On 17/03/2017 00:38, Dave Plowman (News) wrote:

Not quite sure how slipping off a couple of coaches could work in practice?

Fine on a very lightly used service - but how are they moved out of the
way? And how are they retrieved? You could hardly slip them back on to a
fast moving train. Would seem to date from the days of steam, rather than
present day local services with usually more than one driven car.

Yes, it's an old thing, last done in 1960.

A local shunter picked them up to get them out of the way.

One of the problems was indeed that you can't reverse the operation - so
it was good and fast for people leaving London, but the return journey
had to stop to pick people up. (and possibly coaches).