Braced Gate

Rail road ties braced.

Drawing from my time in Montana as a ranch hand, I moved a gate in our pasture in preparation for building an extension on the barn shed to replace the aging horse shed seen in this photo. I found some railroad ties for the purpose and planted them 4 feet down so the frost won’t get under them and move them around. Also being well anchored helps resist the constant pull of the gate which tends to pull posts over.

The diagonal wire helps support the gate post and the horizontal pole prevents the helper post from being pulled over by the diagonal. If we had high tension wire pulling on the gate post there would be a second diagonal wire to resist that pull but ours are hand tightened electric wire.

I notched the posts for the horizontal with a dull skill saw blade knowing the damage a railroad tie can do to a chainsaw blade. Screws for attaching the brace are overkill but it is what I had on hand. The stick in the diagonal wire is used to tighten the assembly and a nailing it to the brace prevents it from unwinding.

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