Railway braking systems

This paper discusses the control systems rather than the components of braking such as compressors, actuators, and friction materials. The gap between the "traditional", mechanical, brake engineer and the electrical systems engineer were also analyzed. The former usually pales at the sight of a semiconductor let alone a microprocessor, and the latter who is increasingly "electronic" but who takes two paces smartly to the rear when faced with the term "fail-safe". The vast capabilities of control that exist today with that most onerous task of providing rail vehicles with a "continuous and automatic" brake system were related in this paper