8 ms·
Slip Coaches: Back When British Express Trains Detached Passenger Cars at Speed
- 5DFractalTetris 8y ago...But could you match a platform to a slipcoach's velocity?
- mirimir 8y agoSure, at zero :) And I'm reminded of the various whip devices in Stephenson's Seveneves.
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- Digory 8y agoReminds me of the moving platform idea a few years back. Essentially, platform trains would run on a loop, connecting to high speed express trains. It sounded unsafe, but maybe not more dangerous than a slip coach. https://io9.gizmodo.com/5863484/moving-platforms-let-you-get-on-high-speed-train-while-its-still-moving https://io9.gizmodo.com/5863484/moving-platforms-let-you-get...
- cup-of-tea 8y agoI remember reading a proposal for a system where a high speed train would travel non-stop for the entire length of its route. In halfway towns a shuttle would be sent out to match the train's speed, interface with it to exchange passengers then detach to return to the halfway town platform. It sounds unbelievable, but remember it was once considered insane to consider building a railway between Liverpool and Manchester.
- jakobegger 8y agoOn most rail routes in Austria we have high speed trains and low speed trains on the same routes. When you need to go to a smaller station, you get off at the closest major station and switch to the slow train. It would be awesome if you could just switch directly to the low speed train whenever the high speed train passed it... (Then you don't even need to have shuttles going back and forth) This would be awesome.
- hansjorg 8y agoThis one? https://www.theatlantic.com/china/archive/2013/12/this-proposed-chinese-train-picks-up-passengers-without-stopping/282598/ https://www.theatlantic.com/china/archive/2013/12/this-propo...
- lgregg 8y agoIn theory it could work. I think one big problem would be the erosion of the rails, slowly drifting apart.
- jakobegger 8y agoYou could just link all four rails to prevent that.
- lgregg 8y agoIt would also be tricky because you'd have to get everyone transferred in time. Those stretches would have to be pretty long.
- bobthepanda 8y agoThe problem would be the scheduling. Even at the best of times railways rarely run on the kind of precision that these kinds of operations would demand. Plus it’d require a lot of duplicate railway since presumably it would take distance for shuttles to accelerate and decelerate, and the shuttles would need to get back to the original stations in time for the next trains.
- colejohnson66 8y ago> The problem would be the scheduling. Not in Japan.
- xxxdarrenxxx 8y agoI believe this to be also in great part a cultural feat not a technical one. Very often my train has to wait because the door is blocked either by choice or because cramped train pushes someone's body slightly in front of the door sensors. This kind of egocentricity is unlikely to occur with current typical displayed social behavior in Japan. Where there seems to be a bigger focus on being aware of other's space. Perhaps a minimal variable, but scheduling can be made to mathematical perfection if you can build with freedom. Where I live the soil is weak for mass tunnels and for political/financial reasons, the route is heavily influenced by surrounding infrastructure, creating inefficiencies in routing.
- Merad 8y agoSeems extremely cost prohibitive. In addition to the extra rails and control systems, you’d need a high speed locomotive and several cars for every single station along the route.
- DoreenMichele 8y agoYour question makes me think of how some airplanes refuel in flight, which blows my mind.
- transfire 8y agoThere is no reason this can't be done for modern rail systems. It would greatly improve efficiency and time schedules. But alas, innovation in rail has been very incremental (HyperLoop aside), and practically non-existent in the States.
- logicallee 8y agoWhat's going on with hyperloop these days?
- turboProps 8y agoUh, electric train cars are all but self propelled, and could carry their own electricity if so desired. Trollies and street cars are individually powered. Slip cars only made sense during the age of steam power, when locomotive power was supplied by huge coal powered engines with furnaces, before internal combustion and deisel made smaller power plants possible. It's interesting, but now we have monorails, magnetic levetation, induction and more, and the concept of coasting to a halt at a precise point pretty much only has utility in amusement parks.
- jarfil 8y agoRail systems shine when they can concentrate steering an power in more efficient dedicated locomotives, with as many "dumb cars" as possible "automatically" following them (thanks to the rails). But in order to achieve higher granularity and better schedules, cars would have to become more autonomous, which means duplicate steering systems and lower efficiencies... unless there were no efficiency benefits in having a dedicated locomotive, in which case it would make no sense to join cars together in the first place.
- greglindahl 8y agoDedicated locomotive? That's true for things like diesel freight trains, but most high speed electric trains have motors in every car because electric motors scale down just fine.
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- fizzbuzzbazz2 8y agoSplitting for different destinations also seems useful. If one is to walk the transfer time must be that of the slowest passengers. I lose 2 times 20 min like that twice per day.
- cup-of-tea 8y agoMany trains in Europe split up and go in different directions. It's something you have to be aware of so you don't end up on the wrong one.
- lgregg 8y agoI was on a sleeper train a few years ago that would detach cars as it went along.
- isostatic 8y agoThe Scottish sleepers detach en route, you leave London and some coaches go to Fort William, some to Inverness, some to Aberdeen. The later train does Edinburgh and Glasgow. One of the few (only?) loco hauled splits in tr UK. DMU and EMU splits are very common - both ones where half the train terminates short (e.g. London to Birmingham via Northampton, or London to Holyhead via Chester), or they go to different locations.
- Symbiote 8y agoThe effect of the northern Scotland sleeper splitting, but being pulled by a locomotive, is the train reverses at Glasgow. I found I woke travelling in the opposite direction, with the sun streaming through the now East-facing window.
- isostatic 8y agoI think it depends on the day, sometimes th train runs via the west coast, sometimes via the east coast
- ljoshua 8y agoThe flight path of landing planes is often directly over my home. How many times I have wished during the final approach that I could hop in an personal landing pod or sky dive out, landing in my driveway, than take the extra hour or so that is required to deplane, get to transportation, and drive home... Slip air travel anyone? :)
- jcl 8y agoReminds me of Mad Jack Churchill, who in his later years would surprise fellow passengers by throwing his briefcase out the train window -- ostensibly into his backyard to avoid having to carry it home from the station. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jack_Churchill https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jack_Churchill
- jimjimjim 8y agoany discussion, regardless of topic, is improved by referencing mad jack.
- briandear 8y agoThank you for this. I actually had never heard of this guy and my evening is richer now having read about him!
- beardyw 8y agoMy dad told me about my grandfather, who I never knew, who would pull the emergency cable at the end of his garden and be ready with the fine in his hand, before walking to his house.
- ascar 8y agoChurchill was said to be unhappy with the sudden end of the war, saying: "If it wasn't for those damn Yanks, we could have kept the war going another 10 years!" This made me laugh. His story is a really good read.
- mncharity 8y agoTaking intercity bus from Boston to NYC, I've many times been fully stopped in Connecticut rush-hour traffic, and looked longingly out the window at an oh-so-close commuter rail station, with trains rumbling away, fast and empty. Or later, stopped at a red light in the city, mused that by getting off now, I'd shave an hour off my travel time. In India, in much of the world, one could just go for it. I often forget to notice the severe systemic inefficiencies of everyday life.
- pjc50 8y agoThe Aramis PRT system of the 70s was intended to do this with individual or 4 seat cars, accelerating and decelerating to make trains. But the control systems of the time weren't quite up to it.
- victor106 8y agoThey used to do this India till at least 15 years ago.
- myself248 8y agoI always figured the solution to this problem was buses. Take a bus and drive it alongside the running train, then merge it sideways into a C-shaped train car frame that accepts it and lifts it up. Now the bus is just another train car. At another point along the route, it can be set down, and un-merge back out again, and ply the streets again.