Thanks to Don Ball for replying to my previous post regarding brakes. He came up with a page from the 1906 Locomotive Builder’s Dictionary, and a Model Railroader article by Gordon Odegard that completely reformed my belief about how these brakes probably worked.
Rather than that tiny vertical equalizing lever, it is likely that they had a horizontal equalizing lever beneath the ash pan. So, I redesigned the parts and found that this approach made it much easier to get the pull rod for the front brakes behind the front driver.
Once again, the ash pan and lower half of the brakes are all one part. This way, when the ash pan is removed, the brakes also get out of the way to allow the drivers to pop out.
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Am I seeing correctly that the equalization/spring system is also incorporated into the part as well? Your thoughts on that topic would be interesting (to me at least).
The springs and equalizing beam will be their own part. I was tempted to combine them, but decided it would be better to allow the brake part to align with the ash pan, and for the spring part to align with the edge of the wheel cover / house bracket.