Re: Sanding without air

Usually it was just a lever of some kind to activate the sanders. The air sanders work SORT of like injectors. I think they push the sand through.
In some ways, the gravity feed worked nicely because most of the time you got a LOT of sand. It poured out rather than spray out. But the air ones are more accurate and when they are positioned right most of the sand ends up right undereith the drivers. Rather than on the rail in front of it. So you can usually catch a big slip sooner without even touching the throttle and thus having a constant flow of steam to the cylinders and not loosing momentum.
Kevin Bush