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It's like a Whirlwind inside of my head!
-Nate
*** This post was edited by coasterdude318 4/2/2003 11:03:35 PM ***
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The Empire will Strike Back....
"What do I know, I only work in an Amusement Park?"
"You are paying to get in. Period."
It's not as if his train chassis have become the basis of which all steel coaster train chassis are built or anything. It's not as if he created the first succesful inversion on a steel coaster, designed a coaster that revolutionized what kind of coasters are the most popular or anything like that all without computers.
So ask yourself who the moron is.
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It's like a Whirlwind inside of my head!
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If at first don't succeed, find out if the loser gets anything.
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"Would you like a sports bottle with that? Its only an extra 2.35$ and your soul. For the extra cost you will receive the privilege to fill your cup with soda for only an additional $3.00. And if you act right now we'll throw in a straw (may be broken) an
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It's like a Whirlwind inside of my head!
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"Would you like a sports bottle with that? Its only an extra 2.35$ and your soul. For the extra cost you will receive the privilege to fill your cup with soda for only an additional $3.00. And if you act right now we'll throw in a straw (may be broken) an
If you mean successful in the sense of physics, then no, he's not. Edward Prescott opened the Loop-the-Loop at Coney Island in 1901. No it was not economically successful, but it had the physics down near-perfect as Prescott introduced the clothoid loop to coaster design.
Adam
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If at first don't succeed, find out if the loser gets anything.
And it was steel MG87
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It's like a Whirlwind inside of my head!
*** This post was edited by MagnumForce 4/2/2003 11:56:56 PM ***
Isn't that a bad way to compare these two rides, though? It seems unfair to blame Prescott because he was working within an amusement industry where he had to design and financially back his own ride. The economical situation of the amusement industry was completely different for Toomer and Arrow in the 1970's where a growing park market took much less of a risk when investing in a new ride. This is not to say that it was not a risky investment, but nothing on the magnitude of an indiviual working with a few others to keep his ride popular in one of the most highly-competitive markets our industry has ever seen, Coney Island at the turn-of-the-century. His ride was mechanically sound and safe, to me that says more than if he was able to market his ride in a very difficult business enviornment.
Adam
Knott's Corkscrew has been thrillign riders for 30 years. The real genius behind Toomer's design however was not in the inversion itself but rather the train design which truly made it succesful IMO. Also The corkscrew was really the first modern inversion, a loop seems simple, a corkscrew on the other hand is a downright odd inversion idea when you really think abotu it.
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It's like a Whirlwind inside of my head!
The tubular steel roller coaster, the Runaway Train chassis, the Corkscrew inversion, and most of Arrow's developments over the years can be attributed directly to Karl Bacon and Ed Morgan. Ron Toomer came along a few years later, and according to the Reynolds book was hired on a project basis to work on the Runaway Train for SFOT (Reynolds, 117). Accordng to the book, Toomer and Bacon were the engineers, and Morgan was the manufacturer. It's hard to say how much Toomer contributed to the Runaway Train, but the Runaway Train design was clearly an extension of the Matterhorn system that Bacon designed some years earlier.
I wouldn't call the Arrow trains a 'mess'. At least not the undercarriages. They're fully articulated, which is more than I can say for any wood coaster train not built by Mike Graham, they're simple, and they're exceptionally fail-safe. Remember it was Schwarzkopf's train that sheared a couple of bolts and killed people.
I do think that Morgan, Bacon, Toomer, and Humphries all can share the blame for inventing the damned shoulder bar, but it's Humphries' name that is on the patent.
--Dave Althoff, Jr.
RideMan said: I wouldn't call the Arrow trains a 'mess'. At least not the undercarriages. They're fully articulated, which is more than I can say for any wood coaster train not built by Mike Graham...
AMEN!!
LOL ;)
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"The Future of Roller Coasters"
-RollerCoasterGod
IX Indoor Amusement Park
*** This post was edited by RollerCoasterGod 4/3/2003 7:35:21 AM ***
When Schwarzkopf was forced to go out of business , MINDBENDER was one of the rides which had to be finished by different contractors. Schwarzkopf was often not even allowed to set foot on his old premises (you know, when your company is dissolved, you are believed to take out money or steal files etc.).
This way it happened, that one of the steelworkers forgot to reduce the track width on some points. (In curves and twists the rails have to be minimal thinner than on straight sections, otherwise the wheels and axles would be pressed apart).
Stengel had done the calculations and Schwarzkopf had build a stencil to verify the exact measurements. But the clueless workers didnt use them, because nobody advised them to.
The whole inspection of the Mindebender accident took years until it was clear that Schwarzkopf/Stengel could not be blamed for the sad loss of lives.
The full story on this can be found (again) in the publication: "Rollercoaster - Der Achterbahndesigner Werner Stengel" by Klaus Schützmansky. (a common source for these boards).
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Those who do not remember the ride are condemned to repeat it!
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Millenium Force- 1
Wicked Twister- 7
Magnum- 7
TTD- 0
mil. force freak!! said:
He also designed the 1st hyper coaster and the first suspended coaster!------------------
Hypercoaster, yes. If you don´t count the Togo designed BANDIT which opened in 1988.
http://rcdb.com/installationgallery1218.htm?Picture=1
sadly rcdb does not mention the height, but it is most certainly in the 60 meter/200 ft. range. The elevation from highest to lowest point is even bigger.
Suspended coaster, no! In 1974 a suspended coaster "Alpenflug" opened on Munichs Oktoberfest. It was build by aviation company MBB. It closed a few days later and was scrapped due to a big design flaw: The track was not banked. Furthermore the brakefins were located on the bottom of the cars which is not too good for a suspended ride.
I am in no way bashing Arrow, but why on earth they did EXACTLY the same mistakes on THE BAT is absolutely beyond me. They HAD to know so many years later that they will build a ride which is not operatable.
Werner Stengel, the old smart aleck, who did the design for ALPENFLUG draw out of the production because the people at MBB wouldnt listen to his ideas (banking, brakefins on top), designed the BIG BAD WOLF with Schwarzkopf for BGW. But the plans wandered in Arrows hands after Schwarzkopf had to close down his factory.
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i was a teenage rollercoaster designer
Closed topic.