Dragster station starting to come up

http://www.coasterbuzz.com/forum.aspx?mode=thread&TopicID=29228

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James Draeger
-Captain Sarcasm (aka Sour Boy)

http://www.topthrilldragster.com/_upload/images/ride03_pics/constpics/Construction127.jpg

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"It's like something out of that twilighty show about that zone"

Millennium Force has 4 sets of kicker wheels in the stations and on the hold track. There is one in the back of the load station, one in the front and back of the unload station, and one at the end of the holding brake. When the train in the load passes the sensor after the kicker wheel in the back of the load, the train in the unload moves to the load. When the train in the unload passes the sensor after the kicker wheel in the back of the unload, the train on the holding brakes moves to the unload. When the train that moved into the unload passes the final holding brake sensor, the magnetic brakes close. Then the train on the lift speeds up. Thats the normal operation of MF with three trains.

How can you even say "B&M are very strict on controlling ever last aspect of each train's journey and to say they overengineer their safety systems would be an understatement." when B&M doesn't engineer the PLC's on their own rides. This company did for Raptor and Mantis. And no, there rides are not 'overengineered.' If they were, they would cost much more than they need to be, meaning B&M would quickly go out of business.

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Last 2002 public ride on MF's front row

Yes, Consign does the control systems, but they don't make them on their own, they design them to spec for the ride. They don't sit up and say, "Well, screw Walter and Claude, we're gonna move trains around their track the way we see fit."

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Jeff - Webmaster/Admin - CoasterBuzz.com - Sillynonsense.com
"The world rotates to The Ultra-Heavy Beat!" - KMFDM

2) We all know that ConsignAG does the PLC system for B&M rides, but do you honestly think B&M would subcontract them without giving them any input on how much redundancy they want placed into the systems that will be used on their own rides?! If they don't like how fast a train travels the circuit during initial testing do you think they say "well damn...I guess we'll have to live with that because we paid Consign to program the system" ? Hell no...they tell Consign just what adjustments they want done.

3) How else do you account for the fact that the same size ride from B&M costs millions of dollars more than one from Intamin? It's because B&M uses higher quality materials, more material per piece of track, a smaller average distance between supports, more mechanical and electrical items to control everyy aspect of the train's movement, a more complex safety system with two complete PLC's and total redundancy, and many other similar features that add to the cost. If that isn't "overengineering," I don't know what is.

You make it sound like overengineering is always a bad thing :oP

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James Draeger
-Captain Sarcasm (aka Sour Boy)

I am trying to get a good perspective on the scale of this monster!

Woody

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- "I used to be in the audio/visual club, but I was kicked out because of my views on Vietnam........and I was stealing projectors" - Homer Simpson