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Piping diagram from 1909 of a Westinghouse 6-ET Air Brake system on a locomotive Control handle and valve for a Westinghouse air brake. A railway air brake is a railway brake power braking system with compressed air as the operating medium. [1] Modern trains rely upon a fail-safe air brake system that is based upon a design patented by George ...
Air pump / Air compressor Westinghouse pump (US+) Powered by steam, it compresses air for operating the train air brake system. [3]: 2 The Westinghouse air brake system is used world-wide; [3]: 93 in Europe two systems that use the same principle are the Kunze-Knorr and Oerlikon systems. It can be a single-stage or, when larger capacity is ...
The main advantage of vacuum was that the vacuum can be created by a steam ejector with no moving parts (and which could be powered by the steam of a steam locomotive), whereas an air brake system requires a noisy and complicated compressor. However, air brakes can be made much more effective than vacuum brakes for a given size of brake cylinder.
The Kunze-Knorr brake (Kunze-Knorr-Bremse or KK-Bremse) is an automatic compressed-air brake for goods, passenger and express trains. It was the first graduated brake for goods trains in Europe . When it was introduced after the First World War , goods train brakes switched from hand operation to compressed-air in various European countries.
The first form of the air brake consisted of an air pump, a main reservoir (pressure vessel), and an engineer's valve on the locomotive, and of a train pipe and brake cylinder on each car. One problem with this first form of the air brake was that braking was applied to the first cars in a train much sooner than to the rear cars, resulting in ...
Also, since the brake pipe is typically used for control and supply of air to the cars, if an engineer is not careful, the air supply can be depleted. Further, since the engineer is only aware of the brake pipe pressure and flow of air into the brake pipe, it is not easy to know the state of the train brakes at any given time.
The first Southern units fitted with EP brake could be considered the Bulleid double deck 4-DDs built 1949 (4001 & 4002). The EP brake fitted to this stock was not of the self lapping type and still required the Westinghouse brake as the 'fail to safe' braking as the EP brake fitted was of the 'energise to apply' type, which meant if there was a loss of brake control voltage the EP brake was ...
A pair of gladhand connectors between railroad cars A gladhand connector on a trailer. A gladhand connector or gladhand coupler is an interlocking hose coupling fitted to hoses supplying pressurized air from a tractor unit to air brakes on a semi-trailer, [1] or from a locomotive to railway air brakes on railroad cars. [2]