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Re: Incompetent FRA safety specialist on air brakes
Author: Dr Zarkoff
Date: 06-20-2014 - 17:59
>"I'm not sure with the audience if you all understand how the current air brake systems on our freight trains out there operate today, but it's basically 19th century technology,"
I get a kick out of people who say things like this because a more than good case can be made for the ECP also being "19th Century technology" too. Back then it was called "electro-pneumatic brakes".
A good example of "new"technology which is actually quite "old" is the fax machine. The basic technology was patented in 1846, although it wasn't practical for everyday use until it became "wirephoto" in the 1920s. Modern-day fax machines, which use the same basic principles, became available in 1964. The same thing can be said about Babbages's difference engine (1822), Boolean Algebra (1854), dog charts for interlocking plants (1880s), and the computers you and I use toady.
I guess we should throw out our fax machines and computers to wait for something "new". Maybe we should pay for someone to reinvent the wheel. I mean, after all, the type we use today were first developed over 5,000 years ago.
If you include electro-pneumatic brakes in this ECP business, which isn't at all a stretch, US railroads have tried and discarded it at least three times since 1900. Only transit agencies (CTA, Philly subway, NYC subway, etc.) stuck with it, and the PCS almost got rid of it about 10-12 years ago because of maintenance costs
An emergency caused by quick action (vent valve emergency) propagates at nearly 1000 feet per second in an AB equipped train (1934). I expect that ABD and ABDX have improved upon it. The principle of "quick action" has been around since the early 1890s with the introduction of the H triple valve, which was called the "Quick Action Triple".
ECP also conjures up the possibility that some nefarious hackers (like al Qaida) could hack into the ECP system, particularly if it's wireless, and cause it not to go into emergency when desired, a situation not unlike the millions of credit card security breaches which happened at Target and Nieman-Marcus over the last year or so.
A few comments on some of the other comments:
>UP runs it's trains without air brakes, just ask the hogheads. This is indeed a misguiding and damaging set of quotes.
Since oil trains etc. have become such a hot button issue, do you mind if I change this to read: "UP won't allow its engineers to runs its trains with air brakes, just ask the hogheads."?
>The word it refuses to post and is replacing with cuss marks is d-e-v-i-l. Is it politically correct to say "witch's brew" instead?
How odd, because the word is a legitimate English word, unlike those four letter words so vulgar salacious and obscene.
>One advantage of the ECP brake is that it normally comes with a brake control device on the car.
With that "19th Century technology", this device is called a triple valve or control valve, depending on the type of brake system.
>This also provides an anti-skid system,
The WABCo Decelostats® and Budd's Rolokron® systems date to just before WWII, although these were for passenger service.
> And it also makes every car kind of independent, which would compensate for weight,
Empty-load brake systems are at least 105 years old.
>The downside is, of course, price.
Bingo!
This is also the reason the AAR has stuck with the 27-line MU cable scheme, although there are ongoing efforts to increase the number of control wires for data transmission from the trailing units. It's also a problem for APTA (transit operators) because each commute operation (Metra, Metrolink, PCS, MBTA, CDTX-Amtrak, etc.) use different configurations for the wires in their communication cables.
As a result of the data developed by the Burlington Brake Trials of 1886, the GMA/ARA/AAR has required new brake systems to have backwards compatibility with older ones, again for the precisely the same reason.
ECP, and the earlier version called electro-pneumatic brakes, work fine in captive and/or dedicated because of the limited scale of the operation, provided the operator sees a reasonable return on his investment in capital outlay and maintenance costs. Eventually you reach a tipping point, the point of diminishing returns, and the US RRs have decided the scale of investment for their huge fleets of cars way, way beyond this point.
I get a kick out of people who say things like this because a more than good case can be made for the ECP also being "19th Century technology" too. Back then it was called "electro-pneumatic brakes".
A good example of "new"technology which is actually quite "old" is the fax machine. The basic technology was patented in 1846, although it wasn't practical for everyday use until it became "wirephoto" in the 1920s. Modern-day fax machines, which use the same basic principles, became available in 1964. The same thing can be said about Babbages's difference engine (1822), Boolean Algebra (1854), dog charts for interlocking plants (1880s), and the computers you and I use toady.
I guess we should throw out our fax machines and computers to wait for something "new". Maybe we should pay for someone to reinvent the wheel. I mean, after all, the type we use today were first developed over 5,000 years ago.
If you include electro-pneumatic brakes in this ECP business, which isn't at all a stretch, US railroads have tried and discarded it at least three times since 1900. Only transit agencies (CTA, Philly subway, NYC subway, etc.) stuck with it, and the PCS almost got rid of it about 10-12 years ago because of maintenance costs
An emergency caused by quick action (vent valve emergency) propagates at nearly 1000 feet per second in an AB equipped train (1934). I expect that ABD and ABDX have improved upon it. The principle of "quick action" has been around since the early 1890s with the introduction of the H triple valve, which was called the "Quick Action Triple".
ECP also conjures up the possibility that some nefarious hackers (like al Qaida) could hack into the ECP system, particularly if it's wireless, and cause it not to go into emergency when desired, a situation not unlike the millions of credit card security breaches which happened at Target and Nieman-Marcus over the last year or so.
A few comments on some of the other comments:
>UP runs it's trains without air brakes, just ask the hogheads. This is indeed a misguiding and damaging set of quotes.
Since oil trains etc. have become such a hot button issue, do you mind if I change this to read: "UP won't allow its engineers to runs its trains with air brakes, just ask the hogheads."?
>The word it refuses to post and is replacing with cuss marks is d-e-v-i-l. Is it politically correct to say "witch's brew" instead?
How odd, because the word is a legitimate English word, unlike those four letter words so vulgar salacious and obscene.
>One advantage of the ECP brake is that it normally comes with a brake control device on the car.
With that "19th Century technology", this device is called a triple valve or control valve, depending on the type of brake system.
>This also provides an anti-skid system,
The WABCo Decelostats® and Budd's Rolokron® systems date to just before WWII, although these were for passenger service.
> And it also makes every car kind of independent, which would compensate for weight,
Empty-load brake systems are at least 105 years old.
>The downside is, of course, price.
Bingo!
This is also the reason the AAR has stuck with the 27-line MU cable scheme, although there are ongoing efforts to increase the number of control wires for data transmission from the trailing units. It's also a problem for APTA (transit operators) because each commute operation (Metra, Metrolink, PCS, MBTA, CDTX-Amtrak, etc.) use different configurations for the wires in their communication cables.
As a result of the data developed by the Burlington Brake Trials of 1886, the GMA/ARA/AAR has required new brake systems to have backwards compatibility with older ones, again for the precisely the same reason.
ECP, and the earlier version called electro-pneumatic brakes, work fine in captive and/or dedicated because of the limited scale of the operation, provided the operator sees a reasonable return on his investment in capital outlay and maintenance costs. Eventually you reach a tipping point, the point of diminishing returns, and the US RRs have decided the scale of investment for their huge fleets of cars way, way beyond this point.
