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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]
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.
When the brake pipe and car components are charged with air, the brakes release. When the engineer needs to make a brake application, control valves in the locomotive reduce the brake pipe pressure. As the brake pipe pressure is reduced, the service portions on each car divert air from their reservoirs to their brake cylinders.
Westinghouse Air Brake Company's Rotair Valve [18] 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 ...
Counter-pressure brakes were found especially on steam engines that worked long inclines and on rack railway locomotives (e.g. on the Vienna Kahlenberg Railway (Kahlenbergbahn), relieving brake blocks and tyres from high levels of wear and tear that they would otherwise be subjected to.
The handle of the angle cock had been improperly placed and had contacted the bottom of the car. Once it was closed, the air brake pipe on all the cars behind the closed valve remained at full pressure, keeping the brakes released on those cars while the brakes on the locomotive and first three cars were applied in emergency. [31]
Modern locomotive MU systems can be easily spotted due to the large MU cables to the right and left of the coupler. The connections typically consist of several air hoses for controlling the air brake system, and an electrical cable for the control of the traction equipment. The largest hose, located next to the coupler, is the main air brake ...