Re: Give Me A Brake! The Update. Updated!

Well,
for those of you who are remotely interested in this sort of thing, not all is well. It seems that the general design is good but the Brake only works well in the clockwise direction which is cab-forward (reverse) and most of the steep downgrade parts of my line. Braking in forward operation with the band braking in the anti-clockwise rotation is about 20% effective of the opposite with 3 times the pressure needed on the handwheel.

This would be a test of the unwary operators, sort of a full-size "momentum" braking feature stolen from the trainset.
However I don't want to go there.

So we're back to reworking the band to be pulled closed in both directions rather than one by fitting an elbow crank. If that doesn't work satisfactorily then I'll rebuild to the original Mancha design with the band centre hung and rotationally (screw) applied.