Junctionmad

I think its fabulous to see pictures that without these sorts of publications would most likely be lost forever or remain incognito in private collections. The irish railways have changed so much since 2005 , that they are almost unrecognisable and these books are a great way to record its demise well done John dave

its worth pointing out that the Article 15 provisions in essence exempt those flying under the auspices of a nationally recognised ( and regulated ) model aircraft clubs, These "proposed" regulations only affect non club members. Given the attitude of the MCAI ( and its insurance), that means most drone flyers

Noel, In ireland , its illegal to fly any model aircraft above 400 feet. ( full stop) The EASA rules while targeting drones , have not been able to define a Model aircraft , as distinct to a drone and hence , ALL RC ( and tethered ) models will fall under the proposed stipulations. There are vague suggestions that a form of " blanket " approval would be issued to model clubs , but then all you would have is drone operators joining clubs. The provisions are a license to create an unregulated " underground " industry of RC modellers, they are absolute rubbish

The current situation is that any drone over 1Kg ( which infact basically includes any RC model at all) must be registered . IN ireland it has always been illegal to engage in " first person flying". Now EASA, has begun a process, where all remote first person flying , is now defined as RPAS ( remotely piloted aircraft systems ) and in essence forbids them to move outside the visual range of an on-ground observer The safety aspect of a register is entirely suspect, as those drones that are setting out to cause trouble , will by definition , not be registered and hence unidentifiable, whereas reasonable operators , operating as they have always done , within the bounds of visual distance and the provisions of the "model aircraft and rocket Act " are having their liberties infringed for an activity that has a tremendous safety record It should be noted that this EASA document is only a " discussion " document. and there is a proposed 3 year grandfather clause for existing model aircraft. so given the typical delays , its could be 5 years before the regulations are applied. ( if not changed in the mean time) Some of the requirements are clearly nonsense , ( such as transmission of IDs, ( no technical data given ) ) and requirements that aircraft fail without causing damage ( hmm , its falling from the sky ) It should be noted that the directive while aimed at drones covers all model aircraft , Im sure certain elements of the RC fraternity , will be " delighted " in having to place a " drone" category certification mark, on the body of their Mk2 spitfire !!!!!

Im am member of MERG ( merg.co.uk) and I am in a group that is working on alternative DCC throttles to go with our DCC command station , we've just finished a smartphone based interface , that allows IOS and Android phones be used as a DCC throttle . My interests in this group lie in creating a miniature Irish GM EMD cab based around this throttle idea ( which is open source hardware and software ) As you can see its based on a 70-80s style EMD control stand. But would make a very close approximation , turned on its side of an Irish EMD GM throttle . However , The brake function on DCC is a very curious beast ( and I delve into detail here ) and in reality bears little resemblance to any reality , air or vacuum brake . and therefore I was trying to understand in detail the operation of the train brake lever on the 141s, to see how well it could be mapped across to this throttle and to DCC. ( in reality the mapping is very poor ) . Its effectively impossible to simulate Vac brake operation in any proper way on DCC ( for example partial release is impossible to simulate ) , even with some of the most sophisticated decoders like ZIMO. Ive engaged in correspondence on several forums, and its interesting to hear the different views. Im currently working on the new throttle software ( which I modifying from PIC assembler , ugh, to "C") to see how close I can get , like lots off things , hobby projects get pushed aside when paying works comes along, so progress in slow. The idea would be to make the red lever cowl of the 141 and turn the throttle longways , with a second strap hole on the other aside and wear the throttle more like a RC aircraft control dave

Actually it doesn't in DCC . as opposed to ones about recoilless rifles !!!! ( which I actually liked by the way) The solution is not to read posts that dont interest you. There are other posting ranging from trawlers and submarines to lots of other stuff that are there for the reading if you desire Id like to thank Rebelled,Railer,IrishThump,Brothie,Mike84C,Garfieldghost and richua for their meaningful contributions . I think garfieldghost feels I have come to the wrong conclusion, but in the absence of direct testimony ( and I have direct testimony of manual lap operation in other forums ) I have to try and reach some conclusion. I will follow up with some drivers I know as to what was specifically implemented on Irish EMDs.

Thanks for those pointers, The EQ brake was I think from reading its application in railUK, somewhat different to self lapping brakes and was more of a " choke " system . the KNorr patent I was aware of but did it actually see light of day ?

I must say I like your layout photography , I can never seem to photograph anything that doesn't make it seem worse then actual. !! Some of them have a lovely " wet " look as if taken after a fall of rain. Lovely stuff Dave

I love the idea of a weapon that creates its own trench to hide in afterwards !!! , ah the unintended consequences of design !!

You now know more about the workings of the vacumn brake then you'll ever need to know !!! Technical topics make a welcome change from time to time !!!

I worked on military projects in the US in the 80s fir a short while. The real life capabilities of military equipment is often far less then we've come to expect from the movies. I remember my old college professor who was involved in cruise missive research saying " the safest place to be with these missiles is at the intended target. !! "

A meme is a word your kids popularised to try and speak something you didn't understand , in reality it's another word for " idea " lol Mind you I like this definition "Used to give a bit of pseudo-academic gravitas to stupid viral sh1t "

Thanks everyone. Based on feedback across a few fora and this one , I think I can conclude that vacumn brake valves certainly up till their effective demise , where never self lapping. You couldn't leave the lever in any " on " position without brake force continuously building and had to be essentially modulated by applying the train brake back and forth between "on " and " off"/ lap with occasional partial " releases " if you needed to briefly restore vacuum and reduce brake force ( interesting partial releases were not possible with many types of air brake to this day ) On steam locos with seperate ejector control and where the brake valve allowed it, it was possible to partially balance an " on" position with a level of exhaustion. So that a consistent brake force could be better maintained down a long gradient , but this was not universally possible nor common usage as far as I can see. On diesels manual control over the exhauster was less evident and hence such balancing act wasn't possible fascinating subject , if anyone has further knowledge or experienced please post them here. I've enough now to see if the same process can be replicated in dcc but initial inspection seems to suggest that DCc protocols only support a subset and are more attuned to air brake then vacuum ( for example simulating partial release isn't possible )

more stock then CIE !!!

I like the bubbles Noel, well done

Oh I understand that , but to make this work requires automation, ie quite a complex vacumn automation system that balances exhaustion rates with the desired inrush rates , and that this only occurs after the appropriate vacumn braking level is established . Something like this was achieved in the 50s with the introduction of the 26L self lapping air brake valve, it was quite complex. I have yet to see any equivalent mechanism for vacumn brakes, most likely because vacumn automating would require bulky control systems ( as they are low pressure ) and also the long delays in establishing steady brake pipe vacumn would make the system hard to implement automatically Even today , in the US, the 26l valve and its self lapping successors are mainly used n high speed passagner applications , and many freight locomotives are still using manual lap valves

So did the Irish EMDs have the ability for the driver to control the specific exhauster rate so that he could balance that against the brake lever position. This seems to be different to mark4c description of BR vacumn diesels operation . Interesting , there must have been electrically controlled balancing , in the US self lapping air brakes arrived in the late 50s with the 26L air brake valve , quite a complicated beast and not transferable to vacumn. Where did the controls on the Irish EMDs exist that controlled exhauster rate ? . It's interesting that they were different to early BR diesels

Did it though , early diesel air , of the cie 141 era did not have self lapping air brakes ( correction some did ) . I've yet to see any mention of self lapping vacumn brakes. Did they exist ?

Leslie , where is the chassis coming from ?

How so, the transistion from simple vacumn brake to automatic vacumn brake mirrors the transistion from simple air brake to automatic air brake. The air system was always arguably a better system , which is why it's practically universal now. I don't understand your contention that you loose certain aspects by making air fail safe. In fact the drawbacks ( limited availability of reservoir ) are present in both systems. The vacumn system was adopted in the uk arguably because it was cheaper to implement , suited steam , and with small trains common in the uk , the disadvantages were not as acute over air

Very nice indeed

Interesting from a railway perspective , is I beleive a ship carrying the initial contingent of industrial locos foundered and the locos were lost

That's interesting , your experience with early BR locos is invaluable and it explains the purpose of the spring detect in advance of release Or labelled auto release , even though it's being commented to me that this position did nothing on Irish EMDs locos. I'd like to thank all those that contributed their knowledge , memories or experiences. If anything else springs to mind , please feel free to add it to this thread

Indeed , butbwere it that simple

I think you miss the point. Firstly I've been attempting to understand the way vacumn braking works. I've also posted similar questions on rmweb , where there are no issues with the debate and an exchange of experiejces followed , with contributions from steam and diesel drivers. However the Irish situation is rather unique in that it's American designed engines which would have been exclusively air brakes , but were fitted with vacumn and I was interested in how they operated. I've been working in MERG with a raspberry pi interface and also interested in moding an open source dcc throttle to make in more consistent with Irish EMD brake operation see http://model-railroad-hobbyist.com/node/25866?page=13 The reason I didn't bring this up is few people would wish to discuss the intricises of the software behind the brake function on dcc. It fact even fewer understand it. Equally , I like to understand how the real thing works. Even here you can see there are confusions about how vacumn train brakes work.