Inncident on Paris Disneyland RR

[Castor Oil]

Two words: automatic air.

[BruceBergman]

Two words: automatic air.

Gotta agree with that - Even though it' a pain in the butt to use, that isn't a problem because Disneyland so rarely uses the train brakes anyway. They use engine braking and the air brakes on the Locomotive alone.

If the train becomes decoupled, I'd rather see the brakes Big Hole into Emergency and a few people get banged up from the abrupt stop. IMHO it would be infinitely worse if the Engineers looked back (GASP!) and saw a huge gap, the Engine slows or stops, and the Cars have some inertia built up and slam into the rear...

It would be possible to slow down just a bit and make them gently kiss - and then stop. But that's not something they would ever practice for.

[Steve DeGaetano]

Gotta agree with that - Even though it' a pain in the butt to use, that isn't a problem because Disneyland so rarely uses the train brakes anyway. They use engine braking and the air brakes on the Locomotive alone.

A good example of "Just enough knowledge..."

Bruce, the trains on the Disneyland Railroad use STRAIGHT AIR. There is no separate engine brake or train brake. There is a single brake stand in each locomotive. When air is applied, brakes on BOTH the engine and the entire train are applied.

See the smaller gauge to the right of the main steam pressure gauge? That's the duplex brake gauge. The red arrow shows reservoir pressure, the black one shows trainline pressure. If there were separate controls for both independent (engine) and train brake, there would be two of those gauges (and two brake stands).



(This is an awesome cab shot, by the way, if you blow it up full size)

[Bruce R Pier]

It's a lot easier handling a train (especially a short one) with straight air. Automatic air requires a much higher skill level that only comes with a lot of practice. There were several commuter railroads that because they were insular had both types of braking systems. The Durango & Silverton uses both automatic and straight air.

[BruceBergman]

I knew the DLRR runs Straight Air, not Automatic, but I thought someone in the past said they could (and usually did) split them off to Independent and not use the train brakes at all. I have now been edumacated and I hereby sit corrected.

But the principle still holds, if the train breaks with Automatic Air the brake pipe will break also, and both halves are going to come to a stop.