https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jack_Churchill

This made me laugh. His story is a really good read.

The train that mncharity refers to is the much more reasonably priced NYC commuter rail, which does not reach Boston.

Ignoring the costs, I find the quality of life on the train to be far superior. No traffic, you can walk around, there are power outlets and the seats are pretty big.

For me, being able to work for 4.5 hours vs feeling carsick on a bus for similar or more time (I get nausea very easily when other people drive me), it was always worth it.

The other thing I would do is drive the car to an MTA stop and garage it for a couple of days while I took the commuter rail into town. Which option I took depended on ticket prices and the length of time I was staying.

It sounds unbelievable, but remember it was once considered insane to consider building a railway between Liverpool and Manchester.

Not in Japan.

https://www.theatlantic.com/china/archive/2013/12/this-propo...

This would be awesome.

https://io9.gizmodo.com/5863484/moving-platforms-let-you-get...

And I'm reminded of the various whip devices in Stephenson's Seveneves.

Because (as described below) these trains are actually constructed from Multiple Units, the train can only be sub-divided if it in fact consists of two or more smaller trains, for example 450s come in multiples of 4 so a 12 car train could divide into three. Some designs offset the driver's cab so that a gangway for passengers fits through the "nose" of the train when it's connected. In other designs you must leave the train and walk along a platform to pass the point where the trains are joined.

One time, the conductor announced - several times during the first part of the journey - that due to an electrical fault in the rear half of the train (no lights), that part would go to the depot in Manchester, and the front would go to Preston, so when the train stopped for splitting, please would everybody swap carriages and make sure they were in the right half.

Needless to say, a few minutes after our section was on its way to Preston, a few fretful discussions that included the phrase "...didn't you hear the announcements?..." could be heard, followed by the odd expletive.

On another occasion, my train left London Victoria for (I think) Brighton, Bognor Regis and Southampton Central (a double split to make 3 x 4 coach trains), and the announcement went something like...

"This is the xxx train to Brighton, Bognor Regis and Southampton Central. Due to a fault, this train is composed of 10 coaches instead of 12. This train divides on route so please make sure you are in the correct part of the train; the front 4 coaches will call at....the rear 4 coaches will call at....and the middle 4...oh we've only got 10..oh, how are we going to do this...erm...hang on I'll have to have a think about this...."

I don't recall the outcome!

Depending on what they had spare ("due to a fault") the 10 cars might have consisted on 2 x 3 car plus 1 x 4 car, or of 2 x 5 car configurations.

In the latter case obviously the train can't split three ways, that's impossible. I would expect that for your service they would choose to run the train to Brighton, then split it and run half to Southampton Central, half to Bognor.

To be fair this route actually could be served (albeit with a little delay) by a single train, there's no huge divergence along the route to serve all of them, it's mostly that it'd be a pain to get back out of Bognor heading for Southampton, the signaller may not want to allow the relevant movement (crossing from the up to the down side, or reversing on the down side) and the driver may not be trained to do it even if a signaller will signal it.

[1] photo: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/c/cf/NS...

[2] video of the walk-through coupler: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mIi2CDYG7jc

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.

I found I woke travelling in the opposite direction, with the sun streaming through the now East-facing window.

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.

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.

The efficiency gain in splitting trains is mostly related to reducing the number of drivers needed. It also reduces the demand on track and platforms that may be congested. Both these things could be solved through better automation. Have the train driven by a computer and automate signalling to allow trains to run closer together.

Some inner-city rail in Europe is like you describe but not anything high speed (>~100mph) AFAIK.

However everything else you've claimed is wrong. The designs you're talking about DO have motors under many (or in some cases all) passenger coaches driving the wheels, rather than a dedicated "locomotive" so they support your parent's point, not yours.

The original Eurostar (class 373) trains are confusing because they're built as multiple units but the lead and trailing cars basically just provide traction, so the result looks a lot like a "conventional" locomotive plus carriages. But modern Eurostar (class 374) looks exactly like any other multiple unit and has motors distributed across the whole train.

Britain does operate a bunch of locomotive pulled high speed (125mph) services, but it also owns a bunch of 125mph multiple units. Even the Desiro 444 and 450 trains could do 125mph if not for the fact they're configured exclusively for third rail power limited to 100mph.

The reason none of those trains exceeds 125mph is purely down to legal/ safety considerations. Britain uses coloured light signals with route control, as speeds increase drivers struggle to correctly interpret and act on a light signal by the side of the track. HS-1 (Eurostar) and many European high speed services have in-cab signals, so the driver doesn't need to try to observe fixed coloured light signals at the side of the track, the indications are inside the cab with them.

As well as the reasons given earlier about improved performance from distributing the traction power across the train, distributing the weight also improves crash performance. Heavy locomotives will tend to crush a lightweight passenger car, if we make all the cars of more similar weight this problem goes away.

Eh? I didn't say anything at all about where the motors were.

You're the second person in this thread to imagine me saying something wrong and call me out on it.

> Some inner-city rail in Europe is like you describe but not anything high speed (>~100mph) AFAIK.

That's referring to a post which claimed:

> most high speed electric trains have motors in every car because electric motors scale down just fine

The examples you gave were ICE and the Eurostar, which are groups rather than specific classes of high speed train, but in both cases the modern classes have motors in every car, they specifically _disprove_ your claim.

There are also electro-diesels which can shut off their diesel engine and take electricity directly from an overhead line or third rail by raising a pantograph or lowering a boot. This used to happen at Faringdon in London (maybe still does).

Diesel electric transmission does happen on smaller multiple units sometimes, but really shines on larger and faster trains, or on electro-diesels (where you need the electric final drive anyway).

Some trains are hybrid - will use electricity while under wires, and switch to diesel when there's no wires, the new class 800 in the UK as an example.

Some 319s are being converted to partial diesel and becoming class 769s, but not on this route.

Before 2009 and HS1 to St Pancras, Eurostar also switched from overhead to third rail, on the fly I think, somewhere near Ashford.

Certainly in the UK: the most common locomotives such as class 66, 60, 58, 67, 47 - they're all diesel electric.

In the US, same story: for passengers the GE Genesis is pretty big, things like SD90MAC and AC6000CW are big for freight.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2OGRwD-00b8

https://patents.google.com/patent/US20030230213

Not sure if this is what jarfil meant by "steering".

It would be kind of tedious to go into great detail. Feels like nerd sniping.