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Rail Trucking Research with Engineer and trucker

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Last Wednesday I was out on the road doing research with the fabrication engineer for Rail Trucking collecting information for the initial drawings of the Rail Trucking bogeys (see Rail Trucking article).

Along the way I flagged down a truckie going past and asked him if could measure his truck for Rail Trucking specifications. While the engineer measured wheelbases and tire widths etc, I interviewed the truck driver about what its like to be a truckie.

Towards the end I eventually explained to him what we were doing and how Rail Trucking works. I fully expected to be palmed off since it very unconventional to think of trucks on the rails but I was truly surprised to find that his reaction was very positive… in fact his biggest problem was with the thought that truckies would find it so relaxing to drive by rail that they will be falling asleep…

--- thus to him the biggest problem would be the installation of what is called a deadmans’ brake… some kind of device that allows the truck to stop if the driver is incapacitated for any reason…

Wow. What a great reaction. This is going to have to be well thought out since the idea of a truck driver reading a news paper until the next rail turnout is what the invention is all about. The other thing the driver talked about was the though that much more traffic could travel in the day now that hundreds and even thousands of trucks could travel on one rail line.

What a great start.

I also asked him what he felt about being another 10 inches higher up if we had to put the rail wheels underneath the truck tires? He saw straight away that since rail has much milder sweeping curves and flatter climbs that going up in height didn’t impact operation or safety at all… so far every problem I thought would be an issue has turned out to be not a problem after all.

Other Rail Trucking articles

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