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Dan, look at the old thread I pulled out; that ought to explain the 24RL and 26L pretty well. As for retainers, they do just that...they retain air in the brake cylinders when the brakes are released. This was a critical job when brake systems had no pressure maintaining feature [p.m. compensates for the train line leakage. without it, whatever your leakage is, say, 3lbs per minute, is how fast your brakes leak on. take a 6 lb reduction...one minute later, it's 9 lbs; after two, it's 12 lbs. at this point, if you released the brake, off you'd go on the hill and the brake wouldn't be recharged. that's where the retainers come in...] . This allowed you to recharge the brakes while holding them back on some grade. The feature isn't much used today except in very steep grades, and they were set or released by a flesh-and-blood brakesman walking the train to do just that.
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