MovieChat Forums > The Cassandra Crossing (1977) Discussion > Max Applied The Brake? Why Not Sooner?

Max Applied The Brake? Why Not Sooner?

posted 16 years ago by richard.fuller1
4 replies | jump to latest

Errors says that the brakes would have been automatically applied when the train blew apart, apparently applied to both sections.

I don't know about this, but when the train was blown apart, we see Max the conductor (Stander) applying the hand brakes, simply turning a wheel.

Why not do this sooner to stop the train? Was there an override for it?

Why have an override for a brake on a train?

Did things change that much in 20 years? As we see in an episode of I Love Lucy, Lucy was able to stop the train a good half dozen times in one twentysomething minute episode.

[–] 807 16 years ago

Presumably there actually is some form of manual override in case the brakes are faulty and kick in automatically without a reason.

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[–] micksasse-1 16 years ago

Train brakes [almost!] always "fail safe": if there is any loss of air (or in some cases of vacuum - same principle really) then the system isn't able to hold the brakes off any more, and so the brakes come on - you can't really override that and prevent the train from stopping without curing whatever is wrong with the brake system. One other reason for this is, err, so that if the train is split (e.g. a coupling breaks) the emergency brakes come on immediately automatically - which is, as has been pointed out before, a problematic area in this film...!

[–] 807 16 years ago

Yes, but there is always a possibility that the damage occurs en route and it cannot be repaired in situ, but the train must be driven to the depot first, or the repair will take some hours or days and the damaged train will permanently block some important railway line - in such cases, one must override the brakes somehow before fixing the problem...

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[–] thunderbolt609 14 years ago

Well firstly, IRL if the train were to be separated, the air brakes would fail safe and go into emergency. The same result would occur if one were to pull an emergency brake cord/button, but earlier on when people are complaining after the train was rerouted, a man reaches for a button but is stopped by Max, who is then seen presumably disabling the brake. If not then, it would have happened at the stop in Nuremberg. Either way, the normal means of stopping the train would have been out of the hands of the passengers.

As for the wheel, the hand brake (different from the air brake) is meant to help keep a single car stationary when it is laid up on a gradient or in a train yard. If Max applied the brake while the train was still under locomotive power, the brake shoes on that car would have burnt off, which would have been a waste of precious seconds.