Subject:
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Re: Train? Thoughts sqrt(2) - Fuel the Insanity
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Newsgroups:
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lugnet.org.ca.rtltoronto
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Date:
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Fri, 26 Jul 2002 16:48:12 GMT
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Viewed:
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481 times
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In lugnet.org.ca.rtltoronto, Trevyn Watson writes:
> I see a solution to this:
>
> Where do we see unpowered trains on hills? Iain and others, this should
> be obvious to you.
>
> Now, the solution I see, is to let the coaster experts get together and
> figure out a braking system for this section of track.
So, you're suggesting installing a track trim brake all the way down the
shallow drop? Wow, almost sounds exactly like the Beast at Kings Island. ;)
http://www.joyrides.com/pki/photos/beast2.jpg
(The second drop on the Beast, the world's longest wooden roller coaster, is
angled at 18 degrees, very shallow, straight, and long. It leads into what I
believe is the single most extreme coaster element I've ever seen (well, on
a wood coaster, anyway) - a gigantic eliptical helix of track, with the
tight part being right at the bottom. The train rips into an impossibly
tight tunnel after this huge long shallow drop - the thing about the drop
that makes it scary is not that it is steep and sudden - it's that it's so
drawn out, so slow to accelerate...that you just keep hurtling faster and
faster and faster toward the tunnel entrance, you've got all this time to
think about what's going to happen. But the point of my joke is that the
Beast is littered with midcourse track trims all over it to slow it down. :)
It is one of the few remaining coasters in the world to use Skid Brakes -
that is, the train has two skid plates on the bottom, which glide along two
long bars in the track that are raised up a few centimetres to engage the
train. This is of course much different than the now-standard caliper-style
brake, in which a pneumatically operated clamp grabs on a fin on the train,
or the made-popular-by-Intamin AG "Linear Inductive Dynamic Brake" ((c)
1999, Iain Hendry) which uses a very similar principal to a linear induction
motor to induce a braking force that is directly proportional to the speed
at which the train is traveling through it.)
(In the picture up there, you can see the end of the skid brakes.)
(I'd love to design a speed regulating system for that drop, as well. You
can outsource it to me!)
Iain
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Message has 1 Reply:
 | | Re: Train? Thoughts sqrt(2) - Fuel the Insanity
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| (...) THAT tunnel is where the Beast bit me. Only coaster ever to bite me and I tend to hold my hands out really as high as I possibly can. Hence I love the Beast even if it does have way too many brakes. I have a new respect for Shivering Timbers (...) (22 years ago, 27-Jul-02, to lugnet.org.ca.rtltoronto)
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Message is in Reply To:
| | Re: Train? Thoughts sqrt(2) - Fuel the Insanity
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| (...) I see a solution to this: Where do we see unpowered trains on hills? Iain and others, this should be obvious to you. Now, the solution I see, is to let the coaster experts get together and figure out a braking system for this section of track. (...) (22 years ago, 26-Jul-02, to lugnet.org.ca.rtltoronto)
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