A highly collimated accelerator beam line facility is described, : riginally designed to measure stopping power for low energy ions by transmission through thin specimens of semiconductors in channelled and unchannelled directions. The facility has been used to study energy loss and straggling in thin amorphous solid absorbers of Melinex, aluminium, copper, gold, and lead at proton energies of 1.0 and 1.6 MeV. The absorbers were produced by various methods and comparisons are made of straggling observed in rolled and electrodeposited aluminium. Expected differences in energy straggling have been observed for the two proton energies, but the relationship between straggling and absorber atomic number is not simple. Cyclic variations related to stopping power at low energies may be partly responsible for the observations.