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Is This a Real BBABB sextuple?

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You can watch this video of a road train in a Lindsay’s facility, but the question which comes to mind must be, is this a real BBABB sextuple? Or is it just someone messing about in a truck yard?

Although we would like to think it would be possible to get something like this out on the roads of Australia one day, the fact of the matter is we are finding it difficult enough to get a twenty metre semi on the roads in some places in Australia.

The combination is simple enough, just two B-triples joined together with a single converter dolly. On the evidence of the video it seems like it will manoeuvre relatively well in situations where it may be asked to download.

It would be interesting to see the results of a computer modelling on this combination (we can be sure someone has done the modelling already, but it’s unlikely to see the light of day any time soon). Intrinsically, B-triples are quite stable and able to follow the prime mover well. Adding in a dolly to the mix does introduce some instability, but how much? 

As it stands, such a long combination may struggle with a few of the standards in the Performance Based Standards used today. The obvious ones are startability, gradeability and acceleration capability.

Another issue could well be around rearward amplification, where a small movement at the steering wheel results in the rear trailer stepping out a couple of metres as a direct result of amplification through all of the trailer couplings. 

There also might be low speed swept path and high speed transient offtracking issues if the whole thing isn’t dead right.

At the end of the day, this maybe just an experiment, or it maybe something the trucking industry can aspire to down the track. My advice is to avoid showing this video to any state road managers any time soon. They need to be brought to the party very gradually.

is this a real BBABB sextuple?

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