Riding Robinson's roadtrain
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• CMhad a short drive of Robinson's roadtrain during the BTAC trials. The double-bottom rig isn't street-legal so its constituent parts had to be sent down to Nuneaton, using a brace of Robinson's 6x2 tractors to pull the two laden Tautliners (both with rear-steer axles) and steel-sprung converter dolly.
Robinson's workshops created the dolly from an old tandem trailer chassis, fitting air connectors at the front so it was braked along with the second trailer. Hitching up the outfit took around 20 minutes: the only problem was manoeuvring the coupling pin through the A-frame eye. The hitch on the rear of the lead trailer is home-made so it needed a bit of persuading, but with a proper drawbar coupling and tapered pin coupling time would certainly fall. Then It was simply a matter of connecting both sets of suzies and hitting the road.
We had to join the track via a side road with a 90' bend leading to it. With more than 30m of truck and three pivot points we weren't sure how it would cope, but in the event we managed it with plenty of room. The problem is losing sight of the rearmost trailer in your mirrors on a tight corner. You simply have to trust that the trailers will follow through without cutting in—and that's exactly what it did.
Until the BTAC trials the roadtrain has never been in a space big enough to hit more than lOmph, so with a home-made coupling we took things easy and kept the rig at between 45-50mph, We needn't have worried. The twin trailer truck tracked perfectly and proved very stable.
The following day Mark Robinson took it up to 56mph as part of the fuel trials. "I can't see any problems with it," he says. When you get It rolling it follows very well."
With more than 72 tonnes up the 460hp MAN 24.464 prime mover was clearly
having to work harder than normal but proved up to the job, although every gear was needed accelerating up to speed. And we certainly felt the weight of the truck pushing us on when we lifted off the gas.
After a few laps we tried reversing the roadtrain, which proved far more of a trial. The trick is to make minimal movements to stop the dolly jackknifing. If roadtrains are made legal drivers will have to learn a whole load of new skills!