FROM A SPECIAL CORRESPONDENT 'THE Roadrailer is to be exploited
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by a I new separate transport company which will be set up jointly by the British Railways Board and the Transport Holding Company. This new interest in the Roadrailer (the road/rail semi-trailer produced by the Pressed Steel Co.) will surprise many people who had taken Dr. Beeching's promotion of liner trains, and his occasional lukewarm references to Roadrailers, as an indication that the railways had lost practical interest in the latter. Now it is expected that the longpromised pilot commercial rail service of Roadrailers will soon start operating and that British Road Services tractive units will do all the road hauls.
The commercial Roadrailer service was due to have started last August, but was postponed because of last-minute technical troubles, believed to be coupling failures. Earlier, a 50-unit train had been in experimental service and I understand that on loaded tests it had managed sustained speeds of over 85 m.p.h. on some sections at a gross weight of some 900 tons.
The establishment of a new company to handle Roadrailer traffic is in line with Pressed Steel's own thinking. The manufacturers have long propounded the idea that Roadrailers could perhaps best be operated by companies formed for he purpose, who could buy or lease them. operate them and provide depots for them. Tn a company having B.R.B. and T.H.C. as partners, the matter of depots is automatically taken care of on a national scale.
The Roadrailer is in effect a 1.04/11ton-capacity semi-trailer having special road/rail couplings and a fold-away rail bogie to enable it to run on standard track. The units form a coupled train.