page_title: Railway brake
section_title: Early days
hierarchical_section_title: Railway brake / Early days
caption_attribution_description: English: Rotair Valve Westinghouse Air brake Company... interior of locomotive at Saskatchewan Railway Museum
context_page_description: A railway brake is a type of brake used on the cars of railway trains to enable deceleration, control acceleration or to keep them immobile when parked. While the basic principle is similar to that on road vehicle usage, operational features are more complex because of the need to control multiple linked carriages and to be effective on vehicles left without a prime mover. Clasp brakes are one type of brakes historically used on trains.
context_section_description: In the earliest days of railways, braking technology was primitive. The first trains had brakes operative on the locomotive tender and on vehicles in the train, where "porters" or, in the United States brakemen, travelling for the purpose on those vehicles operated the brakes. Some railways fitted a special deep-noted brake whistle to locomotives to indicate to the porters the necessity to apply the brakes. All the brakes at this stage of development were applied by operation of a screw and linkage to brake blocks applied to wheel treads, and these brakes could be used when vehicles were parked. In the earliest times, the porters travelled in crude shelters outside the vehicles, but "assistant guards" who travelled inside passenger vehicles, and who had access to a brake wheel at their posts, supplanted them. The braking effort achievable was limited and it was also unreliable, as the application of brakes by guards depended upon their hearing and responding quickly to a whistle for brakes.
  An early development was the application of a steam brake to locomotives, where boiler pressure could be applied to brake blocks on the locomotive wheels. As train speeds increased, it became essential to provide some more powerful braking system capable of instant application and release by the train operator, described as a continuous brake because it would be effective continuously along the length of the train.
  
  In the United Kingdom, the Abbots Ripton rail accident in January 1876 was aggravated by the long stopping distances of express trains without continuous brakes, which – it became clear – in adverse conditions could considerably exceed those assumed when positioning signals. This had become apparent from the trials on railway brakes carried out at Newark in the previous year, to assist a Royal Commission then considering railway accidents. In the words of a contemporary railway official, these 
  showed that under normal conditions it required a distance of 800 to 1200 yards to bring a train to rest when travelling at 45½ to 48½ mph, this being much below the ordinary travelling speed of the fastest express trains.  Railway officials were not prepared for this result and the necessity for a great deal more brake power was at once admitted  
  Trials conducted after Abbots Ripton reported the following (for an express train roughly matching one of those involved, like it on a 1 in 200 fall, but unlike it braking under favorable conditions)
  However, there was no clear technical solution to the problem, because of the necessity of achieving a reasonably uniform rate of braking effort throughout a train, and because of the necessity to add and remove vehicles from the train at frequent points on the journey. (At these dates, unit trains were a rarity).
  The chief types of solution were:
  A spring system: James Newall, carriage builder to the Lancashire and Yorkshire Railway, in 1853 obtained a patent for a system whereby a rotating rod passing the length of the train  was used to wind up the brake levers on each carriage against the force of conical springs carried in cylinders. The rod, mounted on the carriage roofs in rubber journals, was fitted with universal joints and short sliding sections to allow for compression of the buffers. The brakes were controlled from one end of the train. The guard wound up the rod, compressing the springs, to release the brakes; they were held off by a single ratchet under his control (although in an emergency the driver could draw on a cord to release the ratchet). When the ratchet was released the springs applied the brakes. If the train divided, the brakes were not held off by the ratchet in the guard's compartment and the springs in each carriage forced the brakes onto the wheel. Excess play in the couplings limited the effectiveness of the device to about five carriages; additional guards and brake compartments were necessary if this number were exceeded.  This apparatus was sold to a few companies and the system received recommendation from the Board of Trade. The L&Y conducted a simultaneous
caption: Rotair Valve Westinghouse Air brake Company[11]
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