Small things amuse small minds

[julesjones]

The train I've been getting for the last couple of weeks is four coaches between Liverpool to Nottingham, and two coaches between Nottingham and Norwich. I know this because of the "this train will split at Nottingham..." passenger-herding announcements as the train from Liverpool gets within sight of the station, but hadn't witnessed the shuffling concerned. Today yesterday I arrived early at the platform to find a two coach sprinter, locked and lights dimmed, and a few other early arrivals standing around disconsolately and checking their watches every few seconds.

And then two more coaches were seen in the distance. Two more coaches which gently chugged into place three feet behind the existing pair, and decanted their passengers. Plenty of time for the geekier amongst the waiting not-throng to wander up and watch the exciting process of coupling the two sprinters together.

Turns out that train sex only takes a couple of seconds these days, but it was still interesting to see how little effort is involved with modern sprinter units and how it all worked. I haven't worked with heavy plant for a decade now, but apparently there is no such thing as a lapsed engineer...

Comments

[nojay.livejournal.com]

I've ridden a couple of times on the Sunrise Seto, an overnight train that runs between the southern area of Japan and Tokyo. It starts as two separate trains from different parts of the country and joins into a single unit at Okayama which is where I usually pick it up. It only takes a couple of minutes to connect the two sections at the platform even though they're each about six or seven coaches long and quite large waggons at that -- two of the sleeper coaches are double-deckers.

[julesjones]

This was even faster -- the driver simply gently shunted one unit up to the other, and the whole thing snapped together on a giant latch.

"train sex only takes a couple of seconds these days"

[(Anonymous)]

- how unsatisfactory...

(btw - does the observation imply that julesjones remembers
the days of mating multiple snakey hoselike extensions
and three link chain connections? - emwltk & all that)

Re: "train sex only takes a couple of seconds these days"

[julesjones]

Old enough to vaguely remember that sort of thing going on. But I also remember when even sprinter units needed some minor manual adjustments.

[katlinel.livejournal.com]

I get to see quite a lot of train sex as the morning train I get usually has its first three coaches when I arrive and they have to add another three. It mainly seems to be a gentle to and fro bumping, and then all the orange doors-can-be-opened lights light up in some kind of simultaneous train climax.

[julesjones]

What with all the lights doing things to announce success, it's not *that* much of a leap to re-interpret the word "coupling" as applied to train units.