magnum question

The B&M and Intamin wheels are pressed against the track with springs to ensure they make constant contact. That's half of the story. The other half is that those rides have smooth parabolic curves that provide smooth transitions. Many of the Arrow rides have fixed-radius turns that produce very sudden changes in direction. Combine the two and you get that roughness.

The Arrow track isn't a great design either, as far as I can tell. You can see in Magnum's pretzel "bumps" between the ties.

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Jeff
Webmaster/GTTP, Sillynonsense.com
"We used to hate people, now we just make fun of them. It's more effective that way." - KMFDM, "Dogma"

I think Magnum is a lot more rough than Mean Streak. How can you get such awesome airtime and not get a little "rocked"? This season I'm falling in love all over again with Maggie. I sure wish Millenium Mania was gonna happen this year.... sniff sniff......

Magnum has had an interesting past. Supposedly when it was first designed they didn't even have upstop wheels (with all that airtime?? -suicide.) They used steel upstop "plates" -similar to on Gemini. They immediatly realized this mistake from the showers of sparks the ride emitted at night. They also had to change a few portions of the ride because they were too rough. Supposedly this is visible on the hill before the turn around. Regardless, I love Magnum! Try sitting in the last seat of the 1st car, known as the "ejector seat" ...Incrediable amounts of "Ejection" time!! It almost hurts from the lap bar holding you in.
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Coasters? i thought those were those things you put under drinks? ...am I on the wrong site?

I think that it would have been a sight to see Magnum run at night going over those bunny hills! :) There is evidence of the reprofiling in this gallery of Magnum's turnaround. The ejector seat rocks! When the other seats are mild 1-3 is awesome. When the other seats are awesome, 1-3 is just insane! :)

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June 28th: LocoBazooka Tour (Sevendust headlining)
July 11th: Korn, Puddle of Mudd, and Deadsy

Ride Magnum, it is the best ride in the park.

When Magnum is running around 60 seconds or less (which is was tonight it felt:)) I like the last car as well. While the ejector seat is insane and the air is abrupt, in the back I get yanked over so hard that when I finally come down I get pounded into the seat. My head comes pretty darn close to hitting the grab bar.

You can tell Magnum is running good when...

1. There is air on the part up coming out of the last tunnel
2. There is nice up and out air over the dogleg turn hop
3. The 2 small hills along the lake after the pretzel are just as good as the return
4. The pretzel turn is smooth, which means it's running fast through there (which makes no sense but hey)

5. People are chanting "this ride rules" and the enthusiasm in the station rivals Millennium Force. Yes, peeps do like it better when it runs fast! Heck, people behind us decided to stay on Magnum instead of going over to the blue thing.

Now if only Maintenance could keep the trims this loose for the rest of the year.

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2002 Magnum--202
The world I love, the trains I hop, to be part of the wave can't stop.
*** This post was edited by Joe E. 7/14/2002 3:13:33 AM ***

Whenever those trims are off, you'd better be prepareed for an intense ride. At Coastermania right before the park closed to the general public, I got a ride in, It was dark, and there was no trim. I can say truthfully that it was a better ride, than I've ever had on MF. It was THE most intense air and speed I've felt on Maggie. I just wished they could have kept them off for the ERT too. That would have made the enthusiasts go nuts.

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June 28th: LocoBazooka Tour (Sevendust headlining)
July 11th: Korn, Puddle of Mudd, and Deadsy

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Jeff said:
What? How do you expect a lighter train would make it around the course?

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Jeff
Webmaster/GTTP, Sillynonsense.com
"We used to hate people, now we just make fun of them. It's more effective that way." - KMFDM, "Dogma"

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When I said heavy I meant the lapbars. Since they are right on you and lock very far down it hurts your legs on the top of the drops. MF's are better because they lock where you place them and they have more padding.

I was going to say - Magnum's trains only weigh 2,300 pounds each which is extremely light when compared to an MF train tipping the scales at about 28 tons. I'm not sure if that is metric tons or not, but it is heavy either way! :)

I was lucky enough to catch Maggie last Thursday running trimless pretty much all day due to the winds. Even with them off, there was such a strong wind hitting the Soak City Curve that the trains didn't seem to be making the return run all that fast in the morning. But later rides were very very good.

The advice about not sitting in a third seat is good. I'd take it a step further and recommend sitting in the second seat of any car (6-2 is a great seat and I recommend 5-2 for first timers).

-Matt
2001 Magnum Crew

Matt, are you sure it's 2,300 pounds for the entire train and not just one car? That just seems much too light.

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It's very hard to drink all day...
Unless you start first thing in the morning.

I agree. That would suggest my car weighs more than a Magnum train, and that's not possible.

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Jeff
Webmaster/GTTP, Sillynonsense.com
7/27: Subdivision Cam becomes party cam at the year's hottest Ohio luau!

Statistical Summary as per the Magnum SOP manual. ;)

Number of trains - 3, Dispatch Interval - 1:15, Load and Unload Time - :20, Ready and Idle Time - :25, Trip Time - 2:45, Cycle Time - 3:30, Seats per Car - 6, Number of cars - 6, Capacity per Hour - 1,944, Weight of Train - 2,300 pounds. It also has the lift timings which are :45 from base of lift to top of lift, and :65 from dispatch to top of lift.

I agree that 2,300 pounds does seem light, but when those fiberglass bodies are removed (Dan could attest to this), there isn't much at all left to those trains. Still though when you add up 72 wheels, plus the rest of it, 2,300 does seem light. I know a couple maintenance guys can push them around fairly easily as they've done when a train almost rolled back into the third tunnel and I believe they did it once over on the transfer track that I've witnessed. At the same time, 28 tons seems awfully heavy to me! :) So what do I know? :)

-Matt
2001 Magnum Crew

That would make each car about 320 pounds. Not sure I buy that.

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Jeff
Webmaster/GTTP, Sillynonsense.com
7/27: Subdivision Cam becomes party cam at the year's hottest Ohio luau!

A slight shift to this dying discussion. Why is there a fake owl under the track just as is goes into the station? You can see it from the queue.

There are several places where I live that have fake owls like the one you referred to. They are used to scare other birds away.

Years ago I saw a reference to the Gemini cars as being a half-ton (1,000 lbs) each. Since Magnum's train is similar, a 6-car train would be 6,000 lbs. That I could believe. 36 passengers at 170 lbs each would be an additional 6,120 pounds which brings us up to 12,120 pounds.

It's quite likely that both my passenger weight figure (heck I weigh 250 all by myself...) and my material weight figure is probably low...

Matt, my guess is that your manual is missing a zero. :)

--Dave Althoff, Jr.

Yea, I thought of that too. ;)

-Matt
2001 Magnum Crew