Timberliner Testing resumes on the Voyage

Voyage wraps around far enough that when the wind is right you can smell the campfires over at Lake Rudolph, just as you can from the Raven...that to me is a much preferable scent.

--Dave Althoff, Jr.

I am impressed with (from what I can see) how accepting Holiday World is of a 2 year late delivery of the Timerliner trains. I don't think that very many parks would be nearly as accepting.

To be honest, I am sure they have little choice but to accept it! :)

Disappointing it is delayed, again... But it will be for the better I am sure.

I would rather it be delayed and tried and true rather than as experimental as they were. Hopefully with them running on 2 coasters that were designed with the trains in mind we will see what else needs to be done to the ones that were testing on The Voyage. I cant wait to ride in one of "my" Timberliners.

Just makes me wonder what was "off" when they were running those trains on Voyage.. Something had to be wrong in order for them to do design changes and such. Maybe the ride experience was not as good as hoped?

But I do understand this is a first for Gravity Group, and I hope they get it corrected!

Mike told us at HWN last year that many things had to be stronger, The seat shocks, The Chassis tubs, and that his wife and kids would be the ones riding also and that nobody would ride until everyone would be safe. They Rode in November before putting it to bed for the winter.

There is no speculation here and Im guessing it just needs two new trains with all the modifications.

Good luck to both :)

This is speculation .... But something with the trains didn't go well at all because they state that the extreme forces of the Voyage is what keeping them from using them. So they decided for 2011 to order some new PTC cars to go with what they had onsite and return all coasters back to two train operation. So if it is just the extreme forces of the Voyage that doesn't allow these Timberliners to work, then why didn't they just move them over to one of the other two less extreme coasters and use them there instead?

Hopefully I'm way wrong on the idea that there was something major wrong with the design and maybe they can still move these trains over to The Raven or The Legend this year. Or maybe Holiday World can open two coasters in 2012 with the Timberliners.

They rode, The coasters they are building are opening with them, Im guessing they found all the problems, and its exactly like HW mentioned, They want to make sure there are no issues.

While Wooden Warrior isn't the biggest or fastest its still going to have some pop to it and both the Swiss coaster and High five look far from tame :)

Maybe it is more 'sinister' than that...what if Gravitykraft actually got the Voyage trains to exactly where they wanted them...

Again, this is PURE SPECULATION...but Wooden Warrior, Twister, and High Five all need Timberliners. Twister allegedly can't run anything else. That means that for this season, Gravitykraft has to supply...what...eight trains?

What if they built six trains for the new rides and "borrowed" two more from the Voyage to get the new rides going? The new rides need the trains more than the Voyage does, because the Voyage can run without the Timberliners; the new rides can't.

So the Voyage cars get a full overhaul, the 'glass parts get replaced with updated, thematically appropriate components, and the cars end up on whichever ride opens first. Additional cars continue trickling out of Gravitykraft, and at the end of the 2011 season, the 28th all-new fully-updated ready-to-run Timberliner [car], with all the updates a full season of revenue service suggests, shows up at Holiday World.

(Chuck: What Swiss coaster? Twister is at Grona Lund in Sweden...)

--Dave Althoff, Jr.

I kind of like Rideman's theory... I mean, as an engineering firm how do you not take in account the stresses a ride like the Voyage could generate? I am sure they have done field testing and such to determine this as well. I mean, I am only speculating and don't know the real reason that these trains will not run, but it is interesting that they are running on their other coasters... Just not Voyage.

I would just think that the train would be designed for something even more extreme than Voyage, in terms of safety factors for the restraints, chassis, etc...

I understand that many tests you can not perform unless in the real world, and if they are unhappy with some of the features of the trains that is up to them, and good for them to fix them. I just find it weird that Voyage is the only "oddball"...

^28th Timberliner!? Yowza, didn't know there were gonna be that many already.

SteveWoA said:
"...as an engineering firm how do you not take in account the stresses a ride like the Voyage could generate? "

Let's ask Sandor. ;)

Perhaps the trains are doing something unexpected and unexplained. And they are banking on that they'll be able to fix the problem in time for next year, but they really don't know for sure. I mean, they did expect them to be ready for opening day last year, then HoliWood Nights 2010, then opening day this year, then they decided not until next year.

That is true!

I know first hand that designs do not always work as expected in engineering... But the whole fact that Rideman pointed out is very interesting. Unless they really tweaked the track design or how the ride is built to be that big of a difference from Voyage which was built to run PTC's.

Perhaps they realized the reason that no one else seemed to be able to get their trains to exert "50% less vertical force". With all of the changes to the trains that we know and not know about, that number must be a lot less than 50% now.

CoasterDemon said:
^28th Timberliner!? Yowza, didn't know there were gonna be that many already.

Slight typo. I was counting cars, not trains, and didn't make that clear. The Voyage needs 28 Timberliner cars to replace its 14 PTCs. It now has 28 cars that were run like crazy last season and seemed to generally run pretty well. To your point, Two Fifteen, one thing we do know is that there is now a buttload of data collected from running fully loaded Timberliners on the Voyage. I'm not privy to any of it, but rumor has it that while the vertical load reduction may not have been as great as predicted, the lateral performance may have more than made up for it. We shall see what the next round of marketing messages look like for that product; I think that will be instructive.

--Dave Althoff, Jr.

while the vertical load reduction may not have been as great as predicted, the lateral performance may have more than made up for it.

In laymans terms, please :).

Sure. When a coaster train is running, it applies forces to the structure in two directions: vertically, that is, downward into the track, pretty much at all times, and laterally on the curves.

The vertical force is basically the force applied by the mass of the car. If the track profile is set, the only real way to reduce this one is to either make the train lighter.

The lateral force is the force where the train interacts with the track to go around a curve. When the outside guide wheel hits the curve, the load pushes sideways against the track and tries to push it over. Because the train can't steer, it has to be moving fast enough to keep it riding on the outside rail, and it turns out that the combination of the lower weight and the steering chassis means the Timberliner reduces the amount of force applied sideways to the track by a significant amount.

This may be because once the outside rail sets the angle of the wheel set, the rail is no longer required to brute-force-push the cars around the curve, instead the road wheels are pointed in the correct direction. This logically would result in a dramatic reduction in the side load applies to the track.

--Dave Althoff, Jr.

Ah, okay. I got the lateral and vertical forces, but it just wasn't making sense in my head when I first read it, but thanks for the explination :).

But not all coasters properly "hug" the outside rail in a turn....some of them "hunt", banging the train back and forth until the turn is completed. Sonny and HC5 are two that come immediately to mind. ;)

Rideman was willing to speculate a little more than I was in the number of cars needed to get their new coasters open, However I don't know if the test train is any of them. Im pretty sure the second train wasn't going to be built till they were certain of the final modifications

. They rode it. That leads me to believe any safety issues were solved.

There were some other issues mentioned at HWN about the track wearing or bowing to how the PTCs ran the track. Perhaps some of this has to do with those issues. I Don't know. It's pure speculation but maybe some gauging and ledger movement and perhaps a little retracking needs done. or not.

For whatever reason they made the decision to do what they did and we'll just have to wait another year. :)