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 Post subject: UK Drop Coaches
PostPosted: Sun Sep 29, 2013 4:45 pm 

Joined: Mon May 24, 2010 10:22 am
Posts: 548
Has anybody seen film of UK Drop Coach operations?

A Drop Coach was used to speed up trains by cutting off coaches on the fly and letting them coast into a station without the train stopping.

That way they could lower the terminal to terminal times without increasing the speed limits.

-Hudson


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 Post subject: Re: UK Drop Coaches
PostPosted: Sun Sep 29, 2013 5:00 pm 

Joined: Sun Aug 22, 2004 1:51 pm
Posts: 11482
Location: Somewhere east of Prescott, AZ along the old Santa Fe "Prescott & Eastern"
The proper term is "slip carriages" or "slip coaches."

Here's a 1935 account, with photos:

http://mikes.railhistory.railfan.net/r134.html

The obvious problem is that you need to have a locomotive waiting to remove the car(s) from the main line after the express thunders through leaving the slip coach behind. How desperately do you need a speed advantage by not stopping?

Even in Britain they were comparatively rare--about as rare as, say, Budd RDCs coupling together to make up a single train at a junction (the only such user I can think of was the Pennsy-Reading Seashore Lines on the Cape May, Wildwood, and Ocean City service, but there may have been others).


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