While looking for something else, I stumbled across the above. It’s pretty neat -I’d been wishing for something similar ‘on-line’ so a user could see how a real air brake system operates at various points in the locomotive’s air system and the trainline - although it won’t be confused with the MicroSoft Train Simulator or other sophisticated application or simulation software. If you make the small jump in your imagination from “Trackmobile” to a real locomotive, you’ll be close - and I’d say this has about 80 percent of what I’d like to see, which is plenty good enough for now.
The 1st link below takes you to a little 1-paragraph explanation from Trackmobile, from which you can then click on the link to go to the “Train Airbrake Animation”, or you can just click on the 2nd link and go to it directly
Paul pretty much on target the arrows going to the engine is reading brake pipe pressure and the slight differance your seeing in the gauge is about what a trainline does it wont read 90psi right away takes time to air up, and in emergency dealing with air hose seperation the eqaulizer would stay at 90 and brake pipe at 0.
I think that is an interesting and informative animation. But I wonder why air is intentionally restricted by the 3 cfm orifices when charging the service and emergency reservoirs of each car. Would the reason be to spread out the release of brakes by getting the trainline up to pressure before the reservoirs are charged, so the trainline can charge the reservoirs in a closer-to-simultaneous manner, rather than sequentially from front to rear of the train?
Their is a major problem with the reservoir the emergency reservoir is about 33% larger than the auxilary, for this reason when I have a 10psi reduction when I realese the brakes a small ammoont of air goes in the brake pipe to kick in accelarated service release.
I don’t see a problem with the arrows going out of the trainline and out of the triple valve and back to the engine when the brakes are set. I would assume that is exhaust from the trainline being reduced by venting back to the control valve on the engine. And as the trainline exhausts, the triple valves would exhaust into the trainline. Wouldn’t that be the normal occurrence?
What would be interesting is animating the action of the brakes being triggered to dynamite as happens when the rate of trainline reduction exceeds a certain rate of decrease, and each triple valve responds by directly dumping its portion of the trainline to the atmosphere.
I don’t see a problem with the arrows going out of the trainline and out of the triple valve and back to the engine when the brakes are set. I would assume that is exhaust from the trainline being reduced by venting back to the control valve on the engine. And as the trainline exhausts, the triple valves would exhaust into the trainline. Wouldn’t that be the normal occurrence?
What would be interesting is animating the action of the brakes being triggered to dynamite as happens when the rate of trainline reduction exceeds a certain rate of decrease, and each triple valve responds by directly dumping its portion of the trainline to the atmosphere.
When charging a train, all of the cars charge together. If charging were unlimited, the first car would take all of the flow until it were nearly charged, then the next car, and so on. This is not important for the first charge of the day but when the brakes are released in operation we want all cars to see the release (increase in brake pipe pressure) at nearly the same time. With unlimited recharging flow cars would release in sequence and give very uneven brake application.
When the brake pipe pressure is reduced (to apply the brakes) the orifice flow reverses and could potentially keep the brake pipe pressure up (again from front to back of the train) and cause uneven application. Actually, the reversed orifice flow causes an differential pressure across the piston of the triple valve and that is what moves the valve into the normal apply position, putting reservoir air into the brake cylinder.
And yes, the triple valve needs much more detail to see its multiple functions. The little demo is great to give folks a first view of how the system works.
I have been looking for this for quite a while. I looked it up when I first started using the trackmobile at work and wanted a little better understanding of the operations. The guy that trained me just used the emergency brakes to stop the cars, which I knew was obviously wrong. I have been looking for this because now that it is my turn to train someone new, I knew it would be a good resource to help them understand it.
