Japanese Coasters: Why all the stairways?

Rain does slow coasters down, at least SD2K. It collects on the track, and needs to be displaced--causing an additional friction element.

Chris certainly speaks the truth. I never bothered to ask the folks there, but rain indeed does affect the coaster, in that it slows it down, probably through increasedd friction. Perhaps the type of wheel assemblies are to blame? I know SD2K uses a different design than most, or perhaps all, Morgans in its wheel assemblies. What does anyone know about that? After it rained, I watched them send the coaster trains, and I swore they barely made it over the first hill. It certainly sped up within the hour.
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Wait a second, I always heard that rain made coasters faster. Or is that just woodies?
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"Go banana!"-Ralph

Rain speeds up woodies quite a bit. In my experience it has little effect on steel coasters. Someone who is an operator on a B&M could tell us how much if any by checking the operation of the trim brakes.

nasai: You said the SD2K train was very slow when restarted, but you also said that they dried the track first. My best guess would be that the grease in the bearings had cooled resulting in increased bearing friction. And of course, if the train was empty the first few times around as is common on test runs, it would be slower due to the light wieght.

Yes, I didn't think of that, but yes, the trains were empty at first, then a few employees. Does grease cool so much? Does it coagulate in temperatures near 100 degrees? Even with the rain, it was hotter than heck there.
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I would venture to guess that SD2K could be pretty weird in different environmental situations. The amount of track the thing covers, and at that speed, i would think that winds, rain, and temperature could greatly effect it.
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Father Lucifer, you never looked so sane. You did always did prefer the drizzle to the rain

It's so they can evacuate people when Godzilla smashes through parts of the coaster enroute to Tokyo during one of his periodic rampages.

(Sorry... couldn't resist)

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"I wasn't always this cynical, but then I started kindergarden..."

*** This post was edited by SLFAKE on 1/28/2002. ***

nasai said:
They did the coaster in about 45 minutes. Then it started raining again, so I went to the pools. After the rain, they started the same thing over again. I had never seen this done before. Has anyone else seen such a thing?
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That's just... bizarre.

nasai said:
Yes, I didn't think of that, but yes, the trains were empty at first, then a few employees. Does grease cool so much? Does it coagulate in temperatures near 100 degrees? Even with the rain, it was hotter than heck there.
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The lack of weight is probably the largest factor, but the grease will thicken somewhat even on a hot day though it won't get nearly as thick as in cold weather.
B&M hypers are notorious for this. On even a summer morning, the first few runs are very slow. (This is possibly a result of the great precision of their construction and is quite forgiveable.)

Yes, I can easily forgive B&M for any high tolerances. I would imagine that Morgan built SD2K to similar, if not even greater, tolerances.
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