Millennium lift hill noise

Friday while me and my buddy were at the park, we were riding millennium for the last 1:45 of our night. It was raining pretty good, and towards the end of the night, about our last 5-6 rides, the lift hill would make a awful screeching sound. The worker said it had something to do with the anti-rollbacks. I'm just wondering what exactly it was. Thanks.

That noise you heard was the anti-rollbacks.

I heard it too. It was VERY loud and unpleasant. But at least they know what it is lol

Just a guess, but the Millennium anti-rollbacks work by electric current generated by a wheel rolling on a plate charging a magnet to hold the rollbacks up. If it was very wet, it could be that the wheel was slipping and not creating enough current, so you heard the rollbacks ratcheting instead of being held completely up.

You're a pretty smart fella there Pete.

:) Thanks for the compliment Rob!

The rollbacks on the MF trains are indeed super loud. It has happened in the past where one of the three trains isn't correctly holding them up, so that train gets really noisy going up the lift. I seem to recall the red train doing this many years ago, but only near the top of the lift.

The reason that it happens at the top of the hill is the block-section system. If the last train is NOT in the unload station, then the train on the hill will stop near the top. At that point, the anti-rollbacks would activate. They are SUPER LOUD!!!!

I thought I read in another thread that if a train drags its dogs for an extended period of time, it has to immediately be inspected. Also, is there any video of this noise?

If Millennium force dragged any dog, he would be looking for that rattling sound for a while when driving, then get pulled over by a cop, get taken out of the car, and told that he would be punished for animal cruelty. Then Millennium apologizes, the cop starts sobbing, then goes and picks up the carcass from the road and returns the leash to Millennium force :)

smh

I believe the noise you are referring to near the top of the lift. It was doing that all summer. Also this year was my first year at the park since 2009. But did the lift always speed up near the top? Every time it would speed up near the top. The same point at where the noise starts.

It has always done that. The speed up is because the train in front of it has cleared the brake block and is into the unload station. Since the train on the lift can now clear the lift block safely, the lift speeds up.

Here is a link to a video where you can hear the anti-rollback dogs. The train slows down to a crawl at the top of the hill to wait for the previous train to clear the waiting brakes. At this point you hear the guy say "oh crap" but if you listen closely as he says that you can hear the anti-rollback dogs fall and grab the track. The steady clanking sound is the dogs hitting the grooves as the train proceeds slowly similar to the sound you hear from chain-lift coasters. If for some reason the previous train sat in the brakes for an extended period of time, the train crawling on the lift would stop completely until the brakes were cleared. It's all part of the safety system which is thoroughly tested every morning. At 0:21 you really hear the anti-rollbacks drag as the train accelerates to a high enough speed to lift the dogs up again. If an anti-rollback wheel was slipping on it's channel (just outside of rectangles in 3rd pic) from being wet or flat, then that particular dog would drag even when the train was proceeding up the hill at a normal rate--hence the loud ratchet sound.

Here is a link to the video:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dOo9NvKuKts

Here is a picture of an anti-rollback wheel/dog (the inner tire):
http://farm6.staticflickr.com/5001/5368071601_48cf8e05f5_b.jpg

Here are the grooves the dogs would grab:
http://pointbuzz.com/Photos/Photo.ashx?id=1263

Just watched that video and I've never seen it stall at the top while waiting for the last train to clear the blocks like that before. Interesting. On a side note, :30 he said: "ALLAZA BUTZA BUUUUHHHH!" That was pretty humorous.

Hooray for illegal video.

A few years ago I was riding Millennium Force on a cool (but by no means cold) morning during an ERT session with the National Amusement Park Historical Association. When we arrived, the blue and yellow trains were ready for us, and the red train was sitting on the storage track with propane torches heating up the road wheels. In the middle of our ERT, the red train was pulled into service, loaded with water bodies.

We noticed very quickly that the red train was moving much more slowly than the other two, even thou it probably had a heavier "passenger" load (this was a NAPHA ERT), and if we happened to be riding in the train that immediately followed the red train, we consistently had to slow to a noisy crawl on the lift hill, waiting for the red train to clear the safety brake. And that was even with the red train going out ahead of schedule because it didn't have to be unloaded, loaded, and checked. Over the course of the next half hour or so, they gradually removed the water bodies from the train as it picked up speed.

By the time the park opened, all three trains had warmed up and were running more or less normally.

--Dave Althoff, Jr.