Tonnage Ratinds and weather Reductions for locomotives

[NW Mailing List]

John – Releasing the brake and then having to make a second application before the reservoirs are recharged requires a deeper reduction of the brake for the second application to have any effect.  A sequence of these can create a condition known in the vernacular as “pi***ng away your air”.  This can lead to nervous moments on a long downgrade, or worse.  Weather doesn’t have to be cold for this to happen.  

Let any engineer who hasn’t had this experience raise his hand . . .

Ed King 


From: NW Mailing List 
Sent: Wednesday, December 19, 2018 10:56 AM
To: nw-mailing-list at nwhs.org 
Subject: RE: Tonnage Ratinds and weather Reductions for locomotives

Jimmy, If the engineer releases this brake application and then needs to make a second application relatively quickly . . . can a leaking trainline fail to recharge the auxiliary reservoirs throughout the train in time? If so then what?

 

Thx,  John Garner

 

From: NW Mailing List [mailto:nw-mailing-list at nwhs.org] 
Sent: Tuesday, December 18, 2018 8:17 PM
To: NW Mailing List <nw-mailing-list at nwhs.org>
Subject: Re: Tonnage Ratinds and weather Reductions for locomotives

 

On 12/18/2018 12:55 PM, NW Mailing List via NW-Mailing-List wrote:

  3. And maybe decreased braking capacity due to leakage.

    There is no such thing, at least not on a normal train [weird, oddball occurrences or trains sitting without air for long periods of time don't count for this narrative]. Quite the contrary!

If you don't know, unless a steam locomotive has at least a 24RL brake system, it has no "Pressure Maintaining Feature". What that means is that once an automatic brake application has been made to control the train downhill, let's say a ten pound reduction from 75 lbs. to 65lbs, the system has no way to maintain that 65 lbs. in the trainline. Consequently, if there is any leakage in the trainline, the brakes will apply even more. And, they will continue to apply and slow the train even more than desired until a stop is made or the brakes are released by the engineer. So, you can see the importance of having a tight trainline.

Jimmy Lisle



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