The Problem With the Westinghouse Air Brake

The Westinghouse air brake is very simple. It's very reliable. It's basically fail safe. Each car has a cylinder of compressed air on it, compressed air pipe runs the length of the train and that main train air pipe triggers the cylinders on each car to put the brakes on. This happens sort of sequentially car by car, right? This brake signal propagates at about the speed of sound down thelength of the train - which for most purposes is fine. You know, there's some problem here. Wasn't that the train didn't stop quickly enough when they tried to stop it? It's that they didn't know to try and stop it quickly. Right.