EP braking has been around for 60 or 70 years. You use an analog voltage signal to apply and release the brakes. Was pretty common on passenger equipment in the streamliner era.
Amtrak's Amfleet was built with EP braking, but it was later removed as they found the state of the art 26 brake equipement was "fast" enough for 18 car trains and the graduated release worked fine w/o it. Autotrain needed frt braking w/o the graduated release because the trains were too long.
The modern incarnation of EP braking is ECP braking. Autotrain could use it, but the typical 3 to 12 car train wouldn't benefit much by it.
Interestignly, one of the original spec items for the very successful AB brake valve in the 1920s (one which was still in widespread service in the 1970s), included graduated release, but they could never make it work in frt service....
-Don (Random stuff, mostly about trains - what else? http://blerfblog.blogspot.com/)
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