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Comment by racer-v | Hacker News Reader

> First, you have to deal with the security boondoggle. Add 30 minutes for that

In all fairness, how many incidents will it take before boarding a train means 30 minutes of security theater?

Apparently quite a few. I take West coast trains semi-frequently and have never had to wait for security. Officials we're in the station once.

In fairness, I believe there's no indication the TSA will appear anywhere but airports anytime soon.

As I recall, a few years back they tried to push their way into train stations but Amtrak put their foot down and set get out. That's a good call. Trains are on rails and the amount of damage you can really accomplish with one is quite limited. Plus, is it even feasible to reach the engineer's position on the front of a train from inside the passenger cars?

I mean, they managed it in Snowpiercer. Just gotta claw your way to the front car.

When BART got a connection to SFO the TSA started using that as an excuse to bust people for pot on BART.

That lasted like two days.

On a modern trainset (walk through coaches with power integrated along the train) its usually possible. There's probably a door, so the driver's doors can be used to escape in an emergency.

But I don't know about high speed trains. The first and last coaches are often first class, I'm not sure I've seen them on the inside.

That's a good point. What qualifies as modern in my experience is a good old classic Amtrak which is powered by a full size diesel-electric locomotive front & rear. I imagine there are ways to make it to the front, but I imagine they involve catwalks on the side of the locomotive.

But, much like I am not a lawyer, I am also not a train engineer. Or even a railfan. So I am probably completely wrong.

I do appreciate Amtrak keeping TSA out, in any case.

There are still locomotive-at-the-front trains in Europe, and on these I've never noticed being able to walk through to the locomotive from the carriages.

I have found the term for the more modern type: "Multiple Unit" [0]. Smaller motors are installed on many axles, the same as a metro train. It seems they're more reliable and cheaper to run (less wear on the track due to a better distribution of weight), but I agree with the noise issue — I prefer it when I travel on a locomotive-hauled train, since the interior is close to silent.

A site like [1] has a few train interior (and exterior) photos aimed at foreign tourists in Europe, rather than railfans. [2] will get boring quickly, but shows a European view of modern intercity trains.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multiple_unit

[1] https://www.seat61.com/France.htm

[2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2-u1a2WswpI

You say that like there's a rational security analysis behind TSA's policies in airports.

But yeah, planes have a nasty habit of offering to amplify an attack of a certain magnitude by falling out of the sky and killing everyone on board, and potentially quite a few not on board. Trains just doesn't do that. The 7/7 attacks in London (bombs on three trains and a bus) resulted in probably an order of magnitude less loss of life than the same bombs on planes would have.

> In all fairness, how many incidents will it take before boarding a train means 30 minutes of security theater?

If aircraft are any guide, until someone on the train drives a high-speed train off of a track into a skyscraper, national defense headquarters, and/or something similar causing massive non-passenger casualties and economic damages, it won't happen, even with lots of incidents, some of which result in complete loss of passengers.

We had a few train incidents in Europe and security hasn't been increased. They mostly handle that by more police at stations and in trains. The only train with heavy security is the Eurostar because it uses the Channel tunnel which is at higher risk.

Blowing up a train somewhere is not more dangerous than blowing up a car in the middle of a motorway.

We've got companies in the US who have some fancy security theater machines to sell.

Well, in France, it's the military that's deployed in the train station, since quite some time. And the number deployed has increased since the 2015 attacks.

The thing about trains is, you can blow up a train anywhere.

Another thing about trains is, they only go on tracks, so you can't hijack them and fly them into famous buildings.

Also, since they only go on tracks, if you want to blow one up, you can do an attack on any piece of the rail infrastructure, rather than getting on the train.

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