Quote:
Originally Posted by andyhop
Yeah the air bleeds off from the brake cylinder over time, but that has nothing to do with the loco running or not.
Sure it does. If the loco is running its actively maintaining the pressure in the line. That seems to be stated in many different places do in inclined to believe it.
Quote:
Originally Posted by andyhop
The other thing is that you shouldn't be depending on the air brakes to hold the train anyway so if they were they weren't operating safely who/whatever caused the air brakes to release.Our procedure for stowing a train is you put on the required number of handbrakes, then you release the train and loco brakes and apply power.If you can move the train you have to put on more handbrakes.
I was surprised when I read this in other places too. Seems a bit flawed since you really don't know your margin of safety with this method - you just know that you have enough holding power.
Seems like after you can't move the train you should apply another 10% (or whatever) hand brakes to make sure you have a margin of error in holding power.
Someone pointed out that it's possible (although unlikely) that the engineer did this procedure but ended up with just barely enough stopping power at that time. During the fire the train could have been shifted or changed in some way that now there wasnt quite enough holding power.
It'll be interesting to see if the blank box type device can or does show if the engineer performed the braking test you described.