The water tower will be a nuisance to fix if it ever breaks, and so, I decided to find out when that will be. While The Boy is off at university, he doesn’t mind if I raid his Lego supply for some experimental apparatus, and I soon found the battery pack and motor I was looking for. Raking through the happy musical ABS blocks also yielded a couple of gears, and an arm that pulled the fishing line through almost the full travel about once a second.
I was surprised to get four and a half hours out of the batteries that I found in the battery pack. A fresh set of batteries ran it for another half an hour before the 100 pound fishing line broke. Interestingly, the line broke next to the motor where it had to make a sharp bend because the Lego didn’t pull straight out. If I were to repeat the experiment, I would take out the bend.
However that is not necessary. Over the course of the five hours, the spout raised and lowered about 18,000 times. A typical day’s operation on Pembroke will fill four tenders before sending trains down the branch. So, even with the nasty bend, I can expect to get about 4,500 operating sessions out of the water tower, or 150 operating sessions a year for the next 30 years. My heirs might need to think about fixing the mechanism, but I won’t.
Pembroke:87 
Rene – Methinks you’ve missed your calling!