Looking back

[whole diary]

[Rhydgaled]

...many recent calls from the travelling public to 'please just put on an extra carriage to my overcrowded train(s)!'

Yes, there were thousands of 'spare' railway carriages in 1934 - but there weren't in 2014! 

Maybe not thousands of 'spare' carriages, but I'm pretty sure there are a fair few mrk2 aircons out there, for example. Of course it isn't quite so simple as adding them to the overcrowded train(s), since said trains are likely to be incompatible with the available stock. And making any use the stock at all requires solving the problem of what will provide the power to shift them. On diesel routes, you have the problem that no current diesel locomotive can communicate with a DVT^‡(resolve) which has not been specially modified, so you either need to modify the locos or run two of them, which one supposes is stupidly expensive.