Proposals for the construction of a rail channel tunnel, under consideration by the British and french governments, include provisions for a service of roll-on-roll-off ferry trains to carry accompanied motor vehicles and their loads between terminals near the tunnel portals. In order that proper assessment of some of the traffic aspects of the ferry proposals could be made,the laboratory was asked to investigate train loading and unloading operations by means of full-scale experiments.these factors have a bearing on the number and type of trains,the tunnel diameter and the platform requirements at the terminals. A preliminary series of experiments was carried out to find the effects of different sizes of railway wagons and platforms and of various parking procedures in the trains on the rates of flow of various classes of motor vehicles and trailers.having established these figures,a further series of experiments was carried out to assess driver and pedestrian behaviour in the closed environment of realistically simulated trains.these experiments included making measurements of the times taken for the unloading and reloading operations which,in certain circumstances,can be made to overlap. The report describes all the experiments concerned with vehicular movements and gives the conclusions drawn from them.regression equations have been established which describe the loading and unloading processes and which enable forecasts to be made over a range of possible circumstances.formulae are given which show the confidence limits associated with these forecasts.although the experiments were only full-scale simulations,it is believed that the results obtained,with the specified provisos,are representative of conditions at a ferry terminal. (Author/publisher)
Abstract