SPECIAL TRUCK USED FOR TESTING HUMP AT MIDDLETON.

Star (Christchurch), Issue 18451, 30 April 1928, Page 10

SPECIAL TRUCK USED FOR TESTING HUMP AT MIDDLETON.

BUT NOT UNDER WORKING CONDITIONS, IT IS SAID.

Dissatisfaction is still rife among the rail way men who have to work at the Middleton yards, the speed of the trucks coming over the hump being the chief point at issue. The Department is at present carrying out a series of experiments with a truck that has been specially equipped with a speedometer. The truck was recently brought up from Dunedin. It is claimed that, while the tests and demonstrations that' have been made are genuine as far as they go, they are not made under proper train-running conditions. For a test it has been the usual practice to take a rake of trucks that is standing in the yard and is cold, with the result that low speeds, such as .seven or eight miles per hour, are easily obtained over the hump; in fact, it is stated that sometimes the trucks are difficult to move at all. With hot trucks, however, trucks that are straight off a long run, speeds of fifteen miles an hour, or more, are attained from the effort that produces the low speed mentioned with a cold truck.

The tests that are being made with the specially equipped truck are, it is stated, being made with the truck cold, and, therefore, no true indication of the state of affairs is being obtained. It is suggested that had the truck been put over the hump immediately it arrived from Dunedin, some useful, and perhaps startling, information, would have resulted.