
Slip coach - mxfh
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slip_coach
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guard-of-terra
In Russia I believe there are still coaches that are detached from one train
and attached to another. This way you can go from Moscow all the way to Bar,
Montenegro all in one coach (unless they changed something).

Of course, trains do stop before detaching-attaching takes place.

They also change axles at gauge border.

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atomwaffel
Oh yes, but those are through coaches[1] and they're still fairly common,
especially for sleeper trains. The whole fun with slip coaches is that they'd
be detached while the train was moving.

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Through_coach](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Through_coach)

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mbrownnyc
Video of last slip coach in service:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7NEwrjQtrKo](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7NEwrjQtrKo)

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jgc195
Someone's been watching Thomas the Tank Engine!
[http://ttte.wikia.com/wiki/Duck_and_the_Slip_Coaches](http://ttte.wikia.com/wiki/Duck_and_the_Slip_Coaches)

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samdb
There must be some form of this still in practice in the UK, though maybe it
doesn't do it while in motion.

I frequently have to get into a particular set of carriages on my journey home
from central London, as the train divides en route.

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arjie
I believe that's a dividing train:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dividing_train](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dividing_train)

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Animats
Is there some spambot that randomly picks an article from Wikipedia and posts
it to YC?

(The subject is one of the older bad ideas from British railroad practice,
along with brake vans, buffer and chain couplers, and two-axle boxcars. In the
US, Congress passed the Railroad Safety Appliance Act in 1893, and by 1900,
all railroad cars and engines had to have air brakes and automatic couplers.
Because of this forced standardization, boxcars could become much bigger and
heavier. The UK and much of the EU still don't have fully standardized
automatic couplers for freight trains.)

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morgante
> Is there some spambot that randomly picks an article from Wikipedia and
> posts it to YC?

If random Wikipedia articles routinely get a lot of upvotes, I'm not sure it's
a spambot.

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mxfh
I'm not sure either; it's kind of random, yet loosely related to
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10632961](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10632961)

