gp and rollback on TTD

Are the rollback brakes going to be magnetic or friction? The reason I ask is that SFNE had a problem with magnetic. If friction were to be used by Top Thrill, the chances of brake failure would be reduced by leaps and bounds.

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- GeaugaDog
Ain't Nuthin but the Dog in me..
Don't believe anything you hear, and only half of what you see...

Leaps and bounds? That's amusing.

S:ROS's problem was that the brake wasn't in the right place at the right time - those brakes pivited. Xcelerator's (And even Millennnium Force's) brakes are in a fixed position, and basically failsafe.

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« adix@nedesigns.com »

Adix,

I thought that Xcelerator's brakes 'dropped' when the train was launched. If they do drop, they would have to 'pop up' in the event of a failure. Wouldn't this cause the possibility of a malfunction?

I freely admit that I have not actually seen the ride in action, only on video, and I could be completely wrong here.

Fever

The brakes along Xcelerator's launch track are movable and go down then come back up in succesion as the train launches past them.

However, the brakes at the end of the ride on the downward slope are fixed in the upright position- no need for the train to not stop at that point, lol.

Right after that once the track flattens out, there is another set of movable brakes, presumably for the transfer table.

Well, I think that is more than anyone every needs to know about Xcelerator's brakes. :)

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Xcelerator- Put the Pedal to the Metal!

Question, to prevent fallbacks, could a ride have sensors going up the side of the tower, then once they realise the train isn't gong fast enough, have some sort of cable lift over the top? If you had it at a pretty good speed, it'd be hard to tell and you're guarenteed to get atleast that amount of air. I can't imagine it undershooting THAT though.

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You cannot teach a man anything, you can only help him find it within himself.
-Galileo

Is it possible? Yeah. Is it practical? No. If you were going to do that, it'd be a heck of a lot easier to put a bunch of LIM's on the vertical sections. They can operate without having to physically engage the train, whereas a cable system has to connect to the dog.

Of course it's much easier and almost certainly cheaper to just let the train rollback (giving a couple of lucky guests a really sweet ride) and then firing it off again.

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Be polite and ignore the idiots. - rollergator
"It was like that when I got here."
"faster, cheaper, and more often" that's somebody's new sig -UpsideDawnGrrrl

SVLFever... while the brakes do go down when the train is launched, it takes a force to move them downward. If the force is removed, they return to their natural position which would be in the up position. They are like the airbrakes on a semi trailer. In the absence of air, the brakes are in the closed position, it takes the presence of air to get them to release.

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- GeaugaDog
Ain't Nuthin but the Dog in me..
Don't believe anything you hear, and only half of what you see...

GeaugaDog,

So if there was a 'power failure' or 'an air leak', the system would automatically engage the brakes. I guess that is what would make it 'fail-safe'.

Thanks for the insight!

Fever

BTW,

I would LOVE to rollback on TTD.

Fever

i will request a roll back lol im sure ill get my was MWAHAHA jk no but im pretty sure they woul have to be failsafe, 120 mph back into a car would be pretty much guaranteed death.

Very true ApolloAndy. Just a crazy idea I had. I get a lot of those sometimes...

-Charlie Weingartner

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You cannot teach a man anything, you can only help him find it within himself.
-Galileo

I wonder how they will deal with rollbacks on TTD ... Last I knew, when Xcelerator had rollbacks, riders would have to unload and they would cycle the train empty until it made it over a couple of times... It seems like the way everything is set up that it'll be more of a hassle. Plus there may be some random riders who get freaked out by that and want to get off of the ride, who knows...

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-Keith "Badnitrus" McVeen

I would think that either they have planned on re-launching with riders, or, escort the riders back to the station, launch the empty train (probably with riders still in the "ready" train?), and continue operation as normal... Who knows!

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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

By the way, S:RoS's brakes were also "fail-safe" and they failed. Just because there's a ton of redundancy and lots of safety precautions built into the system, doesn't mean it can't malfunction. Thank goodness the S:RoS accident was fairly minor.

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Be polite and ignore the idiots. - rollergator
"It was like that when I got here."
"faster, cheaper, and more often" that's somebody's new sig -UpsideDawnGrrrl

LOL I wonder if Millennium Force will have a new Intamin buddy to roll-back with on physics day from now on?

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Corey
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MF-19
Top Thrill Dragster Coming Soon

I HEART OHIO

Keith: They did say they would unload riders and allow them to wait after doing a few test cycles. It only makes sense that, once they have a good launch speed dialed-in, that they investigate why a launch fails before sending them back out.

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

CoasterFanMatt said:
The brakes along Xcelerator's launch track are movable and go down then come back up in succesion as the train launches past them.

The brakes along TTD's launch track work the same way. So, as in the case of S:ROS, the brakes could jam in the 'down' position. Assuming this happened during a rollback, the results would be catastrophic. I know that the magnetic brakes themselves can't really fail, and chances are they deafault in the up position, but that doesn't prevent them from getting jammed. Is there any engineering in place to address this, or do we just cross our fingers?

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Steve Guilmette
Mechanical Engineering
UNC Charlotte

I bet this has been said and if it has it needs saying again....

BLOCKS PEOPLE BLOCKS!

What do blocks have to do with rolling back? The next train is going to be in the waiting area directly behind the launch strip when the previous train launches. If the previous train rolls back and the brakes don't engage...

Note that this could happen without any block violations.

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Be polite and ignore the idiots. - rollergator
"faster, cheaper, and more often" that's somebody's new sig -UpsideDawnGrrrl
My shirt in my photo seems to be for "Aging Bull"

swimmerkev: correct me if i'm wrong, but the waiting area and the station are directly in-line with the launch track.

Remember, blocks rely on the brakes, and in the event of a brake failure, all bets are off. So, back to my original question; what's in place to protect the lined up trains and the full station if the train rolls back and the brakes get jammed down?

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Steve Guilmette
Mechanical Engineering
UNC Charlotte