For shits and giggles, let’s post some rough numbers, something that James is too scared to do.
Let’s say that the trains happen to carry timers that happen to stay synchronizes with the clock on the station. That’s OK, but it doesn’t necessarily represent the time as we would assign it to a frame co-moving with the trains.
We will identify a frame co-moving with the station and call that frame, O. We will identify a frame co-moving with the middle train (MT) and call that frame, O’. We will say that the final speed of the trains is, in O, 0.5 (in units where c = 1). We will pick our origins for O and O’ such that O(0,0) is the same spacetime event as O’(0,0).
We will stipulate that at time t=10, when the timers happen to reach the count of 10, flashers go off on the leading train (LT) and the trailing train (TT). We will stipulate that in O, the trains are 10 always units apart and are going the same speed.
Let MT(x) = 0.5t - 5; LT(x) = 0.5t + 5; TT(x) = 0.5t - 15; and Station(x) = 0. In this way, the flashers go off when MT is at the origin and LT is at 10 and TT is at -10. The light from the flashers reaches the station at t=20, at which point a sensor in the station, primed to go off if it receives two flashes of light at once, registers the light.
If one wants to do the SR calculations (standard Lorentz transforms), then I suggest one go to the following website and work through them. hyperphysics.phy-astr.gsu.edu/hb … trans.html
When the timers go off, where and when are the trains in O’? (NB: I will limit the numbers to three significant digits.)
MT x’(0,10) = (1 - (1-(0.5)^2)^(1/2)(-0.510 + 0) = -5.77
MT t’(0,10) = 11.5
LT x’(10,10) = 5.73
LT t’(10,10) = 5.73
TT x’(-10,10) = -17.3
TT t’(-10,10) = 17.3
Since the trains do not move in O’, we know that, in O’, the distance between MT and LT is 5.73 - (-5.77) = 11.5 and that the distance between MT and TT is -5.77 - (-17.3) = 11.5. This is what we expect from length contraction.
When and where does the clock stop in O’?
Stop x’(0,20) = -11.5
Stop t’(0,20) = 23.1
Where is the midpoint of the flashes in O’? It would be at (-17.3 + 5.73)/2 = -5.78 (right where we expect it to be, given the error introduced by significant digits). And when does the light reach that midpoint? The light from LT reaches it at 5.73 + |(5.73-(-5.78))| = 17.2. The light from TT reaches it at 17.3 + |(-17.3 - (-5.78))| = 28.8. So the light from the two flashers reaches the middle train at different times, not triggering the sensor on that train that is similar to the one on the station.
Adding acceleration should not appreciably change the results. The frame O’ assigns these times to events whether or not the trains were accelerating up to the point where they reached their speed when the flashes were released. Only the distance between the trains is different (less) before the flashes were emitted.
ETA: It is important to remember that no experiment has been performed here. All that is being laid out is the description of this scenario in SR. Many observations have found concordance with SR, none, save those which go beyond SR to establish GR, have been found to contradict SR.