Extra Concrete

I've been at Cedar Point a couple times this season and each time I've rode Mantis or Millennium Force I've notice that there is still some concrete for another queue. They used to use this back in 2000-2001 but since then it just seems like an area used for something else instead of line waiting?

If I remember Correctly, At one point I think they had a car out there. As a demo for some dealership... but I could be wrong.

They also might store stuff out there during the off season to get stuff off the midway.

Are you talking about outside the extra queue, near the train station?

Yes. The one that Millennium Force doesnt use anymore.

It's just a temp queue area, which is prolly too costly and pointless to take out.

It came in handy when they had to park a crane truck on it to do a pull through back in 2002.

It was a cold and windy physics day. Of course the instructors had the opportunity to explain why the roller coaster rolled back.

Cold wheels roll with a high coefficient of kinetic friction. There wasn't enough kinetic energy to make it over the return hop from the island. The train stopped when it ran out of kinetic energy and was forced by gravity to roll back.

Those dummies on the train got more fun that day.

Thank you, ForgottenEE!

I'm suprised he didn't mention the extra footer at the end of the transfer track. :)

Actually I noticed that the last time I was in line, I commented about it to my friend. Is there a story about it?

Actually, no.

The rumor is that it was for a small crane, but I doubt that.

So what do they have to do exactly when a train rolls back on a coaster such as Millennium Force? Does the crain guide the train all the way back to the station or something?

Does anyone have pics of what your talking about? I am udderly confused.

Also, does anyone know what these two things judding out on the straight track before the final brake run are for? I have always wondered that, I think they are somewhere else too, I don't know where tho. Anyways, does anyone?

http://www.pointbuzz.com/Gallery.aspx?i=1125

Keith 2005 said:
Does anyone have pics of what your talking about? I am udderly confused.

Also, does anyone know what these two things judding out on the straight track before the final brake run are for? I have always wondered that, I think they are somewhere else too, I don't know where tho. Anyways, does anyone?

http://www.pointbuzz.com/Gallery.aspx?i=1125

Supposedly they were for trim brakes... but they decided not to add them, for some reason. I don't really remember the reason. I think they weren't needed. There's also another set of them just as you go into the second tunnel.

They were added in case extra braking would be needed to stop the train before the station. It was determined that they would not be needed because they were able to adjust wheel compounds.

There are 2 ways to recover a train from a rollback. They both have been used. The first is to unbolt a removeable section of track located at several locations. Take the train off 1 car at a time. Put the cars on the end of the transfer track. The second option is to winch the train through the track.

Also, I want to mention I found this realllly neat video on Video Google..

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=6252836073120877178&q=Millennium+Force

That is a nice find. I watched that happen. I would have laughed if the train would have rolled back.

That was the train Tony could've been on for his 1000th ride! I was watching it from the station, and Mike was over at load 3 and he said the train BARELY made it over the hill onto the island. When the train came back into the station, we looked at the two guys in the front row with just a look of envy on our faces. I said to them, "You have no idea how much we all envy you two right now." And one of the guys said as we were giving them their ride-agains, "Now THAT was the highlight of my day....no...the YEAR! I don't even need the ride-again, that was the greatest thing that has happened to me ever!"

By the way, that guy that was narrating is annoying and wrong about just about everything he said, lol.

Teach Tony to wait for Red!

So when it's manually lifted over the hill, how does that work? Does someone sit there with a little hand crank and crank until it goes over?

I rode MF a couple years ago on a cold morning as the first train out. The train barely made it over the island hop. On return it felt like the train had stopped. We were actually rolling slowly. A couple seconds later we sped up. We went through the last overbanked turn pretty slow too. I hung out for a second or two.

The normal operating range according to the control system is a train time between 58 and 78 seconds. This is from the time the train drops off of the lift until it triggers the first sensor in the brake run. Outside that range, you get an error. Most of the time, it's between 60 and 66 seconds. It took us 84 seconds so a nice "too slow at track" error came up. The longest train time Millennium Force has ever had (without rolling back or system error) was 110 seconds.

MF is not possible to manually lift. It can be done two way. With the electric or hydraulic drive. The electric drive pulls at speeds between 10 and 600 cm per second. Most of the time it goes 450 cm per second 2/3 to 3/4 the way up the hill then speeds up to 600 cm per second when the next block clears. The hydraulic drive is used with the backup generator located in the hydraulic shed. The green genset is for the station drive tires and fanicular. It pulls the train pretty damn slow such as in the video.