Brake Tests

4 complexity; the flexibility and certainty in applying and releasing brakes during service application; and the increased difficulty of keeping the service and emergency functions separate, i. e., insuring quick action when required on the one hand, and preventing it, when not required on the other. 4. On certain trains in our service it was found that some of these conditions were not satisfied with the present design of air brake appa- ratus and brake equipment, two of the most important being the length- ening of the emergency stop with the heavier cars and failure of brakes to release after a normal service application. 5. Previous performances of lighter cars in emergency stopping were given consideration in determining the distance at which heavy steel cars should be brought to rest. References were made to such tests as the Galton-Westinghouse tests in 1878-1879, Shiproad tests in 1894, Absecon tests in 1902, Atsion tests in 1903 and Toledo tests in 1909. 6. The first formal consideration and discussion of the distance in which a steel passenger car sliould be stopped was at a meeting of railway officials in conjunction witli the M. C. B. Committee on Train Brake and Signal Equipment held in Union Station, Pittsburgh, in 1909, where the following resolutions were unanimously adopted:— “Resolved, That it is the sense of this meeting that the air brakes provided for the heavier passenger cars now building shall be of such design, proportion and capacity as to enable trains of said heavier passenger cars to be stopped in practically the same distance after the brakes are applied as is now the case with the existing lighter cars; and be it further “Resolved, That for the use of this committee and others in- terested in making calculations, we suggest that it be assumed that the theoretically desirable stop is one which requires the space of not over 1,200 feet after the brakes are applied, the speed of the trains at the time of the application of the brakes being sixty miles per hour.” 7. During the winter of 1912 the Test Department conducted a series of tests near Absecon, N. J., making a total of 214 runs with various types and makes of brake shoes on a train of ten of the Penn- sylvania Railroad Company’s P-70 cars and during these tests it devel- oped that our heavy steel passenger cars were not being stopped in the distance agreed upon as desirable at the meeting leading up to the Toledo tests of 1909 on the Lake Shore & Michigan Southern Railroad already referred to. 8. The results of a new series of tests made at Absecon in 1913, and herein described, indicate clearly that the requirements set up in the above resolutions can be met, when due regard is given to all of the detail factors which contribute to the bringing of the vehicle to