…Nobody can back a road train?
Just goes to show you shouldn’t judge others’ abilities on your own inabilities. Apology accepted, Carryfast.
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When I was on holiday in Chimay, Belgium, they had a little tourist train. But it was a road vehicle, no tracks involved, must have had half a dozen carriages all articulated but following exactly in the tracks of the wheels in front even going round corners. Obviously it was only going forwards, but I guess the principle is the same in reverse?
Unfortunately I get a message that the video is not available in the UK. It would obviously blow our minds! 
Depends on how many trailers behind
The answer is in the description road train, when have you ever seen a real train go backwards
Ask a artic driver to reverse a wagon and drag without experience, totally different ball game but not impossible a few shunts back and forward then no problem,
You probably have to do a separate test to drive a proper road train multi trailers and I would imagine you would need a lot of experience and it can be stressful and i don’t know much about it so the question is
Do they only drive on roads that avoid towns cities villages
How long in distance can a route like that take you, how far
Would there be a road train between major cities, a proper road train
Do they have cameras in cab on the back of each trailers for hooking up
Is the money better for driving a proper road train
I wouldn’t call two trailers a road train
Having had to pass the UPS A frame drawbar assessment, which included having to reverse it through a slalom course and putting the trailer under a demount box from straight and through 90 degrees, what I actually said was that the three points of articulation of fifth wheel and drawbar, of an A double road train, would be more than enough of a handful.Probably unviable here.
An A triple no chance.Its going nowhere.
Our resident Oz expert seems strangely challenged regarding the finer points of an A v B outfit in that regard.By definition road train means an A outfit not B.
Including no understanding of train weight v combination weight and the respective advantage of the former in that regard.
All I got SDU is ’ not allowed in your country’. 
On the first one. Saw the 2nd one ok, for what it was worth, hardly had time to bend it out of shape. 
You probably do nowadays, but, and here I must repeat my boring drone, I have never taken a driving test for lorries, even with 3 trailers. I was thrown in at the deep end by Noel Buntine without even a run around with him. I mistook his one question ‘have you ever driven a twin stick?’ (so nothing to do with trailers, just the Mack B61 unit) for twin steer and looked at him a bit surprised and said ‘of course I have’.
That sounds to me like trailers with reer steers connected by a bar to the front steers, but it is true that an A-train set up will follow better than a B-train because the towing eye of the trailer, just as in a standard UK wagon and drag (not centre axle ‘caravans’) is thrown away from the direction of travel by the natural tail swing of the towing unit and thus the rear wheels do not cut the corner as much as the rears of an artic (and B-train) would.
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Exactly. Some (NFI how many) have a system that locks the dog trailer to within a degree or so either way dead straight (I drove an Iveco Stralis with it), but that only worked under limited circumstances.
The two points of articulation of an A train or an A frame type coupling also help in reducing cut in.Combined with the reverse steer action of the tail sweep.It’s why they are often the default choice in mountainous terrain with tight bends.Also the fact that the trailer imposes no weight on the lead trailer or the drawbar outfit prime mover.
Exactlyyyy
A road train is defined by length, type 1 roadtains are between 26 and 31.5 metres and can be a ridgid truck, conveter dolly and one trailer.
A type 2 road train is between 31.5 and 53.5 metres, they can have up to for trailers consisting of any combination of A and B trailers and dollies.
A B double can be up to 26 metres.
All of he above require a Multi-combination (MC) licence.
A single semi trailer or ridgid and trailer can be up to 19 metres. These combinations require a Heavy Articulated (HA) licence.
I fully agree the skills of both (single) semi trailer and truck and dog drivers are different, but each can learn the other’s skill.
The further north and west you go the more prevalent road train become, with greater access. Away from the more populous south east, the road trains share the same roads as light vehicles. Some of the busier towns have heavy vehicle routes, allowing road trains to avoid the CBD.
Theoretically 90% (+/-) of the continent has access for road trains. There are no cameras usually.
Big deal, you can back a truck and dog. It’s a basic skill, but given your propensity for embellishment of any minor skill you have aquired, I dare say 33% of drivers in your country coud do so, also. You carry on like you deserve a George Cross for your services to UPS. If your rare, superhuman driving skills are so unique and extraordinary, how did you manage to fail in this industry, so miserably? BTW, that’s a rhetorical question, no company would waste a driver with the skill set you claim to have, utilizing him/her as a human forklift.
Forget A doubles for now. What you have said, and repeated is, and I quote verbatim (including the lack of punctuation) “An A triple no chance. Its going nowhere.”
My YouTube link clearly demonstrates a triple being reversed. Granted it’s an AB triple, but a triple none the less. London to a brick, he can configure the truck as an A triple when required. He can and will have performed the same manoeuvre many, many times, with an A triple. Sheep carters are some of the most highly skilled drivers, when it comes to reversing triples of any configuration.
Your “resident Oz (sic) expert” is totally unchallenged on any points regarding A v B configuration, finer or otherwise. Unlike you, who have only seen them on TV and in print, he has actually driven them.
WTF has train and combination weight got to do with the price of eggs in China?
The bloke in your video is probably better at it than you, but it’s his first crack, he’ll improve with practice.
They have a tab that when activated with a small, single diaphragm brake chamber, locks the ballrace. Not for use on sealed surfaces or with multi-axle draw bars.
So let’s see this magical video of anyone reversing an A triple not a B combination, more than the few yards it will take for at least the second of the drawbar dollies to fold up with no way of recovery at least through the fifth point of articulation of an artic lead trailer and unit.
Yeah it takes skill to reverse an A frame drawbar outfit properly with just one trailer and that’s why I know that even the four points of articulation of a double drawbar outfit would be virtually impossible to reverse let alone the 5 of a triple A train.
You’re saying that the driver in the video can’t drive when he actually drove the thing as far backwards as it was ever going to go. Which isn’t far.The 3 points of articulation of an A double is about the limit and doubtful if even that could make a 90 degree turn going backwards.
In Europe we don’t generally define anything and licencing by the number of trailers.
Ironically the C+E category is more aligned with German practice in which the A frame rigid and drawbar outfit is considered the default and is generally what they train with from day 1 not artics.
A frame drawbars are a lot easier to reverse if you’ve got all the right steering moves in your head before starting and an enthusiasm and preference for the configuration.
Going forwards the advantages have been described.
They are nothing like an artic to drive reversing or going forwards.
Going forwards more like driving a rigid just allowing for the trailer than the laughably exaggerated lines needed for an artic trailer.
Ignore all the above in the case of an A double artic except for the bit it will help even more if you’ve got all the right steering moves in your head before starting out.I’ve never driven one but think I could reverse it somewhere in the ball park but not under a demount box.
Going forwards it will be similar to driving a normal artic but also pulling a drawbar trailer.Or two in the case of a triple.
Going backwards if it’s a triple don’t even think about it just drop the rear trailer and dolly.Maybe even the second and third trailers.An A double is the reasonable limit for going backwards so long as the ball park is the size of Australia.
Do I pass the Oz theory test ?.
To put exactly what I meant into perspective the typical NZ type rigid and drawbar trailer, IE two points of articulation, would be a lot more practical here in UK than the typical Australian type A double artic road train advocated by Stan Robinson some time ago.
An A triple road train ain’t going to work here at all because it’s going absolutely nowhere backwards without removing the third trailer and it’s dolly and it probably will have to go backwards at some point.
B trains just mean loads of road space and more cut in with diminishing returns in payload capacity.
By definition it can’t really be termed a train it’s a combination in which the lead trailer/s bear the pin weight of any coupled trailer just as a tractor unit bears the weight of a semi trailer.It also replaces the two points of articulation, of a drawbar dolly/bogie, with only one.
As correctly described by Spardo and the video I posted.
Reversing a B double isn’t the same thing as even an A frame drawbar outfit, because the two points of articulation of the fifth wheel couplings are much further apart than an A frame drawbar.
An A double has three points of articulation at the fifth wheel and an A frame drawbar.
An A triple has five points of articulation 4 of those being the two A frame drawbars.Which is why it’s going nowhere backwards.
I consider myself to be a fairly competent driver, I can back a trailer into just about anywhere…nothing boastful nor clever about that btw, considering how long I’ve done the job…
However…
A draw bar ‘A’ frame, never driven one, never want to.
I sit here thinking about how I would reverse one at an angle, and my brain does not seem to compute.
Do you put opposite lock on and take it off gradually, same lock on and put it on … or what?.
I can not for the life of me work it out in my head which axle would go in which direction on a turn…
I would more than likely make both a complete horlicks of the manouvre and a complete prat of myself 
.
Should there not be another class of licence for these, I could get a job and my Class 1 would be useless.
As I said driving an A frame drawbar outfit is nothing like an artic.
Going forwards you take a rigid line at corners but with some but not much allowance for the trailer.Visibility is better and cut in is nothing like an artic.
Going backwards is more interesting.
Don’t even think about backing it from 90 degrees under a demount box until you’ve first mastered backing it in a straight line over the length of a decent sized yard.
If you want the trailer to go left you first steer it left which turns the drawbar right which steers the trailer left.
Then it starts getting interesting but the alignment of the corners of the prime mover and the trailer are your friend.
Is what your saying is that it has 3 turning points
The truck the a frame and the drag
The way you describe it the a frame coupling is like a third drag and has its own turning point
Bit lost here i have driven a wagon and drag and it took me 5 minutes to get reverse right
No idea of difference is it all to do with these sunshine corn flake boxes that i seen on road years ago, a drop box without chassis
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