The forgotten practice of detaching carriages from moving express trains still holds intriguing insights for today’s railway industry. Travel time and energy savings with increased accessibility were only a few of the benefits of non-stopping trains with detachable coaches. The revival of the continuous transport concept could greatly improve the sustainability of more modern practices, such as high speed rail systems, thanks to technologies not available in the past. Nowadays in fact it would be possible to deploy innovative transport approaches that only few decades ago were inconceivable due to prevailing safety issues. This paper represents a first step in creating a framework for the appraisal of sustainable Continuous Railway Systems. A formative methodology for analysing the effectiveness of such an innovative concept is presented with particular consideration of the potential impacts on the economy, society and the environment. This paper also reviews operational methods and associated safe working issues of the docking between moving trains; moreover it shows the need for further theoretical and practical research in this new area of investigation to face the posed challenges
