Has anyone ridden a train?

It really depends where you are. In a tradional train you just get on. At some point a conductor will come by and either inspect your ticket or sell you one.

Ditto to what Veinglory said - need to know where this takes place, first.

No there won't be someone at the door of the train. For a start the train has many carraiges each with two doors. They would never have that many staff on a train. At a large station there will be a turnstile where station staff might stop you. At a small station you just get on.

Generally, access to a train is through ticket gates in the train station. The last time I took a train was the New Year's run to Cochrane on the Northern Express, way back when I first met my husband twenty five years ago. I don't recall anyone checking my ticket because I had to go through a gate.

For Via in Canada you buy the ticket in the station and just board the train. You're pretty much on your own. I believe your ticket is checked at some point, but there really isn't any security. I've traveled from Toronto to Montreal dozens of times... and from Toronto to the East coast... even when transferring trains in Montreal you really feel like you're pretty much on your own. Admittedly, I haven't taken Via for a few years... but it seemed much like taking a bus to me. Like others have said, it really depends on where you are.

Is this in the US? The UK? Western Europe?

In the Northeastern United States, you purchase a ticket and the ticket taker walks through the train, checking your tickets and punching them. There's little security.

But the train is different from the subway in cities like New York. There, there are turnstiles that cannot be jumped, and open with the swipe of an electronic debit card.

I ride the commuter train in LA and Orange County. I don't show my ticket to get on (at LA Union Station), I just get on. Usually someone in a uniform walks through and looks at everyone's ticket at some point. If you don't have a ticket they fine you, but if you are roaming around the cars and avoiding the conductor, they wouldn't check you.

If a train employee saw crimes in progress, they would probably call 911 and stop at the next station. There's no security to speak of. Gotta run--train to catch!

I've taken trains on the East Coast and in Europe. For most of them, you just walk on with your ticket and someone punches it once the train is in motion. (Except for subways.)

One reason there isn't a lot of security is because is there isnt much to gain. You can't hijack the train as the engine doesn't connect to the carraiges. If you rob the passengers someone will get on a cellphone and they will just arrest you at the next station

If it's a reserved seating Amtrak train at Penn Station New York or either of the Boston train stations, one of the conductors checks to see that you have a ticket for that train (either at the head of the stairs/escalator at Penn Station, or behind a little stanchion on the platform at either of the Boston stations). They can ask to see your ID, but in my experience they rarely if ever do.

But that's just a preliminary check--the real check is as others have described (conductor going through the car, punching tickets and taking counterfoils/stubs).

Blue Lucario said:

Child assassins are illegal in many cities.

Click to expand...

You don't say.

Um, Blue? This is something that I've been wondering about for a while. Does your story take place on a fantasy world? Or in a fantasy country that's part of this world?

Because all of this stuff about trains and Glocks and what-not seems oddly this-world-specific, if this is all taking place in a different world where child assassins are legal in some cities.

It's jsut that if it is not literally this world it is odd that it has the same brand names and stuff. Unless it is an AU or something like that.

In Queensland you buy your ticket and get on the train. There is about a ten percent chance that the railway security staff (usually in groups of three, uniformed) will check every ticket. On very late trains ordinary police often walk through to check the safety of the passengers. At each entrance to the carriage there is a tiny video camera in the ceiling. I don't know whether it records or just shows the guard what is happening in the train. The driver is in the front, of course. For long trains the guard is in the middle. At stops he steps onto the platform to make sure everyone is clear of the train when it pulls out. On shorter trains he is at the back of the train. In both cases he has a discrete little room (that makes it sound too large).

On the normal commuter trains in Queensland there are no toilets but in NSW they use double decker carriages and these have toilets. These are ideas for you, just in case your terrorist needs to be out or sight to prime the bomb or something - he/she could push into the guards little cubby-hole or wait for the toilet to become vacant - perhaps tension for him if this doesn't happen quickly.

In long-distance trains you have to book a seat but the trains do stop at main suburban stations to collect passengers. So a nasty person could barge on at one of these places or take a chance to hide in the luggage compartment.

In Paris you buy your ticket and swipe it through the turnstile, activating it for that day. The inspectors come around to see you have a ticket and it has been franked on that date. So you can buy a swag of tickets and they don't go out of date if not used by a certain time.

Let me know if you need anything explained further, Blue.

Believe it or not, there's a WikiTravel, and it covers train travel in a fair amount of detail:

http://wikitravel.org/en/Tips_for_rail_travel

Trains with bed are called 'sleepers'. I would suggest Googling. But all the details surrounding train will make it really very hard to write that without doing it or at least getting out a train documentary from the public library.

those sleeper compartments exist on usa amtrak trains but are very expensive. most peeps, shakey included, just buy sleeper chairs. --s6

Try running a search for passenger trains in some of the bigger newspapers--might be a story of an incident that would give you some information.