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| We made it! The end of a tough build day. |
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| The seven-wheeled racer: one of the strangest vehicles ever seen on Britain's railways |
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| Trying to start the engine ... |
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| ... still trying |
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| Ready to roll ... |
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| Action! |
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Tunnel Ratz diary
Prep day
The first day was to learn how to drive the quad bikes and for tool familiarisation. We were being shown round the set when it suddenly dawned on us: We here. We gonna build something. Then we looked round and there was the throne the chosen one sits upon (the chosen one being Robert). I was team captain, which was a stitch-up by my two so-called team-mates, because they wanted to drive the quad bikes and the captain has to stay with the technical consultant in the build area.
Build day
When we arrived on the build day – it was early, oh my god was it early! – we had breakfast, then set about filming the intro for the team. The anticipation of what we had to build was driving me mad. We all just wanted to get on with it. Then there it was: a Railroad racing machine. As we come from London Underground, the rail bit was going to be easy – at least, that's what we thought. Our technical consultant had other ideas. You see, we see these machines at work: they drive onto the track, then two hydraulic-driven wheel sets come down onto the track and the road wheels lift up. And back and forth it goes all day. What our technical consultant had in mind was rather different ...
So we started building this seven-wheeled machine. By lunchtime we had a motorbike and a steel frame, and that was all we had. Things were not going well, to say the least, and I was not a happy bunny. As team captain, all the final decisions came down to me, and we stuck with our expert's idea. It was so simple to build, but we couldn't get our heads round it – as I said before, we see these machines all the time and what we were building did not look anything like what we thought it should look like.
So in to 'Confession Cam' I went, and after about 20 minutes – or that's what it felt like – I came out after baring my heart and soul to the world. The producer renamed it 'Suicide Cam' – he must have been really hacked off. But we carried on and by the end of the 10 hours we had a machine to race with.
Test day
So to the test day, which was staged at the Bluebell Railway in Sussex. As this machine was so radical, nobody thought we had a snowball's chance in hell of winning.
After some last-minute tinkering, we were ready to race. We were the first team up. I had some severe doubts as to whether this machine would work. But down the road and onto the track, off it went – suddenly all my fears and doubts were lifted. It actually worked – and worked very well. It didn't run on the track, it flew down it. The people standing on the platform looked very surprised, and I even heard one person say 'They could win this!', which made me feel a whole lot better.
We won the first heat. The second heat was a weight-pull up a hill. This time we were going second, so we waited on the platform while the other team got ready. They hitched up the flat wagon and waited for the klaxon. Off they went up the hill. To me it looked a fast time. Then it was our turn. This is where I thought we would have trouble. Anyway, we hitched up the flat wagon and got ready to start. I was sitting on the back this time – we all took it in turns to ride on the machine. Our technical consultant, Bryn, opened up the throttle and away we went. When we got to the top of the hill and got our time, all four of us were jumping up and down screaming our heads off. So now we had a comfortable lead over the other team.
The milk round
The last race was from the top of the hill to the end of the platform, where three milk churns were set up. We had to stop at the first milk churn: you incurred a time penalty for every milk churn you went past. We were first again this time. Bryn took it a bit slower going down the hill. Once he got past the points, he opened up the throttle and flew along the last stretch. A very good bit of driving – he stopped dead in front of the first milk churn. We had a 50-second lead over the other team.
So now it's their turn. Off goes the hooter. They started a bit slow at first but they opened up their machine and really started to move. It was just as they got to the first set of points that we heard this loud bang. They had derailed! At this point it was a bit difficult – we knew we had won, but didn't want to gloat over the other team's misfortune, so with mixed emotions we ran along the platform to give them a hand in trying to get their machine back on the rails. As their machine was made from an old black cab, it was quite heavy. We eventually got it back on the rails, but it was all over. We had won our first challenge – and I must say it felt really good!
So that was it for the Railroad Racer. We had six weeks to wait for our next visit to the scrapheap – which is another diary.
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