car weight

how much do these trains weigh? in guessing about the same as millennium's. any body know?

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"Racing a Honda Civic is like the special Olympics: even if ya win your still retarded"
"A Toyota Supra without turbo is like a man without balls---worthless"

~quotes courtousyof Supercars.net forums~

Probably a little less than MF's because of the use of figerglass in the trains, but around the same weight.

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What is most anticipated event of 2003? the debut of Dragster, the release of Metallica's new album, the release of Terminator 3, or the release of Matrix:Reloaded...tough call.

MF's trains weight is 28 tons, that is just over 3 tons per car. I think the fact that the front and back cars have 2 seast, but have big decals, that all the cars are simular in weght. 3*5= 15 tons.

I'm assuming that the trains will be about 15 or 16 tons eash.

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Chocolate is chocolate, but liquor is quicker.

I think Monty Jasper said in an interview that the trains weigh 15 tons.

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Virtual Midway
http://www.virtualmidway.com

28 tons? damn. i had no idea they weighed near that much. but i guess when you think bout it its gotta be, otherwise doesnt get nuff speed.

ya win your still retarded"
"A Toyota Supra without turbo is like a man without balls---worthless"

~quotes courtousyof Supercars.net forums~

Gravity doesn't play favorites. 28 tons or 28 lbs, it all falls at the same speed.

The weight of the trains isn't about speed, it's about durability. The bases of the cars are made out of machined steel, as Jeff had mentioned before. Bending, welding, or otherwise manipulating steel reduces their strength. Roller coasters such as Millennium Force and Top Thrill Dragster are very big and fast running on steel track without any device to absorb significant shock. Furthermore, they run about 10-15 hours a day all summer long, but they have to run that without any structural problems._______ In other words, the trains need to go through torture for many seasons without failing, but while building them to do this, they also have to weight a lot._________ As an added note, the daily maintenance checks the trains, track, and structure go through every day is a redundant measure for added safety. The parts can go quite a while unchecked safely. Considering the social aspects of today’s society, it’s better to be a lot more safe than you need to be than be just safe enough. Even with this level of safety, there still is many that thing roller coasters aren’t safe… _____I can't keep this damn post from clumping the paragraphs together...

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Chocolate is chocolate, but liquor is quicker.

*** This post was edited by SteelMonsters 1/24/2003 5:22:00 PM ***

i never really thought bout how much frickin power is in those hydrolic launchers. to get 15 tons up to 120 is ALOT. (didnt know how to express it)

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"Racing a Honda Civic is like the special Olympics: even if ya win your still retarded"
"A Toyota Supra without turbo is like a man without balls---worthless"

~quotes courtousyof Supercars.net forums~

The hydrAUlic launching mechanism produces 10,000 HP. I think thats enough.

Although 28 tons and 28 lbs drops at the same speed, the inertia is certainly significant. If the trains on MF were made out the same materials as Magnum's it would slow down more throughout the course.

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What is most anticipated event of 2003? the debut of Dragster, the release of Metallica's new album, the release of Terminator 3, or the release of Matrix:Reloaded...tough call.

I would have thought it weighed way less due to its design but im just comparing this to X's 35 ton trains

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Bob Majoras said:
Gravity doesn't play favorites. 28 tons or 28 lbs, it all falls at the same speed.

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Maybe if you're in a vacuum! It needs to be heavy to move around the track. Notice how slow woodies with Morgans are versus PTC's? Or how smooth and fast the old Intamins are versus the Arrows?

It has something to do with MOMENTUM as well. Momentum = mass x velocity. So more momentum if the train is heavy.

That is pretty freakin heavy though! Old 4 car, 3 bench PTC's (before all the headrests, ratchet bars, etc.) were about 6 tons unloaded (worked on the Blue Streak before CP ruined it!)

I thought I read somewhere that one empty M.F. train weighs in at 38,000 lbs. In fact, I think that it was on Cedar Point's site back in 2000 where they were real big on giving out facts and stats on Millennium Force. It was part of the same set of factoids when they listed exactly how many wheels are used for each train. Unfortunately, I can't recall that number and cannot find that information on their website.

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zombie said:

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Bob Majoras said:
Gravity doesn't play favorites. 28 tons or 28 lbs, it all falls at the same speed.

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Maybe if you're in a vacuum! It needs to be heavy to move around the track. Notice how slow woodies with Morgans are versus PTC's? Or how smooth and fast the old Intamins are versus the Arrows?

It has something to do with MOMENTUM as well. Momentum = mass x velocity. So more momentum if the train is heavy.

That is pretty freakin heavy though! Old 4 car, 3 bench PTC's (before all the headrests, ratchet bars, etc.) were about 6 tons unloaded (worked on the Blue Streak before CP ruined it!)

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No everything now matter what falls at a rate of 9.81m/s towards the earth.

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Finally an annoucment.

No everything now matter what falls at a rate of 9.81m/s towards the earth.

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You must be taking high school pysics. Go stand somewhere high up, and drop a rock and feather, then make a reply!

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No everything now matter what falls at a rate of 9.81m/s towards the earth.

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So everything falls to earth at the rate of about 22 MPH.... Millennium Force can't possibly be going 93 MPH...

Gravity is an acceleation. It is about 9.81 meters per second squared, or stated in some cases 9.81m/s/s. In a friction free enviroment, the speed is directly propotional to the time rather than a set speed. If you accelerated for an hour, you would be going about 72,000 MPH. We don't live in a friction free enviroment. Wind resistance is a huge factor. The faster you go, the more wind resistance there is, which can cause an equilibrium between the force applied and the friction.

Think about the space shuttle, they need extremely good heat protection, why? They hit the atmosphere at about 17,000 MPH. What there trying to do, is point the nose down at a steep enough angle so do get bouced back up. They really don't want to go too steep where the thermal tiles will melt off from the friction, pulling a columbia. [not saying thats what caused the accident]

Note: From 0-about 750 MPH [under mach 1] friction increases will increacing speed in a linear fashion. Above 750 MPH [mach 1 and above] something interesting happens. The air can't freely move out of the way, so it rips acrossed the moving surface.This creates heat. The friction increases exponetially here on up. When you reach speeds around what the space shuttle enters at, the heat will melt most solids. The thermal tiles are made in a way that there is virtully no heat transfer, so you could touch it when it just got out of a 3000 degree furnace for an hour, with your bare hands.

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Millennium Force 03'

Does anyone out there have any doubt that the train will make it over the top hat?

Doubt? hell no. Maybe it won't when there testing it to purposely trying to get it to roll back, and then a few times when they are tring to get used to the system, but it *will* work most of the time. Physics may not be an exact sceince, but calculus is. If you apply physics formulas to calculus's proceders, you get exact answers. How do you know there exact? They've been proven to the same extent the law of gravity has.

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Millennium Force 03'

*** This post was edited by SteelMonsters 2/7/2003 1:35:31 PM ***

i never realized how heavy these trains actually are....it just seems like a train that heavy wouldn't make it over all those hills!

Heavy ophjects are hard to get moving, one the same note, there harder to stop when they do get moving. 10,000 HP will be getting TTD's 15 tons without riders to 120MPH very quickly. Going uphill, the trains will be fighting gravity, the weight or the trains is being pulled down on by gravity, but the force of the weight because of it's speed keeps it moving. It will slow down while it's going uphill, actully it's going to slow down to a precicse speed. You REALLY don't want to be going over that hill too fast, but on another note, if your not going fast enough, you won't make it.

How do they know how fast to make the ride? Actully it's pretty simple, theres a many formulas that can be used to caclulate train conditions such as:

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Speed, acceleration [G forces], potential energy [how high the train is at any given point], kinetic energy [how fast the train is going at any given point], and total energy [a combo of potential and kinetic energy at any given point]

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With these, you can find out just about everything that the coaster will be doing with these formulas and some calculus concepts. When you design a roller coaster, you want to calculate everything before you start building. better to make mistakes on the drawing board than after multimillions have been spent. There is some difference from calcuated and real world roller coasters, but with new technologys in design and manufacturing processes, roller coaster problems of the past are just that, a thing of the past.

There was a time when they build a coaster and ajusted it till it worked right. Thats how the 'classic' woodies were made. You can change the shape of the wooden coaster without too much effort or money, but not with steel. Steel coaster need to have parts completly replaced. Examples are Steel Phantom to Phatoms revenge, Magnum's thrid hill reprofile, Rapters cobra roll reprofile, and a few other cases. It's much harder, but if in needs to be done, it gets done.

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Millennium Force 03'