At the end of the day, the trains stop running and are tucked into storage or something, yes? Does anyone know exactly where they are? And what happens to them? How hard would it be, hypothetically, to get out of such a place, were you to somehow end up stuck in the train until the very end of the line (and not be noticed by a roving attendant)? Are we talking locks and doors, gates, or would you have to hike through the tunnels themselves? Also, what time do trains stop running in major cities? I'd guess around two or three in the morning, but I don't know for certain...
This is a tough one as it depends from place to place. Our local subway station is rural so only one gate and a set of steps let's you in/out. The metro system in Paris would be a real mood setter, as it runs throughout the bowels of the city and is quite eerie at night. In a place like London I imagine security would be tight and would basically run all night, even in the storage areas. Was there not a film a few years back, horror based, about a lady stuck in the subway system?
This is a good question, a very good question. All subways and trains when they park are required by law to have an exit port or easy means by which the engineer of the train can get out safely. OSHA requires this. This I would assume that doors, perhaps grates would be the norm. I would also expect them to be either locked both sides like a door handle or be locked from the outside only like a panic bar. Since they are not for public use they may be locked like a door knob as an engineer is expected to have their keys on them. This is a really good question because I have no idea where the subways actually stop.
subways will do like amtrak's and stop at a rail yard at the end of the day....not a full-fledged frieght type yard but somewhere they can take them off the main line and allow for crew changes, etc etc.
Is the rail yard a part of the regular station? What does it look like? (A link to an actual photo would be awesome, or at least a floor plan.) Some Googling has turned up info on the emergency safety features, so poor Will can get out of the train car no problem. I'm just not sure how hard it would be to get from the train to the exit once he makes it out into the rail yard or whatever. Are there likely to be other doors, or just the big gates that close off customer access? Would it just be like going into a regular subway station? (I don't live in a big city, so I've only ridden a subway about a dozen times or so in my life. Most of my experience is with the DC Metro system.)
I did a Google search on New York Subway yards and without much effort found this site. Similar searches with other cities with subway sytems shoukd provide quite a bit of information to answer your questions. If that isn't enough, you could try writing to the information centers of several subways to ask specific questions. Do explain that you are researching for a book, so they are slightly less likely to think you are a terrorist looking for weaknesses to exploit; but you could still come under some scrutiny in these cautious times.
Well, it looks like at least some of those places are at least superficially similar to train stations. I'll run with that. It's not nearly as much fun if it's outside somewhere and he just needs to hike all the way back into town. Thanks, Cogito!
