Older cars 627

British goods trains in the olden days did not have train brakes. All the braking power was in the locomotive and the guard's van, and the van's brakes were manually applied. The waggons having buffers and link couplings did not have slack like US freight trains. I don't know how the French or Germans did it. A US locomotive has separate controls for the locomotive brakes and the train brakes. When stopping a train normally only the locomotive brakes are applied. In an emergency both the train brakes and the locomotive brakes are applied. The action is likely to be pretty rough as individual freight cars vary in their braking power. When a train is stopped the train brakes help hold the train. You don't want to run out the slack in the train as it then becomes difficult to start because the locomotive will slip. One big advantage of electric traction (whether they get the power from a wire or a diesel driven generator) over steam was greater starting power.

My dear old grandfather was a yard brakeman in 1914. In those days the brakeman would ride cars down the hump and use his club to lever the brake wheel. They got pneumatic retarders for the clbuttification yard some years later.

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