Photo of Air Brake Badge Plate

[NW Mailing List]

M. Le Premier Burnett:

Une mille <<Mercis>> from the WH&WFL dispatching center!  Thanks to your informative tome from the 3ieme Arrondissement, we will finally be able to get that string of bad-order hoppers off our storage track and back to their rightful owners or assignees.  I wonder where the Old Colony Railroad wants these cars sent?

Brian Gilleran
Center for Ice Cream Consumption
Herndon, VA

Long live the mighty Brassica papa!


> On Dec 18, 2022, at 7:27 AM, NW Mailing List <nw-mailing-list at nwhs.org> wrote:
> 
> Comrade Brian O'Gilleran, Excellency:
> 
> The badge plates show the set up and measurements of the rods and levers which communicate the motion of the air brake cylinder's piston, through a linkage of rods and levers, to the brake shoes which do the work of applying a retarding force to the car's wheels.
> 
> The lengths of the pieces and parts will vary according to car length, the type of air brake equipment applied, and the braking-ratio which the mechanical engineer wishes to achieve.
> 
> Why is this information practical, and why does it need to be available?
> 
> Well, say you are a car repairman at the car shop of the Washington, Herndon & Western Fast Line Rail Road, and you get a car owned by the Central Pacific Rail Road.  It has been shopped for a broken or missing brake rod; or perhaps the car has been wreck-damaged and you must replace more than one rod and/or lever.  The car does not belong to your road, so you do not know how its brake system was designed.
> 
> You can find the answer to these existential perplexities on the badge plate, which gives all the needed information you need to repair the car.
> 
> But I was only a brakeman who hallucinated about being a telegraph operator, and  know but little.  For the really serious questions in life, you should consult the Hon. Mr. Gordon Hamilton, of this List, who is a bona fide Mechanical Engineer and worked in the N&W's Mechanical Dee-Partment.  He can explain freight car air brake systems at the level of thermodynamic theory, if you wish, or at the level of twistin' the brake wheel, for dumb old brakemen like me.  Just tell him to put up his Blue Flag before he gits his'seff too deep into the explanation...
> 
> Hope this helps.  Cheers and Christmas Blessings.
> 
> -- abram burnett
> Troisieme Arrondissement of the Turnip Patch
> 
> .
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