This process was known as slipping.
A certain high-ranking railway official was riding in a car when his train made an unexpected stop.
What had happened was that the coupling chain broke.
The truth is, slip coaches had existed for some time before they were implemented on passenger trains.
Initially, they were used in junctions for the purposes of hauling a train in the other direction.
The locomotive would then come out of the siding and attach itself to the opposite end of the train.
This saved time from having to shunt between different tracks.
Even more time was saved when this idea was implemented on a running train.
Slip coaches were first implemented on the London, Brighton and South Coast Railway in February 1858.
A guard inspects the coupling of a slip coach before the beginning of a journey (left).
If a coach was slipped too early, it may not coast to the station.
It was also essential to maintain speed once the slip coaches had detached.
If a train slowed down, the detached coach could run into the main train from behind.
Such an incident occurred on 19th December 1935, at Woodford Halse, in Northamptonshire.
A Great Western Railway Bristol express just after it has detached the slip portion.
The two detached coaches will run on their own accord into Bath Station.
Slipping a coach was generally uneventful, although there were some inconvenience for the passengers.
Slip coaches were very successful in Britain and in Ireland.
As trains became faster, slip-coaches were gradually phased out starting from the late 1920s.
By the start of World War2, slip coaches had stopped operating altogether.
There was, however, a brief revival of the practice after the war.
The last slip occurred on a Western Region of British Railways service at Bicester North on 10 September 1960.
More common today is the dividing train.
The detached carriages are attached to another locomotive and taken on a branch line to another destination.
