Pull through or just let it rip?

I'm sure the MCBR was off because it was the first run and it was cold. Once things break in and the weather warms up, I'd be very surprised if the MCBR wasn't grabbing at least a little.

I just saw some pictures of the pull through on Hollywood Rip-Ride-Rockit or however you spell it, and they're using plywood as well. I guess it's not as uncommon as it might seem.

That's not a pull-through, that's just putting a frame on the track to see if the surrounding crap is outside of the clearance envelope. A pull through involves dragging a car around to see that the car itself doesn't violate any clearance issues or interact with the track in a suboptimal way (like brake fins catching on the track ties).

I dunno, that sounds like semantics to me. Either way, you're moving a train through the circuit in a controlled manner, looking for clearance issues for either the train itself or the stupid idgits who will soon be on it.

Raven-Phile said:I just saw some pictures of the pull through on Hollywood Rip-Ride-Rockit or however you spell it, and they're using plywood as well. I guess it's not as uncommon as it might seem.

Yeah, it was pretty funny seeing the Guggenheim with trackage all over it and then seeing some wooden cut-outs attached to the building/track to check the clearances. With Rockit, the name implies they should just "let it rip"... :)

Well, no, they're not actually pulling anything through on the UO ride, at least not in the photos I've seen. Feel free to direct me to photos with a car on the track, but I haven't seen them. They're just strapping a frame to places where they're building something near it (or in the case of the former Ghostbusters facade, building through it).

I guess the only reason that I'm making the distinction is that we aren't necessarily talking about testing the same things, or sharing the same concern about where the engineering fails.

LOL, yes, if they were doing an actual pull-through, the plywood frame would certainly get in the way...then again, a "let-it-rip" test with the plywood in place would create some additional excitement for the new ride...hehe... ;)

Jeff said:That's not a pull-through, that's just putting a frame on the track to see if the surrounding crap is outside of the clearance envelope. A pull through involves dragging a car around to see that the car itself doesn't violate any clearance issues or interact with the track in a suboptimal way (like brake fins catching on the track ties).

True story..... When they built Legend at HW they installed the anti rollbacks on the left side like they would for a PTC. Charlie Dinn said let her rip and the brake fin burried itself in the anti roll back at the top of the Carousel turn. They waited for the train to return for several minutes till Charlie said go find it. The train was a Gerstlauer. The brake fins are on the left. The dogs on the right. LOL. Some little birdies I work with that were part of that former Custom Company told me this. Pull thru, Might have helped but generally checking specs would have too.Chuck

Jeff said:
I guess the only reason that I'm making the distinction is that we aren't necessarily talking about testing the same things, or sharing the same concern about where the engineering fails.

That's correct; they're two different tests.

The wooden cut outs are placed on the track at certain points if there's a clearance concern or issue. It has nothing to do with actual operation of the ride.

A pull through isn't done to test the ride envelope, it's done to check if the train will physically be able to traverse the course without getting stuck, broken, etc. It's about fins rubbing, tight cornering, and wheel assemblies getting jammed.

We've done the cutout thing (especially in the Exterminator since it has so much gingerbread.) I've never seen a pull-through done. We always do the "let-er-rip" thing.

What's gingerbread?

Gingerbread, as in the Victorian architecture reference, is elaborate ornamentation or superfluous tasteless embellishment.

Cool, thanks for the info.

Jeff said:
Well, no, they're not actually pulling anything through on the UO ride, at least not in the photos I've seen. Feel free to direct me to photos with a car on the track, but I haven't seen them. They're just strapping a frame to places where they're building something near it (or in the case of the former Ghostbusters facade, building through it).

Well, I would imagine that if they were indeed going to do a pull-through, it would be after the track was complete. There's no lift, drop, or "non-inverting loop" yet.

Which is why Jeff was so confident one hadn't been performed yet.

No, I wasn't aware that the track wasn't complete, I'm only going off a friend's pictures she posted on Facebook from last weekend. They've got a wood frame tied on to the track in the former Ghostbusters facade, much in the way that one plastic frame was hanging on the Manta picture we had seen somewhere.

And as kpjb was saying (or was I saying it?), these things test two different things. Granted, a number of the Intamin pulls have also tested the clearance envelope, but again, it shocks me that it's necessary. Or maybe it doesn't. In addition to the mod on the first turn of Millennium Force, there's a support out on the island that had to be cut out to make room for some adjacent track.

If anyone saw the TV special about Tatus a couple of years back, they had a footer they had to slice pretty much in half because it was in the way of the bottom of the loop. And it wasn't in the way by inches, it was a good 3 feet in the way.

Yeah, I remember that. The blame on that rests squarely with the people who poured the footer though. The steel was certainly all good or it wouldn't have snapped together.

On a side note, the cool thing about flyers is that they only require a 4 foot clearance, rather than 6-8 feet on most other types of coasters.

Jeff, that's exactly why suggesting B&M has reason to be confident isn't accurate at all. No matter how well planning/designing/engineering is done, you're still relying on a vast array of independent & dependent variables, all of which have to come together. Simply assembling the thing and giving it a glance-over and saying "Yep, she looks good guys! Let 'er rip!" isn't confidence - its idiocy.

Dude, no, you're talking about testing different things. Pull-throughs have nothing to do with whether or not a footer is in the right place, particularly seeing as how you can't do a pull-through until the ride has been built!