Hi, Alec.
 
AC>A popular arrangement in NSW in our north west express DMUs. Eight cars
AC>collect a second driver out in the sticks, and two four cars sets continue 
o
AC>to separate destinations.                              But! the latest dmu
AC>car sets do not have walk-thru driving ends, the driver now has a full 
idt
AC>cab instead of a wee cubby room. Consequently two buffet cars are staffed 
fo
AC>the major length of the run, and if either kitchen runs short of stock 
hen
AC>there is a mad dash along the platform carrying food to the other kitchen. 
A
AC>mad dash, because the employee has to get back to the other set of cars 
ia
AC>the station platform.
 
Which sounds very much like Murphy's Law:  If something can go wrong,
it will.
 
As for trains being taken apart and swapped around, far more than the
old Rock Island Line here in the States managed such a routine operation
at outlying stations. The old Baltimore & Ohio did the same thing in
Ohio on the run from Washington, D.C., to Chicago, with a section of
that train being switched at Deshler, Ohio, many years ago for the
several cars that made up the train going north to Detroit, Michigan.
 
Perhaps one of the larger such operations had to be that done by the
Union Pacific Railroad during the period they ran the "City of
Everywhere" train between Chicago and the West coast. While the several
"City" trains (City of Los Angeles, City of San Francisco, City of
Portland) had been separate trains for some number of years following
World War II, by the time we got close to the beginnings of Amtrak here,
the U.P. maintained one of the best passenger services of anyone, with
the possible exception of the Santa Fe's operation. While the "City of
Everywhere" would leave Chicago as one very long train headed west,
various cars would be switched out at Ogden, Utah, to make up the
separate trains again that would go on from that point to their end city
destinations. The reverse would take place on the way back to Chicago at
Ogden, and usually in the middle of the night in both cases.
 
AC>I liked the push- pull arrangements in UK. Before I had heard of these, my
AC>train had taken an avoiding line due to Sunday track work. It stopped 
smartl
AC>in the middle of no-where it seemed and quickly accelerated to top speed 
n
AC>the opposite direction! So half that long fast run I travelled backwards. 

AC>second driver was seated in a driving trailer at other end, it seems.
 
At the moment, I don't have a clue as to whom it might have been that
might have started such an arrangement, but the Burlington Route had run
such a service since the late 50s or early 60s, engines leading such
trains between Chicago and Aurora, Illinois, on the CB&Q's triple track
speedway between the two cities, while cab cars would lead in the
opposite direction. It's been only within the last handful of years here
in the San Francisco Bay area that the former Southern Pacific/CalTrain
service finally got into the same type of service here on the Peninsula
between San Francisco and San Jose, all of which is now owned by the
Union Pacific Railroad.
 
---
 # SLMR 2.1a # I'm in shape ... round's a shape isn't it?
 # PDQWK 2.5 #51
 
---
---------------