Talk:Vacuum brake

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Are vacuum brakes employed on heavy road vehicles and if not, why?Myrtone (the strict Australian wikipedian)

Use on road vehicles: Vacuum brakes were originally developed to provide a continuous brake through all the vehicles in a train. This was not necessary in a road vehicle. Furthermore, the requirement to maintain the vacuum (using the small ejector) meant a constant bleed of steam from the boiler, which would be harder to sustain in a road locomotive. It would have been simpler to use a straightforward steam brake, where a small piston acts directly on the brakes only when required. Indeed, this was the method used on "freight-only" rail locomotives intended for use on unfitted stock (i.e. waggons which carried only hand-operated brakes). Moonraker88 20:50, 15 April 2006 (UTC)