In this paper, the performance improvement of a decentralized brake system for railway rolling stocks is investigated. In order to verify the effectiveness of the decentralized brake system, it is compared to the truck unit brake system which has only one control unit per a truck. The adaptive sliding mode control scheme is used to realize a robust anti-slip brake control system. Through computer simulations, it is verified that the decentralized brake system has better braking performance than the truck unit brake system.