Slip Coaches – A Little Bit Of Railway History
Disclaimer: I do not advocate for “slip coaches” on either the E&N or the RftV/Leewood plan, rather just a historical look back at passenger railway practice.
In 2022, if one mentions a “slip coach” I would think Transport Canada would be in a nervous collapse.
The last “slip coach” operated on British rail in 1960, but the practice of dividing passenger trains at stations and joining other rail services to separate destinations, is common today on many European railways.
According to British railway lore, the “slip coach” was born when a rail official was riding in a train car that came an unexpected stop. The rest of the express train kept going while his carriage glided to a gentle halt in front of a midway station. As the story goes, the coupling chain broke in transit, so the guard on the slipped car used his handbrake to slow and guide it carefully to a halt alongside the platform. Fascinated by the accident, the official wondered: could we do this on purpose? Thus, in the mid-1800s, train operators began detaching passenger cars in motion, sending them into stations without motive power of their own.
The more likely actual origin story is a little less sudden and dramatic, but nonetheless fraught. Before slip cars, there were reckless rail car detachments — a locomotive might simply slow down a bit to provide some give while an engineer decoupled rear cars on the fly.
Once a slip coupling was developed, there was theoretically no limit to the number of cars that could be slipped or how many times it could be done along a route. An express train between London and Glasgow could, for instance, drop a few cars off in one smaller town or city along the way, then a few others in another (as long as there was a guard manning a set of brakes in the lead car slipped at each stop). The slipped cars could then open up to let riders off, or be attached to another train, routing them along without people needing to transfer.
Canadian and American freight railways still do something similar to this at what are called “Hump Yards”. A single or a group of empty freight cars or “safely occupied” freight cars are detached and given a slight push into a tree of slightly downhill, multiple sidings. Each freight car unpowered rolls onto this sorting tree of sidings individually, the cars are sorted as needed on particular sidings. The freight car then goes through an uphill section known as a “hump”. The car is then slowed down to a stop by a “retarder”. A series of tensioned wheels in a track, which rubs against the freight car wheels and gently brings the freight car to a stop. A yard engine or yard tractor pulls the freight car or group of cars, onto a storage siding. The advantages are that multiple, very large freight trains can be easily, quickly organized and assembled, simultaneously or broken down as well as needed. The speed of these cars can never exceed 10 miles or 16 km per hour. The practice is less popular today not necessarily because of safety but because of the noise when detached freight cars bang into each other, re-attaching on the sorting sidings.
VIA Rail does a safe version of this in Ottawa. The passenger cars are never without an engine. The trains are never allowed to travel unpowered or allowed to coast to a stop. Essentially two 4 or 6 car passenger trains are connected together, end to end (so there’s a engine at each end of the train). This consist then leaves Ottawa’s main railway station traveling southwest to Ottawa’s suburban station at Fallowfield, in the community of Barrhaven. At Fallowfield Station, the train stops and the consist is broken up into two separate trains. The westbound train continues to Kingston and eventually Toronto. What was the rear facing train, then let’s Montreal bound passengers board and then heads east back to Ottawa’s main railway station in Alta Vista, to pick up the majority of the Montreal bound passengers and then they are off to Montreal after that (It’s a short trip, about an hour to an hour and a half to Montreal from Ottawa).
I agree with your assessment of Transport Canada and its reaction to slip coaches. When the City of Toronto went ahead with planning of the Smart Track idea, which was running heavy rail rapid transit, subway like trains on mainline railway lines, sharing track space and scheduling with GO Transit regional railway trains (which is still illegal), there was a lot of reservation (to say the least) at Transport Canada about the idea. My guess the idea of modern slip coaches would require the bulk shipment of digitalis (a natural heart drug which limits contractions of the heart, a bit of which is in common aspirin) to Transport Canada’s Rail Safety Directorate, both the employees and management alike.