Great concept, but impractical from the perspective of safety. The train would have to slow down enough for the handicapped, elderly and families with small children to disembark in a timely and safe fashion and anyone who has ever walked between cars through those connecting things know just how noisy and scary it can be for an adult, much less a handicapped or elderly person, or a child.

And it would require more space for the platform to travel instead of having stationary places for the trains to stop.

A better solution would be a sidecar transfer train. Much lighter and could pull up beside the train, connect to it for disembarking, then pull away. You'd just need a mile or so of parallel track and synchronized speed maybe using magnetic couplings. The side cars would be very light weight electric vehicles much like street cars and the main train would only need to slow to a reasonable speed to allow the safe cross over with plenty of time for the aforementioned elderly/handicapped/families with little kids.

Or you could have separate boarding and disembarking cars. The train slows as it approaches a station. Everyone who wants to get off has gotten onto the disembarking car. As the train reaches the station, the disembarking car detaches from the train and is separately maneuvered to a platform. Meanwhile, those wishing to get on have pre-boarded another car, which is then attached to the slow-moving train. The train speeds up as it departs, and the new passengers disperse into the rest of the train. As the train reaches the next stop, the former boarding car becomes the new disembarking car.

Or, modularize the compartments based on destination and have the cars automatically remove themselves and add themselves to the train while in motion. You wouldn't be able to walk from one compartment to another or have attendants. For crime safety there would need to be cameras as well as pictures/finger prints taken of boarding passengers.

I was working on my post while THM posted his. I like his better.

@The Hanged Man That sounds pretty good. One car detach, one car attach for each station. Net savings is what it would have cost to decelerate/accelerate everyone else, and the only problems that need solving are how to dock at speed, and how to shove everyone in the boarding car into the main part of the train before the fucking thing detaches again. I think it's do-able.

THM has a great idea. The back car is always the disembarkation car. Brilliant!

The Engineer's famous last words: "It worked great on paper..."

Tendmote, you can be the first guinea pig...

What we really need is Elon Musk's Hyperloop. That thing is cool.

"Musk"

Krellin, you have never even been on a train.

This would require self-propelled cars, which would have to figure into the design tradeoffs.

If the *front* car was the departing car, and the *back* car was the arriving car, perhaps there could be a way to cleave off the front car first, and somehow use *its* momentum to accelerate the arriving car? Having arriving/departing cars at opposite ends of the train also makes egress from the arriving car easier.

How can we turn the braking of the arriving car into energy for the arriving car?

^ *braking of the departing car. The car thats stopping should power the car that's getting going.

Well, some kind of propulsion system, sure. The cars wouldn't have to self propel if there were an external force acting on them, but they could be propelled using a variety of methods: wireless power is one possibility. When the car is out of range of the wireless grid (or electrified tracks) it no longer needs power and reverts to a traditional railcar.

tendmote - I've never been on a train? What sort of a moronic statement is that? I've actually been on trains in 4 different countries on 3 continents.

Assclown.

I say they put a giant net on top of the train and sling-shot passengers onto the train as it passes by, like a circus cannon act.

Departing passengers can be thrown overboard into reusable inflatable air bags.

Actually if the "passengers" were fired from a cannon in a pit, the "passenger" could match the horizontal speed of the train while the vertical speed was at or near 0, at the top of the trajectory. Since this makes sense in theory, we should immediately surrender our liberal democratic rights to a dictator who will remove all obstacles to this occurring in practice, since it is only the ignorant fear of the masses in the way. Putin33 is Krellin!

tendy - you're starting to get it...almost...

By the way - tendmote has just made a CHEATING ACCUSATION and needs to be silenced immediately.

shit I better mute the mods first...

"Putin33 is Krellin!"

I'm not so much concerned that it's a cheating accusation so much as how it's such a wildly stupid one.

Just saying, your predecessor weilding the silencing hammer took such idiocy *very* seriously....

Glad to see you exercise reason.

(NO- not an attack on JMO....I loves me some JMO...)

Why do we both seem to have to do that dance every time we compliment abge for not being JMO. Not that I'm putting down JMO, mind you. It's just that abge has the patience, tolerance, and common sense in abundance.

Draug, you and I are the most misunderstood saints amongst this hideous lot of humanity we call the WebDip community. While our loving intentions are, sometimes through the use of the rod, to see everyone straighten up and fly right and to excel in their personal life without constantly seeking to suck off the tit of others for their personal gain; to believe in others as much as they believe in themselves; to challenge the convention and think for themselves; we are just so often misunderstood and abused as "haters" to use the childish, reactionary conventional terminology of today's corrupt culture that we therefore feel the need to pre-defend ourselves so as to not squish the overly sensitive personalities that surround us.

It's a difficult task, for sure, but we are up to the challenge, and take it on with relish.

Now....Dance little monkeys!! Dance, dance, and fling your poo!!!!

Your position would garner more sympathy if you weren't encouraging the monkeys at every turn. You'd be a voice of reason instead if a self-righteous asshole.

He's not actually self-righteous.

y2k....sigh....

Dance little monkey. Fling your poo.

I honestly thought the satire would come through a little more obvious....but attack monkeys like y2k wouldn't see it if it, well, smacked them in the face like monkey poo.

That was it for today, I'm conserving.

And it's hard to pick your satire out from actual points you try to make, I'm learning slowly that it's mainly the former.

y2k - assuming you have a bit of time off over the holidays, perhaps we'll bump heads a bit more and I'll illuminate you on some of the finer points of not taking all the bullshit around here quite so seriously.

In all seriousness, I'm looking forward to it.

faster the better: dump those humans quickly

We just need the momentum brakes the third Doctor had.

Maybe the embarkation/disembarkation cars could be propelled by monkeys flinging poo.

Screw it. Develop transporters and beam us all around the planet.

It's about time someone suggests the MagLev...

Question: Why are all you liberals that think humanity is an infestation upon the earth seeking to find more efficient methods to spread our parasitic presence more readily???

The fu--...........? ^

Can't spread to where man's already been and can't go by train to somewhere man's never been.

Draug...SHHHHHH! You'll spoil the fun~!

Stop derailing this thread with the usual political bullshit. Let's get this discussion back on track.

+1/2 for the agreeable statement, +1/2 for the groaner...

Don't make me kick you in the caboose.

http://cheezburger.com/7022656256

I lost my train of thought.

Oh come on. You give bad pins plus one but not my train of logic that took the steam out of krellin's runaway argument?

http://puu.sh/5WPRA.png