I have excerpts from Australian National Railways
annual reports many years ago that highlighted the
problems of ANR dealing with State Railways.
Victoria was one of the worst, they even "lost" waggons
of goods for customers for a couple of weeks, not only
that, when ANR started shoving long trains over the
border back in the seventies, the Vics was unable to
handle them because of their constipated 19th Century
English working practises, based on passenger trains
and short crossing loops.
Things are not really much better, the "new" standard
gauge from the border to Melbourne proves that.
Well, we do have National Rail now, but ....it is run
by public servants who answer to the Minister, the more
things change the more they stay the same.!
The road industry is 100% private and growing stronger
each year, somewhere in there is a message.
FWIW ...the Northern Territory through an old friend of
mine, Doug Foster who won a Churchill Fellowship back
in the Eighties to study Road Transport around the
World, introduced the B-Double and later the C-Triple
to the NT, B-Doubles were used in Canada.
In the Territory they are called B-Trains (double) or
C-Trains (triple).
The "full blown" Road Train (Trailers with bogie dollys
and draw bars) are still the most prevalent up here.
Cheers
----Tell
Alice Springs NT
>david@nmit.vic.edu.au wrote:
>Just seen the April RACV Royal Auto. I wonder if it is an april fools joke.
>B Triples ( road trains despite their denial ) - claiming low wear and manning
>reductions.
>Well Ford should know better. They got rid of a B-TWENTY !
>What is a B-Twenty ? A locomotive and twenty carriages. If one or two people
>crewing one loco hauling more than 3 trailers OFF the roads and on the rails.
>I mean if they are restricted to highways, put them on railways.
>Finally they could use the trailer train concept, assemble them at each end(
>one excuse for trucks is the rail sidings are not near all the areas the
>trucks deliver, well the trialer train can shunt in and have small tractors or
>old trucks in the compount to move them !
>What do you think ????
>David
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