Another excellent read “Road Trains of the Northern Territory” by John Maddock, published by Kangaroo Press.
Out of print but might be available thro. your public library.
Perfectly conveys the development of road haulage in the Territory and why American lorries usurped British lorries.
As a kid living in Darwin in the late 60s was always fascinated by road trains hauling fuel out of McMinn Street and the cattle hauliers. If you met them on the road car drivers were to pull over onto the gravel and allow them past. Occasionally met cattle carcasses on the road, at water courses, where a road train had plowed into them. There would be no point roadtrain drivers swerving to avoid as that would risk the consist flipping.
The end of our road was the Stuart Highway paralleled by the railway from Birdum into Darwin. Used to watch the trains, counting the wagons, always hoping to see a 100 wagon train. Can’t remember if I ever did.
Not sure where these were taken, possibly Larrimah or Newcastle Waters. Our EH Holden being topped up on a trip down south to pick up the train at Mt. Isa.
My two sisters leaning on the car with pump attendant looking on. Is that a ■■■ hanging from his lips?
The Shell roadtrain appears to be fronted by an Atki but I cannot be sure. More eagle eye among you might be able to confirm or not!
The date would probably be around 1968 so would predate the Atkinson “Skippies” by abut a year.
My father worked as a civil engineer and when looking through some of his old stuff came across this.
ramone:
When were the roadtrains first used over there i’ve seen photos of Mammoth Major Ergo roadtrains but they must have been well out of their depth
Have to look up the presice dates but AEC developed the first for the South Australian Government, I think, to serve cattle stations.
The father of the modern Roadtrain was Kurt Johannsen who bought ex forces Diamond Ts and designed his own trailers.
He funded the purchases with loans from business contacts and the first road train was for carting cattle, in 1946, I think.
His story is told in his autobiography “A Son of the Red Centre” public. by J B books in 1992.
Probably out of print but your local library can probably source one on inter county loan.
Well worth a read. Trouble is I cannot find my copy at the moment[emoji849] typical!
{I had a bit to do with this old girl in as near as I can remember late 1990s,at that time it had a hard rock drilling rig mounted on it and was owned by a couple of drillers who had taken the plunge and given a job with a wage up for a shot at being owner driver/drillers.
They had leased some yard space in the transport company yard who I worked for at that time and when I first saw it I wandered over for a look,I knew the owners and they told me they had rear diff problems and had been unable to source parts locally I had a look and from memory believe the diffs were Kirkstall anyhow rang my mate in the Uk and he tracked the parts down in a warehouse in `Leciester and had them freighted to Perth.
Lost track of it when they moved and went to the Pilbara area to work.
It was 6wheel drive as I recall.
Dig
mushroomman:
They are not my photos Dig, I found them somewhere on the internet, a long time ago.
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Thanks MRM a good view of the tropical radiator cowl so I thinking probably a 250 ■■■■■■■ ish or the rare 8 cyl Gardener, what sort of hp in the big G.
Somebody might remember this green and white mob who are shown at 36 seconds on that video.
I took these photos on the way to Alice Springs circa 2002, at the Queensland/ Northern Territories border at Camooweal.
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There’s only one, Mushroomman. The plural is Canada.
They’re all parked eastbound, were they held up by flooding?
Odd, because there’s a big parking bay half a kay behind them.
Can’t think of the name of the green fleet, but B, Beedham, Beacham is ringing a bell.
Not Australia but just across the ditch in New Zealand. The milk tanker fleet is now all Scanias and Volvos. any body know what happened to the Alphas?
Just come back to the thread as I remembered that Rhodes mining hauled Manganese ore to Port Headland using Scammel Contractor 8 leggers made from Knock down kits. The prime mover hauled two 8 wheeled trailers.
Picture of one appears in this blog. johnwattoblog.com/rhodes-ridley … es-ridley/
After a long trawl of the net I did find multiple photos of the Rhodes Scammells but cannot remember which site came up trumps but there are some good shots of them in the Scammell thread, page 6 and 8 trucknetuk.com/phpBB/viewto … &start=210
The plural is Canada. 
