Ron Toomer
I will agree though that Toomer's importance is probably a bit overstated in the grand scheme of things. Yes, he was vital to Arrow's success in the 80's, particularly with regards to loopers, but as others have mentioned, he more or less worked with existing engineering.
And before you start criticizing the guy, just remember that the bulk of his work was done before they had computers to "virtually" build rides before the first weld.
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Jeff - Webmaster/Admin - CoasterBuzz.com - Sillynonsense.com
"The world rotates to The Ultra-Heavy Beat!" - KMFDM
I'm entitled to my own opinion on Toomer, and I think his designs suck, he was lazy, and he didn't belong in the position of engineer, nor did his company deserve the success it had years ago, especially when there were actually people making quality rides are still incredible today. Read "Roller Coasters, Flumes, and Flying Saucers" and you'll see that even Morgan and Bacon saw how Ron destroyed the company.
-Nate
*** This post was edited by coasterdude318 4/3/2003 2:49:05 PM ***
Tell us, what makes an engineer "lazy?" Tell us, what "screwups" did Toomer make? What did they do "over and over?"
Better yet, tell us all about the steel coaster scene in the 80's. Who else was making "big" steel coasters at the time? TOGO? Compare and contrast the engineering of the two. Go on, I dare you.
A friend of mine, who is a coaster engineer, says much of the down and dirty engineering in Arrow's hayday was done by Okomoto. Shall you tear him down as well?
You deserved the "mental giant" insult, because you called Toomer a "moron," which frankly is worse because, as I've outlined here, you don't know the first thing about him, his involvement in Arrow's golden age or the engineering involved in building a ride.
Move along now.
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Jeff - Webmaster/Admin - CoasterBuzz.com - Sillynonsense.com
"The world rotates to The Ultra-Heavy Beat!" - KMFDM
Screwups: The Bat. Magnum (Upstop pads? What a genius!). How many of his rides have been torn out? How many have needed trims or serious reprofiling (or both) soon after opening? How many are generally referred to as the roughest creations ever built? That's a rather large list of screwups. What about the rest of his failed prototypes (pipeline for instance)?
Over and over: Bad transisions resulting from desigining a ride by placing cookie cutter inversions (*exactly* the same inversions, I might add) next to each other to form a ride, connected by the occasional turn and crappy transition.
Who did it right? Schwarzkopf. How many of his rides are considered "rough" when running as he originally built them? I can't think of any.
Okotomoto may have done the "down and dirty" engineering, but he was still ultimately under Ron's direction. And Ron was the one directing the same mistakes be made, one after the other.
Just because I wasn't around in the 70's or riding in the early 80's doesn't mean I don't know what happened, or what the rides were like, or how Ron was involved when the company was booming. If you seriously overlook all the above, then I wonder how you can claim to know so much about Arrow when you just pull the curtain shut on all the big time errors.
-Nate
coasterdude318 said:I'm entitled to my own opinion on Toomer, and I think his designs suck, he was lazy, and he didn't belong in the position of engineer, nor did his company deserve the success it had years ago,
.......and you think you can do better? Have you come up with any type of designs?
*rollin eyes*...Big Time
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100th coaster....Dania Beach Hurricane!
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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
-Nate
coasterdude318 said:
People love to use that argument ("You haven't designed squat!") but when did I claim I was a better designer?
...and it's so easy for someone to bash someone like Ron Toomer, over the internet. Like Jeff said, he had less to work with, in comparison to B&M and Intamin. Maybe you should do more research?
NewYorkSuperman for some reason wrote:
That's not even an argument. Sorry, try again. You should stary by looking up the definition of critical thinking.
LOL...Sorry, I can write *anything* I want. You don't need critical thinking to see your *twin* is all-out bashing Arrow/Ron Toomer, because he feels other designers are superior.
*rollin eyes*..at both of you!
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100th coaster....Dania Beach Hurricane!
Laziness: Putting loops on 100' stilts because you don't want to spend the time to engineer a different sized inversion for a different speed ride (and even that didn't work, as many rides needed reinforcement down the road).
Whether you want to admit to it or not, doing that makes a lot of sense. It's efficient, it's safe, and it's effective. Face it, nobody cares if *you* like it or not, and what you consider lazy is completely subjective and irrelevant. I think it's pretty damned clever. Time is money, and money is what allows Arrow and other companies build other roller coasters for you to enjoy.
Otherwise, Arrow Development/Dynamics is responsible for numerous innovations. They were the first to do a lot of things you take for granted, and they did so without precedent. Quit being so pissy and recognize the accomplishment and innovation and risks that these people took -- all of them.
coasterdude318 said:
Laziness: Putting loops on 100' stilts because you don't want to spend the time to engineer a different sized inversion...
Tell me, Mr. Engineer, how does that make one "lazy?" I get out of bed late some mornings, that's lazy. Did you ever consider even for a moment that they built what the customer asked for? Or that the "cookie cutter" loops were necessary to fit available land? Or that they just never considered larger-diameter loops because, well, there was no reason to? Do you have the design specs or R&D budgets in front of you? I'm betting you don't.
Screwups: The Bat. Magnum (Upstop pads? What a genius!). How many of his rides have been torn out? How many have needed trims or serious reprofiling (or both) soon after opening? How many are generally referred to as the roughest creations ever built? That's a rather large list of screwups. What about the rest of his failed prototypes (pipeline for instance)?
I'll give you The Bat, but they made good with the follow ups.
However, consider that Magnum's upstops had been working just fine on the other mine trains (it is just a big mine train), so why assume they wouldn't be adequate? Magnum's problem (and its positive side effect) is that it runs a lot faster than they calculated (sans computers, mind you). That was the risk they had to take at the time to build something that big. Intamin made the same mistake a decade later with Millennium Force, and they did have computers. It's too fast as well.
Sure some rides were removed, but were you there at CoasterMania when he said those rides were built on too small a plot of land, but it was what the customer wanted, and would not take no for an answer? Were you there when he said the pipeline worked fine, but they ran out of R&D money because no one wanted to fund the project? Ah yes, in a perfect world, engineers could do whatever they wanted, take whatever time they wanted, and have limitless funds to do so. In the real world, however, the dollar dictates what you can and can't do.
Over and over: Bad transisions resulting from desigining a ride by placing cookie cutter inversions (*exactly* the same inversions, I might add) next to each other to form a ride, connected by the occasional turn and crappy transition.
Are you aware that they had no means to bend track into perfect parabolic curves at the time? (That's why modern rides have smooth transitions.)
Who did it right? Schwarzkopf. How many of his rides are considered "rough" when running as he originally built them? I can't think of any.
How about any ride where they had to use OTSR's. Or better yet, show me where the Schwarzkopf megaloopers and hypers are. Look at the Schwarzkopf catalog and tell me that nearly every ride isn't derivitive of the previous one, and a stock model. (How's that for lazy?) And why don't you contact the families of those that died in the Mindbender accident about how fabulous Schwarzkopf engineering was.
And the point still stands... on the relative scale of intelligence, you've got no place to call anybody a moron. I'm not a huge fan of Arrow rides, but without Toomer and the Arrow of the 80's, we'd likely not have the technology we have now. It's hard to imagine how the industry would have evolved, how big rides would be, or even if there'd be a coaster-building war.
Stick that in your big picture.
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Jeff - Webmaster/Admin - CoasterBuzz.com - Sillynonsense.com
"The world rotates to The Ultra-Heavy Beat!" - KMFDM
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It's like a Whirlwind inside of my head!
I think Trick Track covered this already. Klaus Schutzmansky talked about this in his book in detail with sources- at the end of the day Schwarzkopf and Stengel cannot be blamed for this accident, plain and simple. For those who have not read the book I would suggest it, no book has documented the European contributions to the industry as this one did.
Adam
Didn't you say earlier that the trains Arrow created were the best part of the ride? "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."? It seems that the real genius of Schwarzkopf was that he chose not to use OTSR's when they weren't necessary simply because he knew that they hindered the ride experience and did not enhance safety. If anything it seems that the Arrow car and restraints was a concept of good intentions (with a good undercarriage, as Dave noted) that was executed poorly.
Adam
Wasn't there a post a few weeks ago about Intamin adding to the supports on Goliath at SFH?
"How many of his rides have been torn out?"
Wasn't there a campaign last year to save a Schwartzkopf coater bacause there are so few of them left?
I was speaking of the chassis, not the restraints. Lapbar only inversions didnt fly to well in the 70's and 80's.
Look how many Schwartzkopfs had them added.
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It's like a Whirlwind inside of my head!
The decline and fall of Arrow came about as a direct result of the buyout by Rio Grande Industries, when the parent corporation had no idea how an amusement ride company has to operate. Look at the Reynolds book and note that Karl Bacon had designs for both a pendulum boat ride and a canyon rapids ride, but the parent company wouldn't pay for the development of either one. Getting bought by Huss would have been a blessing if there had been some actual money involved, instead it put the company into a nasty bankruptcy. Things started looking up again when Ron Toomer and other Arrow principals (not including then-President Dana Morgan, who opted instead to start up his own shop) bought out the company and formed Arrow Dynamics. That's right about where the Reynolds book comes to an end, because that book isn't really about Arrow, it's about Karl and Ed, who were both retired by this time. Arrow Dynamics was able to produce some spectacular rides, but the realities of doing business forced them to make some concessions to limit the development time and the production cost. That's why you have 100-foot-high loops on stilts that ride just like smaller loops, but when all anybody cares about is that your new ride has one more loop, goes a little bit faster, and is a little bit taller than the last one, it really doesn't matter. And when the company is undercapitalized to the point of having virtually no R&D budget combined with a full production schedule...well, what do you expect?
I would like to know, though, if Ron Toomer knew about Millennium Force when he declared at CoasterMania that there was no way they could ever build a 300-foot-tall coaster at Cedar Point. I'll bet he knew all about it at the time.
--Dave Althoff, Jr.
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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
There's a lot of good information here about Toomer I wouldn't even know to ask about, so all your contributations have been well worth reading. Keep it coming!
-Danny
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It's like a Whirlwind inside of my head!
And is Ron Toomer even the right man to credit for the Corkscrew coaster? I've read that "Flying Saucers" book on Arrow, and if I recall correctly, Ron wasn't engineering at that point.
>>
That is Absolutely correct. It was Ed Morgan and Karl Bacon - They decided to "turn a helix on its end" to make for an exciting "inversion". Can anybody name what coaster that was? Yes..Knott's Corkscrew. Also, their original idea for the trains featured a lapbar, then they tried it with a 5-point seatbelt harness. In fact, the test model was contstructed with a 5-point harness.
I guess I give more credit to Ed and Karl for everything - Ron brought us those entangled mega-loopers by stamping inversions together (which is really all any looper is).
Also, who was the real brains behind Magnum??
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Don't...Look....Back
Closed topic.
