Evening Republican, Volume 19, Number 137, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 10 June 1915 — STOPS CARS QUICKLY [ARTICLE]

STOPS CARS QUICKLY

NEW BRAKE BELIEVED TO BE BEST IN ÜBE. Adopted by a Leading Eastern Railroad, It Is Claimed to Be Capable of Causing Almost Instantaneous Stop. A brake that will stop a train of twelve steel cars weighing 2,000,000 pounds going at sixty miles an hour within 1,000 feet, practically in its own length, and do it. without jolting the passengers, has been adopted by the Pennsylvania railroad, according to a bulletin issued recently. One has to know how air brakes work before it is possible to understand how an almost instantaneous stop can be made without a jar. This is well explained in one of the railroad’s recent bulletins: “The air brake apparatus controls a flow of compressed air through the train and to and from the brake cylinders on each car. A system of levers transmits the force exerted by the compressed air to the brake shoes—that part of the brake which comes in contact with the wheel. As the controlling force of the brake is air and the control itself is given from the engine, brakes on the first car apply first, on the second car next, and so on to the rear of the train as the flow of air travels from car to car. About eight seconds elapse from the time the brake application is started by the engineman until full braking force is obtained on the last car of a twelvecar train. This serial action results In surges and shocks throughout the train during brake application, the shocks increasing in severity as the train length is increased. “The new brake differs from the old mainly in that the control of the compressed air is electric, with the result that the brakes are applied at the same instant on all cars; the full braking power of the train is exerted in two seconds after the engineman turns his lever.” Thus it is not the sudden stopping of a train causes the jar, but the slowing down Of the cars one after another, those in the rear of the train not feeling any of the brakes until eight seconds after those near the engine have slowed down.