We are restoring a 1890's caboose, (North Western Pacific 5591) which received air brakes, presumably K type early in the last century.

Does anyone have any diagrams of typical practice related to the "extra" air brake plumbing found on a caboose, i.e., air gauge or conductor's valves. The previous restoration efforts, circa 1970 destroyed all remaining evidence of this plumbing. The car currently and air cylinder from the West Side Lumber Co., which includes a Automatic/Straight air valve as used on WSLC and Swayne Lumber Co. Clearly not the correct valve for this application.

A little update... We will reinstall the couplers with their new yokes and draft springs early next month. We have found that draft gear (this from the era of single spring, either yoke or stem style, not later multiple spring draft gears) generally follows the dimensions of the earliest (1879) MCB standards with 25" long drawheads, which had changed by the 1890's to a shorter design. It is nice when the period literature answers questions.

The result was that the car had the draft stops mounted further back on the car frame that was typical when the knuckle couplers were installed, so they had to use a longer yoke with a spacer block to take up the difference. We have found an example of surviving coupler installation by Southern Pacific within our collection, with the same issues, with a similar block carrying a SP casting number.

We have also found evidence of an earlier second pair of truss rods. We are now struggling with the question of whether the car had 4 truss rods (not common on California narrow gauge passenger cars) or just had the truss rods replaced and moved to the edge of the body during a rebuilding, possibly as part of a truck change from arch bar to wood framed passenger trucks.

So far this has been an easy restoration... Things are coming apart as they should, materials are arriving on time, and appropriate parts are appearing from the spare parts pile as needed.

Randy

Brake valve comes off the train line. Choose any convenient place to tap it. I'm not sure what valve you refer to - if it is the "engine brake" valve from the old combination equipment, it could work well in this application, just running its exhaust to the atmosphere rather than to the engine brake cylinder. It would allow the brakeman or conductor to make a gradual set rather than just "dump" the air in the event of an emergency. I have seen valves specifically made for cupola mounting with a series of progressively larger holes that performs the same function but not as smoothly.

dave

At Sumpter Valley Ry I did most of the plumbing on Caboose 3 during it's restoration. It had most of it's brake piping system intact, but in far too poor of condition for use. The original system used a plain triple valve with the built in 3 position valve for straight or automatic air. I put some effort into retaining this original valve, air resevoir and detached brake cylinder. It became obvious that the components were in such condition that there would probably be some dependability issues even if made functional. Thus our carman and I decided it would be best to install a K1 triple valve and related updated components for reliability and interchangability with our other cars.. The lines to the cupola were not fully intact, but there was some evidence as to what had been in place so we tried to keep those exposed aspects prototypical.
The old train line was 1". It was shot, so we replaced it with 1 1/4". You will need a tee with built in strainer where you tap of for your branch pipe. The typical WABCO tee has a gasketed union end and built in strainer. The original 1" one had a 1/4" nipple brazed into it to carry trainline pressure to the gauge in the cupola. On the new 1" branch pipe to the k1 tripple valve I intalled a tee with bushing down to 1/4" to tap off air for the same purpose. You will need a 1" cut out cock for the branch line to the triple valve. Our caboose 5 already had been converted to a K1 at some point so there were several points about the piping system there that we could copy, and also some things to avoid. I recommend putting swing joints (double 90deg ells with close nipples between) at both the connection to the brake cylinder and at the resevoir, assuming you would be using a detached cylinder. We have had trouble with bolts loosening up on the cylinder mounting on cab. 5 with the result being the cylinder works a little bit and the line between the cylinder and resevoir not having swing joints ends up breaking in the threads of a pipe nipple. This we avoided on Cab. 3. On the original caboose 3 piping there was a tee in the line between the brake cylinder and triple valve that allowed a 2nd 1/4" line to be tapped off to go to the duplex gauge in the cupola to indicate brake cylinder press. In the new piping we installed a similar tee bushed to 1/4" for this purpose. I ran the 1/4" blk. steel lines up through a closet under the cupola seat at the original location, coming out from under the wooden seat side to the gauges. At this point not knowing what was there originally, I converted to 1/4" copper lines to make the final connections to the gauge. I think it looks pretty good. As to the dump valve in the cupola, I brought the 3/4" line off from an additional conventional pipe tee in the train line up through the original hole next to the air gauge lines and plumbed this to a 3/4" air cock which discharges out through a hole in the wall on one end of the cupola. I think the old plumbing on cab. 5 was quite similar, though not quite the same as #3 as these cabeese were basically one off
cars that had many modification over there life span now of perhaps 120-130 years. The duplex gauge in Cab. 5 had been in it for many years which was evident by old coats of paint dating back to when it operated in SVRy trains pre 1947. The gauge is actually a locomotive cab gauge, so the nomenclature on the gauge is not correct for brake cyl. and train line press. however any trainman would quickly learn which hand reffered to which function. Cab. 3's gauge was missing, so we used a gauge identical to the one in 5 assuming this to be prototypical for SVRy.
Also, the retainer line was partly intact on cab. 3 which was 3/8" black pipe, so I replaced it with the same and installed a retainer that was probably the same or similar as to what had been in place. There was more that one set of retainer mounting holes, so it was obvious that more than one type had been used over the years. Caboose 5's retainer is in place but not connected to the triple valve. It is of a type I have not seen in any old catologs or manuals.
Piping diagrams for the k1 system are readily available in a lot of old air brake catechisms and also the Wabco k1 manual's turn up on Ebay frequently. Hope this is of interest and helps.