Pittsburg dispatch. [volume] (Pittsburg [Pa.]) 1880-1923, 1890-03-04
FOR FREIGHT TRAINS.
The Airbrake Has Been Put on no.
900 Cars in the United States.
SOME WONDERFUL STOPS MADE.
The Master Car Builders Recommend Its
General Adoption.
A DEVICE TO SHOW QUICK AIR ACTION

When freight cars are fitted out with air
brakes and self couplers, railroad men will
begin to think the millennium has struck
them, and if the time comes, as Colonel
Andrews predicts. when there will be four
and six rails instead of two and big cars
that will carry heavy tonnage, and separate
tracks for passenger trains, the average
brakeman will commence to wonder il
things have not lost their reality, or has
paradise descended and encased him, and
the newspaper paragrapher will miss his
daily occupation of chronicling arms cut
off, bodies crushed and lives lost in railroad
accidents.
1t is surprising what progress railroads
are making in the use of the air brake.
Already ITO, 900 freight cars have been fitted
up with the straight and automatic brake,
but this is small proportion of the number
of cars in use in the country. When the
Westinghouse Company first put the air
br axe on a train of 80 freight cars and test
was made. the brake was applied on the
last car 80 seconds after it had been put on
the first one next to the engine.
IT WOULDN'T WORK.
This plan was found not to work. The
momentum OF the rear cars carried them
forward with such force as to
smash them to pieces by the colli-
sion. Mr.. Westinghouse saw that
if the brake were to be successful it must be
applied almost instantaneously to each car.
Then the automatic brake was produced,
and with it the air could be put on the last
car of train of SO in II seconds, and since
then the time has been reduced to two
seconds.
At the Westinghouse Airbrake Works in
Allegheny series of 80 cylinders has been
constructed and placed side by side to repre-
sent as many cars. Each cylinder is sup
piled with piston, and the apparatus is
connected with an air pump. The engineer
guiding the train can put on the
brakes as he pleases, either slowing
up the cars gently, or stopping them with a
sudden and surprising jar within short
distance. 1t is a great sight to see the pis-
tons in the cylinders shoot out from their
places when the air is put on. One after
another they follow each other in quick or
slow succession, but the climax is reached
when the full force of air is put on to make
an emergency stop.
RAPID AIR ACTION.
With simple turn of stopcock there is
clatter and bang thathlls the building with
roar and scares the uninitiated, but if he has
his eyes open and is watching the row of 80
cylinders he will see the piston on the rear
car line up with the first one that is forced
out almost in the same instant. 1t is a
beautiful sight, and one that railroad men
and others will appreciate.
A number of tests with the airbrake have
been made on different railroads on heavy
grades. In Pittsburg, with heavy train of
30 cars running 20 miles per hour, the train
was stopped in six seconds and in 95 feet on
a grade of AZ feet per mile. In Washing.
ton, at a speed of 40 miles per hour with the
same number of cars, the train was stopped
In 359 feet, or IL seconds. The results
obtained in other places on varying grades
were eminently satisfactory.
The Master Car Builders Association, in
which all the American roads are repre-
sented, some time ago recommended that in
the future all freight cars built be equipped
with self-couplers and airbrakes. 1t is an
expensive job, certainly, but the number of
lives saved in year on every railroad, the
decreased amount of damage paid for loss of
freight in wrecks, etc., will more than repay
the railroads for the extra outlay. Many
cars have been thus equipped, and num-
Der of old ones have also been fitted out,
but there is still much to be done, and it
will take years before all the cars will be
changed,