You’re thinking of The Roads Must Roll, which was a Heinlein story.
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I wasn’t because I’ve not read it.
I see they both had them, though.
Just have a large hook on the edge of the train. Anyone who wants to catch the train, just holds up a stick with a little loop at the top. The hook catches on the loop, and woosh, you’re whisked away on the train ride.
Let go when you reach your destination.
We just need faster hobos.
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Harrumph. I beg your pardon. I flatter myself that I’m considerably denser than your typical American.
This particular article is talking about HSR, not something usually associated with metro or subway style crush loads. In most cases, if all seats are sold out, then you get a ticket for the next train, not just push on and stand crushed shoulder to shoulder. As for getting from the main train to the offloading carriage, with available technology there is no reason it would be more than a matter of simply stepping through an open doorway; interlocking platforms would ensure no gap.
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Neither Asimov nor Heinlein can claim credit for incorporating them in fiction first. H.G. Wells had published stories incorporating them way back in 1899 in When The Sleeper Awakes.
*Edit: Just saw in the wikipedia article you linked to that Wells had actually introduced them even earlier…
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I had this idea ages ago! I told my wife, and she said it was not a good idea so I elected to not persue it. Damn! I coulda been a railroad millionaire.
My money is on precision people-launching catapults.
Liked for combination of post and name, R. Olivaw.
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I agree however here in the USA there is a problem with that. Whenever engines or self-powered railroad cars are coupled or uncoupled there is a series of tests which must be done before the train is allowed to move. For this reason railroads try to avoid doing this. A coupling on the fly scheme would require new technology and new regulations.
Yet another area in which innovation is unlikely to come from the states.
That’s just a US thing. In Europe, it’s routine for trains to couple or uncouple in the middle of a journey. For example, the 8-car train from London to King’s Lynn will leave 4 of its cars in Cambridge. The uncoupling process (and the coupling process in the other direction) takes less than 2 minutes.
On a bigger scale, I once boarded a night train in Venice half of which was going to Munich and the other half to Vienna. When I arrived, some of the cars in the train I arrived on had come from Zagreb and Budapest.
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