My current Hudson obsession gave rise to several questions about details. The unique failsafe brake system is vaguely described online but not detailed or diagrammed. I bought a ’48 Stepdown Owners Manual on Ebay for $40 to satisfy my curiosity.
The brake system was pretty much how I imagined it.
The pedal applies leverage to the master cylinder as usual. It also pulls a cable to the rear parking brake linkage, applying the rear brakes after the pedal goes beyond a limit set by the turnbuckle in the cable. The curved thing above the pedal is the regular underdash control for the parking brakes, which pulls on the same cable.
Most other details were conventional for the era, and one was unexpectedly conventional. Articles and books say that Hudson door locks pulled up to lock, opposite of the norm. The manual clearly describes the usual way, push to lock and pull to unlock. The inverse was true before 1948, but the ’48 and later models were ordinary.
Polistra's Mill 