A bit of a bump in Notts I believe?

[mick2me 3,033]

I think this was somewhere in Notts, I am sure the train buffs will tell us?

[Cliff Ton 10,468]

Wasn't it somewhere down the old Melton line? Old Dalby?

[Trickymicky 57]

There was some sort of crash test on that line close to the bridge on the A606 Melton Road at Edwalton.It would be early 1980's at a guess. I was there coincidentally,because police closed the road for a few minutes while the test took place.

[Beefsteak 305]

I thought it was Toton Sidings

[plantfit 7,599]

_{I seem to remember a staged train crash on the line near Tollerton sometime in the 80's something to do with how radio waste storage containers would stand upto a head on crash, I believe the loco's were two class 45's or 40's, I also seem to remember the prototype tilting train being engine/turbine tested on the same line}

_Rog

[Rob.L 1,090]

They did test the APT on that old Midland line. I remember seeing it pass over the A46 one day on my way back from Leicester.

Wasn't it chosen as a test track due to having decent straight sections and gently curves?

[StephenFord 866]

It was indeed on the Old Dalby test track. Date was 17 July 1984, and the loco was 46009 (which, unsurprisingly, never ran again !)

[Bilbraborn 1,594]

Stephen, you are dead right. I was an employee at Nottingham Carriage sidings and they used the class 46 you mentioned and redundant mark 1 coaches. The engine, naturally had no driver but was remotely fixed to drive into the obstacle at a fixed speed. I don't really think that it proved anything that we didn't already know.

Later, when I was at derby we used to send a train of redundant mark 2 coaches to somewhere near Melton on the test track for army training. It may have been the SAS. I know they came back in a right state.

[Beefsteak 305]

Toton, mixed up with Tollerton by yours truely

[bamber 128]

I seem to remember reading that the "crash" made a great spectacle for the tv cameras but was known to be quite useless as a scientific test/confirmation of the flasks' crash-worthiness.

[StephenFord 866]

Scientifically, that is undoubtedly true. But everyone knew that nuclear flask wagons were treated very carefully on the railway, with special control measures for their movement. The prospect of any circumstances arising where one would encounter a smash worse than a 200+ ton load travelling at around 100 mph was vanishingly small. So, yes - it was a circus act, but a dramatic demonstration that they were secure under all reasonably predictable circumstances.

[bamber 128]

Again, from very blurry memory, one criticism of the test was that the loco and its wagons didn't present the most formidable of potential hazards (it is after all just a metal box that is easliy deformed and deflected) and that a more realistic test would have involved something like the corner of a bridge support all concrete and immovable.

[Bilbraborn 1,594]

We all knew it was a set up even before the event.