Electrical – Is There a Symbol for an Inrush Current Limiter

The inrush current limiter that you're using is under-specified and experiences too large of a temperature swing in your circuit. It fails due to excessive thermal cycling.

As expensive as it may sound, I've yet to find any inrush current solution more resilient than discrete resistors, and a contactor that bypasses them once the 24V control supply has started up. No need for any other delays: just a 24V switching supply, a contactor, and three resistors. The resistors would typically be in metal enclosures and mounted to a metal plate bolted to the DIN rail or the panel. You'd need to size them so that they can safely dissipate the energy they'll produce during the charging transient.

I do use this http://electronics-diy.com/soft-start-for-power-supply.php for toroid transformer, part of dc bus for stepper motor drivers. It works great. The basic idea is to limit the inrush current due to magnetization and also due to large capacitor that is discharged at begining. ou can use similar circuit to slowly charge the capacitor and then to switch to operation. A good way to go would be using another pair of contacts of the relay, disconnecting the load.
1. the relay is open: resistors limit the current to the cap, load is disconnected
2. at certain delay, the relay closes and bypass the resistors, while the other contacts connect the load.