium thread pitches, but hardware stores here generally only stock two out of three. When congress mandated that American manufacturers switch over to metric, the manufacturers "got even" by using odd sized bolt heads and nut sizes. I drove and worked on European sports cars and small sedans before the Americans switched to metric, and the Mercedes, Izusu, and Kubota diesels used in transport refrigeration equipment was all metric. I used my 8mm,10mm, 12mm, 13mm, 14mm, 17mm, and 19mm wrenches a lot, but always wondered why a set of metric wrenches included 15mm, 16mm, & 18mm wrenches. I never found a bolt head that size until the Americans started putting metric hardware on our cars! I think if the American manufacturers could have found a whole metric size between 12, 13, &14mm for the heads of screws, they would have opted for that size bolt head instead of being forced to go with the rest of the world!
To go back off topic briefly, my biggest complaint with metric as a retired mechanic is that there is no international standard for metric hardware! Japanese metric is a different thread pitch than European. SEA hardware has fine and coarse threads. Metric has fine, coarse, and medium thread pitches, but hardware stores here generally only stock two out of three. When congress mandated that American manufacturers switch over to metric, the manufacturers "got even" by using odd sized bolt heads and nut sizes. I drove and worked on European sports cars and small sedans before the Americans switched to metric, and the Mercedes, Izusu, and Kubota diesels used in transport refrigeration equipment was all metric. I used my 8mm,10mm, 12mm, 13mm, 14mm, 17mm, and 19mm wrenches a lot, but always wondered why a set of metric wrenches included 15mm, 16mm, & 18mm wrenches. I never found a bolt head that size until the Americans started putting metric hardware on our cars! I think if the American manufacturers could have found a whole metric size between 12, 13, &14mm for the heads of screws, they would have opted for that size bolt head instead of being forced to go with the rest of the world!