Why passenger carriages were intentionally disconnected from moving trains - Slip Coaches 

This sounds like an idea that when first suggested, everyone laughed at until one guy at the meeting table went, "ok guys, but seriously..."

Man: "Oh crap! An engine is coming, let me step off the rails. Phew, that was a close one.. Atleast now I'm safe." Slip Coaches: "Think Again."

Using James's theme in a video about coaches is a deep cut indeed.

I always assumed slip coaches were an "old-timey thing" that was abolished as trains became faster and safety features like pneumatic brakes were introduced at the end of the 19th century, but in fact this practice could have been filmed in colour.

What a beautiful artist show of how slip coaches work. You are quite an artist

I like that James' theme is in the background.

The visual depiction of how Slip Coaches are used was perfect

"NOOOO YOU JUST CAN'T LEAVE THE COACHES IN THE LINE THAT'S DANGEROOOOUS" "Haha slippy coach go brrrr"

The only surviving Slip Coach is on Cornwall,Its called "Railholiday Hotel"

When I worked on a train years ago, we were climbing a 4% grade and it was booming tourism season, with a bunch of unused surplus cars being used due to the unusually high PAX capacity. Our SD70Mac engine was unable to get up all the way, so we had to disconnect half the train, disconnect the locomotive and push the rest of the train up the hills. The location was the old “loop” on the Alaska Railroad, so the PAX weren’t complaining about the glacier views all around while stopped.

I like where you use James’ themed for this video, and as well it’s reminding me the episode Duck & the slip coaches in Thomas and friends.

That poor guy that got hit by the slipped coaches. What a humorous way to die lol

I remember being in a slip coach travelling from Cornwall to Swindon. Several Airmen as well as my family were going to RAF Lyneham - we then went on to RAF Changi

The Danish ICE train was intended to be (sort of) a modern take on this. Not dropping coaches (all units powered) but to be able to link up and separate under way to reduce line congestion. Train A would start from one city, train B from another, when they reached the same track they'd link up and now you only need space for one train instead of two. Turned out not to be very useful in practice, but it was a neat idea.

I’m running off of memory so I don’t know how accurate this is, Another thing that was related to this and common on backwoods US railways was some of the wooden truss bridges weren’t necessarily super stable and couldn’t support a train AND its rake of coaches all at once. So in some cases, the locomotive would get behind the coaches and push them across the bridge and let their weight and momentum carry them across. 1 Coach at a time typically wasn’t too heavy for the bridge, but sometimes a station on the other side of the bridge was called, so another locomotive could pick up the coaches on the other side because locomotives are significantly more heavy than coaches. This was a long time ago if I remember correctly, around the time the transcontinental railway was being constructed. The locomotives used at that time were mostly 4-4-0 “American” types.

Any Duck fans here?

it's James theme, which is ironic because James stole the suggestion and idea from duck.

The main question is: what if the train runs out of coaches?

my man really put James' S1 Theme, and I love it

I thought the slip coaches had a cool trait, although I didn’t even think about the passengers wanting to either go to the loo or wanting something from the snack trolley. It just comes to show that we should be more considerate of the passenger’s needs other than their stops.

I actually learned something new about slip coaches today with this video. To learn that slip coaches were not exclusive to the UK and were used in the United States is almost hard to believe!!!

Slip coaches disconnects the people closest to the corridor's"THE TRAIN DISCONNECTED,AHHHHHH"

Will you ever talk about broad gauge

U know what they say, “A Train of Though video every Friday keeps the Depression away” Also f I R s T lOl

I love this channel. Please never stop uploading!

Can you make video about Race against train at Talyllyn Railway?

The route I used to use top get to work (east midlands railway) use to split the train at Kettering. One half would continue on to Leicester, but the other half would head to a branch going to Corby. Its now been replaced with a dedicated electric service. But that is slightly different and done for different reasons to this. wild to think would let coaches roll!

I love these videos! Subbed!

I have seen freight trains do similar moves when doing switching. A car will roll down a track with a facing switch

Things rolling stock were useful for 1: Coaches for carrying passengers 2: Trucks for storing staff like coal or China clay 3: Break vans for stopping for emergencies 4: Wagons for taking animals and boxes 5: Tankers for storing liquid resources 6:Flatbeds for carrying anything heavy things 7:Mails vans for delivering mail 8: Breakdown cranes for emergencies and 9: Breakdown coaches for emergencies use.

Me knowing why James' theme is playing, due to his history with slip coaches: Level 100 nerd

The slip coach guard would sometimes be a bit too keen on the brakes leaving the coach stopped on the line, so the station pilot would be ready for the rescue.

I never knew that the U.S. had slip coaches as well. The closest thing I remember seeing is old footage of the Budd RDC railcar splitting up its formation at a station going in opposite directions. Great to see some more attention brought on the slips.

1:39 Perhaps Thomas' Special Coach was a Slip Coach? That would make for an interesting story.

Detaching trains still exist in around the world, one such train is the S-bahn here in Germany. Its technically two trains attached to each other and passengers either board the front or rear. During the trip the trains seperate and go their separate ways.

Thhat high tech software at 0:48. This channel is going places.

Taking a train from Taiwan to France, while also travelling back in time.

I found out about Slip Coaches cos there was a T&F episode about it.

I was thinking the coaches would release and coast to the the next stop and that took great calculation to arrive without slowing down to fast or not fast enough. Also depending on the weight that was on those coaches affected speed.

Here in Canada we have a few trains called "J Trains" where we couple two seperate trains together. These trains are used when two trains are departing from the same origin but have different destinations. Whenever the train gets to the junction the train is stopped and the second train is detached from the rear. These are primarily used for the Toronto-Ottawa, Toronto-Montreal service where the Ottawa train gets uncoupled to head north while the front continues east to Montreal.

Love the James theme playing during the video but honestly I feel like duck's theme would had been better since he eventually got slip coaches

Nobody: Duck: Hello Slippies!

Great little story! Really enjoying the quirky stuff you cover - excellent.

I’d imagine another reason for the discontinuation of this practice is air brakes, if the air line is disconnected the train would immediately stop with no control

I think there would be use for slip coaches today. The high speed rail needs quite a lot of space, to get to full speed. In Germany for example big citys are just to close to each other to use really high speeds. So I can see the use of slip coaches for shortening the travel times of the Cities, that are far apart.

Duck's Slip Coaches

1:21 montparnasse made me laugh so hard xD

Top tier demonstration

Actually I think this idea is more plausible for EMU trains in modern time. Sometimes several EMU trains are connected together to run service and each of them has seperate control system.

I love that you used Thomas music

Don’t wanna be annoying but I already knew this. In Thomas and friends CGI

*Hears James' theme in the background.* Ah, I see you are a man of culture as well.

0:55 I bet u found that picture from Taiwan railways because that’s a Taiwan train

Wow, I didn't notice the well-themed 'train-music'

Hah, I knew about this even before watching this video just from watching Thomas the Tank engine as a kid.

Slip coach is my favourite passenger wagon ever

Hi train of thought, can you make a face reveal?? Please. And can you make a video abute the LMS crab or the SR leader class?

Slip Coaches Thomas And Friends

So that's what a slip coach is! Dang you answered a question I'd had for a while!

An episode on Big Bertha would be Really noice to see (not sure but doesnt b,b have a really cool history)

Haha gwr moment

I am so happy when James's Theme popped in this video!

I've heard the term slip coach, but never fully understood their purpose or how they truly worked and for the technology at the time it was an ingenious solution.

I’ve heard this before. Reupload?

Maybe one of your future videos should about the history of automatic air or vacuum brakes

are you ever gonna cover Beyer Garratt Locomotives?

this sounds like a move from a derail valley speed runner

MAKES SENSE......ENJOYED IT................merry xmas................

“You know, days like these rimed me of the time I was on the Great Western Railway.”

You should do a video about the USATC S160s

Hold up, what's going on with station C?

Love how station c is just The Montparnasse Derailment

Love the animation!!! Fascinating content as always. Thanks

good use of thomas music

Aaah, who needs to use a toilet, anyway?

They still do this in a way at Machynlleth or Dovey Junction on the Cambrian line where the train to Aberystwyth is the front two and the train to Pwllheli is the back two using 158 DMU's. It was a GWR line so was where some of the last slip trains were used.

A unique invention at the time! Another great video - always tons of information packed into a short space of time. 20k views in about 24 hours too. Some going!

More or less the same technique has been used to cut off helper locomotives (bank engines) on the fly in North America as late as the early 2000s, with a piece of equipment called ‘Helper-Link’, which electronically controls the brake connections on the trailing locomotives, allowing the disconnection at speed without putting the whole train into emergency.

What if you wanted to go from station B to station C?!

Dangerous and old school

Nowadays with individually powered coaches it would be even more interesting, i'd imagine. Why stop at only letting people out? After letting people out, the coach could wait and take people in and then attach itself to the next train, allowing to board a train as well as leaving it. Of course this would be very difficult to do, especially to do safely and require a lot more tracks and infrastructure.

Slip Coaches are becoming the "did you know super mario bros 2 was a reskin of doki doki panic" of railfans 😂

Try how Union Pacific did when they worked along with Alco for their FEF class. The FEF class was built mostly with single casted parts, the frame, wheels and axles are single casted. The FEF class was never built in traditional methods, which is why the FEF, Challenger, and Big Boy have fewer small parts than other locomotives. Later on, the Union Pacific's Living Legend 844 was fitted with Multiple Unit systems, meaning, the Steam crews in the steamer can also operate a Diesel locomotive in tandem.

I mean it was done, but surely it would be more of an inconvenience to have all these slip coaches laying at various points on the routes needing to be picked up and shunted. sounds like a logistical nightmare if it were around today, what with timetables being pretty rammed with no real room to add wild card elements in them and not enough sidings or through tracks to manage these wild cards

lmao, Thomas the Tank engine soundtrack in the background. At least it’s not the Runaway train theme.

The animation describing entire process... is an art, good job mate, good job.

Haha panier tank go brr

I think they arrived at station C a little too quick

Duck: 😩😩😩😩😈😈😈😈

Never knew slipping was used in my country.

"Norwich In 90" could be more easily achieved by adopting hi-tech Slip Units behind those suburban-style Class 745 EMU's on that InterCity route at Colchester & Ipswich.

Top quality graphical explinations!

A pleasant surprise for an image of a Taiwanese station for station A at 1:10

'Very happy I discovered your channel 👍

James' theme. Classic.

How can you can get away with this when trains were moving at a BLISTERING 20 mph. How womens unterusess didn’t go flying out is beyond me.

Do you know anything about a train that went between Edina, MO and Monmouth, IL? Thanks

1:35 James’ theme play through out this, uhm, whatever is happening here, is just funny to me.

Good to see a photo from my home state of Western Australia at 3:31.

Indian Railways are very much British in their DNA even after Independence names given to express trains like Inter-City Express etc. They still follow the centuries old traditions even today, even though the rolling stock is very modern and comfortable. A slip coach or coaches that are detached even though they are not slipped on the run. 1. What is a slip train in Indian Railways (IR) ? In IR, sometimes to save cost and time, few coaches do not go to the final destination of the train. They are detached from the train and left behind. Those coaches are called slip coaches of train and they might be picked up by another train or that could be the final halt for them. The train which has slip coaches in it is called slip train. 2. Do I need to change coaches while travelling in a slip route train? No, you don’t have to change to any other train at any station. During reservation itself, you will be placed in the respective slip coach. 3. What is the difference between a slip coach and through coach? A through coach is similar to a slip coach but it is later reattached to another train so that it can proceed to another destination. On the other hand, slip coaches may or may not be sent forward after they are detached. All slip coaches and through coaches are that have reserved seating. Unreserved passengers are not allowed to board these coaches. The SLR (Seating Luggage Rake) or Guard Brake Van which is usually the last coach of a consist, but if the train has a slip or through coaches then the SLR Coach stays as it is and the slip/through coaches are coupled to the SLR/ brake van, so when the slip/ through coaches are detached, the crew check brake air pressure and connectivity and move onwards to the destination, leaving behind the slip/through coaches which are attached to another train taking them to their destination or are shunted to a siding if that particular station is their destination. Extra coaches eg. Railway Inspection Coaches, tourists group coaches are attached to the end of trains and they are dropped off according to their scheduled stations as per their itinerary where the group tours that particular area and then board the same coach which is parked at a siding and travel to the next destination.