Thanks for all your comments - it gives me fuel for thought - one repairman had done a tuneup, thinking that would take care of it, then saw the broken gear - he would have to remove the lower shaft to get to the lower gear, and apparently there are a lot of things attached to the lower shaft - he estimates four hours labor and total cost of about $400 - now that's prohibitive! I'll call a local repair shop to get their comments, but probably I'll be saying good-bye to the machine - sigh. Perhaps I really will look for the machine on goodwill.com