SRS 801

SRS801 Stabled at Coffs Harbour NSW

801 was not actually a "Rail Car", but a hi-rail bus. As far as I can tell it was purpose built for Australia, The January 1979 issue of Railfan magazine shows 801 coming to Australia in October 1969. I believe that it came out as a result of a derailment on the (NSW) Main South line that was caused by a broken rail. It worked on Standard Guage lines, primarily in NSW, until replaced by SRS 141 in 1973. I'm not totally sure but it appears that an opportunity arose to work for Hammersley Iron (HI) in North Western Western Australia (WA). It seems that SRS 141 was brought in to free up 801 to be shipped to WA to take up the HI contract. The HI contract must have been fairly successful as in 1976 another rail car SRS 140 was brought to Australia to work exclusively for HI. 801 was returned to the company headquarters in Sydney (NSW) in early 1977. The bus was refurbished and the axles of the guide bogies widened, and spacers added to the driving wheels to allow it to run on Broad Guage (5' 3" - xxxx mm) track. It then carried out testing work in South Australia (SA) and Victoria (Vic), as well as some Standard Gauge work in NSW. In 1978 Automation Inductries won a contract to provide testing services to the Queensland Railways. Queensland was totally narrow gauge (3' 6" - xxx mm) which meant that 801 had to be further modified. After much trial and error modifications were installed to allow narrow gauge operations which commenced in the second half of 1979. It was still working in Qld when I left the company at the end of 1979. I'm not sure what happened to 801 after that.

801 was a purely ultra-sonic car - that is it used ultra-sonic flaw detection only, as opposedto the Rail Cars that used a combination of ultra-sonic and electro-magnetic induction detection systems. Without going into the detail ultra-sonic testing is based on specially designed probes that can generate and direct high frequency sound into the steelof the rails and capture the sound echos that bounce back out of the steel. By analysis of the echoes it is possible to detect flaws in the rails - there is more detail in the Operations section.

Copyright Lin Hampton 2006