>>2018965Forgot to mention, what always gets people talking are delays. Normally, everyone minds their own business, but when my train is delayed, I go through all my cars and ask (more like shout across the entire carriage) if anyone has any connections they would miss, so that I can talk to the dispatcher to hopefully make the connecting train wait.
Like this, people who share a connection suddenly get a shared identity, they start talking about where they are going and generally are much more likely to start a conversaiton. I have seen many conversations start like this, old grandmas talking with students who are going to the same town and many diffirent unexpected combinations of people.
