THE B-6 FEED VALVE. The B-6 FEED VALVE furnished with the No. 6 EQUIPMENT, photographic views of which are shown in Figs. 40 and 41, is the common slide-valve feed valve, the duty of which is to regulate pressure supply to the brake pipe, but improved by the hand-wheel regulating device and an enlarged regulating valve. In the ordinary automatic equipment, the feed valve was attached directly to, and was considered a part of, the automatic brake-valve; in all E-T equipment, it is located in the line of one of the two pipes that supply main-reservoir air to the brake-valve. The pipe that is directly supplied by the feed valve leads to the automatic brakevalve, and is called the feed-valve pipe, and in Running and Holding positions of the brake-valve it is in open port connection with the brake pipe. All forms of FEED VALVE are interchangeable. As originally designed for attachment to the G-6 automatic brake-valve, the feed valve hangs downward in its proper position; in its application to the previous styles of the E-T brake it was turned upside-down-sticking upward; while in the No. 6 equipment we find it again turned down in its rightful position; and the reasons follow. There are two air ports side by side in the connecting face of the feed valve, and as we stand in front of the G-6 brake valve the left one is the entering port for main-reservoir pressure, and the right one is the port of exit, or brake-pipe connection. As used in the E-T equipment, the feed valve is attached directly to a "pipe bracket" (note appearance in Figs. 40 and 41), and as FIG. 40.-The B-6 Feed Valve. Valve and pipe bracket complete. usually placed, the main-reservoir air enters the pipe bracket from the right. The pipe brackets of the No. 5 equipment were simply made-right-hand pipe connection leading to right-hand face port, and left-hand pipe connection to left-hand face port; this would have reversed the order of passing the air through the feed valve, but by turning the valve upside-down, the port connections were made to coincide, and they were so inverted in the No. 5 and all preceding E-T equipments. The crossed passage, "F" pipe bracket is used in the No. 6 E-T equipment, and, as the name indicates, the passages in this pipe bracket are crossed, so that main-reservoir air entering at the right-hand pipe connection will pass to the left-hand port from which it enters the feed valve, leaving through the righthand port to the left-hand pipe connection, which is to the feed-valve pipe leading to the automatic |