magnum trims?

hello, i was wondering what controls the trims on the magnum because ive ridden it multiple times with the trims off and with the trims on and i cant seem to see what turn them off/on. thanks.

Not sure if there's anything more elaborate now, but it used to be a push to turn them on, pull to pull them off switch in the control booth. Depending on the timings of the trains, we'd call maintenance to adjust the pressure on the trims. We tried to keep the trains coming back around 60 seconds (from dropping off the lift to hitting the safety brakes outside the tunnel). We used to do this with a stopwatch, but I believe I've seen that they added a timer in the booth.

In general, we'd have them on most of the time during normal operation, but they could be off if a train went out less than 2/3 full or if it is cold/windy and the timings were slow. So the most common times to get a "special ride" were early in the AM or late at night or on cold/windy days.

Their procedures might be different now, but this was the jist of it.

Very nice answer. I always believed the trims were there to keep the train from tearing up the track or itself. Never thought of it being a timing issue. Thanks for the info!

A 55 second or under ride on Magnum is one of the greatest ride experiences around. Unfortunately, a ride that fast is really hard to come by due to the need to trim it up to 60.

I've been told the trims are now automatic, and no longer need to be adjusted. I don't know if this is true, but it makes sense as the labor requirements of having to constantly adjust the trims would have been quite costly, in my opinion. Union labor is expensive enough. Using it to do something that can be done via computer is bad economics.

Also, it appears that to recover from a set-up, ride operators no longer have to run out to the base of the lift to restart the ride.

-Sam

AdamP, I don't think you are incorrect in what you say the trims are for. The timing was just what we used to know when to have them on/off or when we needed to ask for them to be adjusted. I think the reasons you listed, in addition to rider comfort of the average guest, are the biggest reasons they have them. When I worked the ride, we certainly almost never made use of the extra 5 seconds the trims gave us as we dispatched 99% of time at the proper interval (previous train at the top of 2nd hill with three trains), beyond which you have another 20-30 seconds to get the train out before you need to worry about a set up (if you haven't sent train when you see the previous one come out of the 2nd tunnel, you're probably going to have a setup). So the extra time the trims gave us almost never really came into play.

For whatever reason, I prefer trimless rides because the train seems to track better through the pretzel with no trims. I'm not sure why it makes such a huge difference, but it does. Also, the airtime on the return hops is incredible to me, but maybe not to the average guest.

Not sure about automatic trims, Sam. You could be right although I think there needs to be a way to cut them off for an empty train. I still suspect there is some degree of manualness to turning them on/off even if the pressure is adjusted automatically. When I was there, they'd have them set at fairly low pressure for first thing in the morning and we'd sometimes have to have them adjusted up if the trains came in at 56 or 57, but if it was 58 or above, we'd just let them be. We'd probably let them be on the slow side too up to about 62 before we asked for them to be adjusted down. So it wasn't like they were constantly tinkering with it all day long to keep it exactly 60.

I do know you are correct about recovering from a setup though. They have added a sort of "dispatch enable" button for the safety brakes at the same spot as the dispatch enable for the station brakes (back of the train, load side panel). When they set up now, you'll sometimes hear the controls person saying, "releasing safeties in 3-2-1" at which time they simultaneously hit that button and pull up on the one in controls to get the safeties to release. Not sure why this was necessary as the safeties should not release until the block in front of it is clear anyway and there are no people standing close to the safety brakes as in the station, but maybe there's some sort of good explanation as to why they needed the "dispatch enable" for the safety brakes. My guess is that they simply replaced the key turn down underneath the safeties (where they were always running out to) with the button at the back of the station and absolutely no programming changes were necessary. It was probably just simpler/cheaper, but still workable to implement it this way. Unfortunately, it removes some of the "incentive" not to set up as it's really simple and quick to recover from them. We used to need to actually call and wait for a call back from our sup before resuming operations too. Then they changed that so we could just call and go back up, but didn't have to wait for a call back. We also had to document all downtime on our daily operations report (DOR) so this was a line on there. A typical day for us was one or two setups. A bad day for us was three or four setups. Sometimes we went multiple days without any. Not sure what a "normal" day would be these days or if they still track it even, but that number is a lot higher than it used to be.

Why does Magnum have setups? And why did someone have to run to the bottom of the lift to restart the ride?

I haven't been in the booth since 2009, but yeah, I think they have the timer next to the release. I'm not sure that they can adjust pressure remotely or automatically. I never thought to ask.

Is that a timer? Looks more like a turnstile counter.

It's not a timer, it's a display that shows whatever numbers the comprooder tells it to.

JPS said:
Why does Magnum have setups? And why did someone have to run to the bottom of the lift to restart the ride?

Magnum will set up if they don't dispatch a train in time. If you can see all three trains from the station then typically they set up the ride. Someone has to go out to the lift to restart the ride simply as a safety measure. This is typical of many Aero Dynamics coasters. Iron Dragon, Corkscrew, and Magnum all have this feature.

As far as the trims are concerned, even last year they had to call maintenance to adjust pressures on the trims.

thanks for the answers, i went to cedar point on an extremly windy day so that must have been why the trims were off. on a side note, i was wondering what the modification to the 3rd hill actually did, cause i cant find anything on the internet about the modification...

I rode in a half full train right after the storms passed on July 4th. The trims were on hard. By far the slowest ride I've ever had. Zero airtime on the hops back to the station, and I seriously thought we might roll back in the pretzel for a minute.

On the other hand, Mean Streak was running with no trim on the first drop later that evening. That made up for the bad Magnum ride. :)

Ralph - try doing that on an October night, with only 2 people on the train.