Electric Trains without Compressors

[darwins]

A Westinghouse Document from 1904 describes a storage brake system:

Instruction Pamphlets of the Westinghouse Traction Brake Company : Westinghouse Traction Brake Company : Free Download, Borrow, and Streaming : Internet Archive

Book digitized by Google from the library of the University of Wisconsin - Madison and uploaded to the Internet Archive by user tpb.

archive.org

(This particular example was intended for straight air brakes rather than automatic air brakes.)

Motor cars were not fitted with compressors but rather had high pressure storage reservoirs which stored air at pressures up to 300psi. This was released through a reducing valve into a main reservoir operating at ordinary brake system pressure.

Some early electric railways in UK used brake systems that were recharged from external compressors at terminal stations. AFAIK these all had automatic air brakes. Was the storage system on these the same as that described in the document?

Railways that operated trains without compressors were:

Liverpool Overhead Railway (1892)
Waterloo and City Railway (1898)
Mersey Railway (1903)

 

[OVS Flatbottom]

Some early electric railways in UK used brake systems that were recharged from external compressors at terminal stations. AFAIK these all had automatic air brakes. Was the storage system on these the same as that described in the document?

Railways that operated trains without compressors were:

Liverpool Overhead Railway (1892)
Waterloo and City Railway (1898)
Mersey Railway (1903)

Didn't the City and South London do this too, in the early loco-hauled days? (I'm afraid I've no idea whether it was the Westinghouse system described.)

 

[Taunton]

The Mersey Railway certainly had this. Pipes for the compressed air located at the platform ends were attached by drivers to trains arriving at Birkenhead Park and Rock Ferry to recharge them.

Not dissimilar in concept, slip coaches had storage reservoirs under the frames for vacuum, which became charged up during normal running from the train pipe, such that they could make multiple applications and releases of their brakes as they ran detached into their destination station. Slip guards used to feel it was a point of personal skill and finesse to make just one application and stop right at the intended point on the platform, but this gave rise to the misapprehension that it was all they were able to do.

 

[Rescars]

On a grander scale, there have been trams and locomotives powered by compressed air held in reservoirs charged from external compressors.

 

[John Webb]

Were 'end of line' compressors driven by electricity or by steam? Anyone know?

 

[Taunton]

When the Mersey Railway electrification was extended onto the onetime Wirral Railway, now LMS, in 1938 the static compressors were given up and conventional compressors installed on the cars which now ran through between the two systems.

 

[edwin_m]

On a grander scale, there have been trams and locomotives powered by compressed air held in reservoirs charged from external compressors.

The trams (at least) had to have a coal-fired stove on board to heat the air up and avoid icing up as it expanded.

 

[ThirteenArches]

there have been trams and locomotives powered by compressed air held in reservoirs

I once bought a book called something like "Tram Accidents 1895-1960". It was unbelievably depressing- the same accident repeated over and over; tram starts down a hill, loses the wire, magnetic rail brake non- functional and handbrake ineffective, corner at bottom of hill, smash and often major casualties. Air brakes had only been available since 1869, and the lead- acid battery since 1859, so tram designers couldn't have been expected to incorporate such wild innovations, especially since they were both foreign. The book went to a charity shop.