Railroad Hand Brakes
Virtually all railroad rolling stock is equipped with manually operated mechanical hand brake devices that set and release the brakes. Most of these involve a chain linked to the brake rigging, most often at the brake cylinder, that when tightened pull the piston out against the releasing springs, thus applying the brakes on the car (if there is only one brake cylinder per car) or bogie (if there is more than once cylinder per car). Newer locomotives have electric systems that simply place an electric motor in place of the chain winding mechanism. This brake acts independent of the action of the automatic air brakes, which function collectively when coupled in a train and are under the control of the locomotive engineer.
Manual hand brakes serve to keep a piece of rolling stock stationary after it has been spotted in a rail yard or at a customer for unloading or loading. They are also used to secure a parked train from inadvertent movement, especially while unmanned.
Before the development of locomotive-actuated train braking systems in the late 19th century, designated railroad employees known as brakemen would move about the tops of cars, setting hand brakes in an effort to stop the train in a timely manner. This process was imprecise and extremely dangerous. Many brakemen lost life and limb as a result of falling from a moving train, icy and wet conditions often adding to the hazards involved in negotiating the top of a swaying boxcar. In the U.S., an 1893 federal law, the Railroad Safety Appliance Act, required automatic brakes on all railroads, effective in 1900.
Read more about this topic: Parking Brake
Famous quotes containing the words railroad, hand and/or brakes:
“... no other railroad station in the world manages so mysteriously to cloak with compassion the anguish of departure and the dubious ecstasies of return and arrival. Any waiting room in the world is filled with all this, and I have sat in many of them and accepted it, and I know from deliberate acquaintance that the whole human experience is more bearable at the Gare de Lyon in Paris than anywhere else.”
—M.F.K. Fisher (1908–1992)
“Take pains ... to write a neat round, plain hand, and you will find it a great convenience through life to write a small and compact hand as well as a fair and legible one.”
—Thomas Jefferson (1743–1826)
“There is a limit to the application of democratic methods. You can inquire of all the passengers as to what type of car they like to ride in, but it is impossible to question them as to whether to apply the brakes when the train is at full speed and accident threatens.”
—Leon Trotsky (1879–1940)