Got tired of having this conversation over and over again so I just spent way too long making this:
In case anyone is wondering: yes, this is how train robberies operated in the Old West. Slip the switch after the locomotive passes by, passenger cars are stuck there. They could rob everyone and get away before the locomotive could even stop and reverse back to the passenger cars.
And in case you were also wondering: yes, this tactic is still used by people stealing UPS packages from trains in various American cities today.
This actually comes from railroad workers talking in comments on a fb group. I just made the meme for them.
They were like "those trolley memes are stupid, we have to do this in our railyard like once a week when some intermodal runs loose."
It's a really dramatic demonstration of the fallacy of the zero-sum game.
I wish David Graeber was still alive to read it. He loved real-life analogies like this.