Rougarou Valley

Rougarou reportedly had a valley this afternoon, according to a guest on Twitter. There is a picture- https://twitter.com/JoshuaGregory10/status/621807433468506112/photo/1

Pointbuzz quoted it and also tweeted it out.

How could this happen in July? It's about 80 degrees and there isn't a very strong wind in northern Ohio to act against the train to slow it down. Is there something else? The train weight? Maybe RideMan knows!

Also, I hope this doesn't become an issue with this ride.

Intamin.

Oh, wait...

XS NightClub said:

Intamin.

Oh, wait...

Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't Rougarou a B&M coaster???

I'm pretty sure that was the joke.

Is the water level in the lagoon still high? Maybe that could cause it.

I doubt that would be a cause...but who knows! Haha

Yesterday evening when we rode Rougarou there was some kind of malfunction going on and the stopped us at the trim brakes halfway through the ride and left us there for a while. A ride host came up to keep us company and let us know that if we were there more than ten minutes we would be evacuated. When we started back up we never picked up as much speed as usual and several times we seemed to be just creeping. I though we might valley then but we made it through to the station. I wonder if the ride was stopped in the middle again before this happened?

Paisley I imagine the incident was pretty similar to what you experienced - All the times I've watched Rougarou or Mantis I have never seen it stop on the mid course brakes once. Maybe the old Mantis style trains were much heavier and picked up more speed on the drop after the brakes than the new floorless trains. I was imagining a possible axle failure or wheel failure too could create enough friction to slow the train down? Regardless, I've never seen a ride at CP valley with riders on board. It was just before the final brakes it looks like too. Not a common thing on a B&M designed coaster.

My logical guess is what you're describing; that for some reason the brake is grabbing harder than it's supposed to causing the train to lose it's velocity.

While we were stopped they had another train stopped waiting to enter the station and a train in the station. It wasn't until they eventually sent the station train out empty that they sent us through the 2nd half of the track. At the time I thought maybe something was preventing them from sending the train out backing the rest of us up but then I would have expected to just sit stacked behind the station not to stop mid way though.

I hope it's running on Sunday when I go. I hope they don't have to shut down for an investigation for a few days.

Maybe it's time they replace the friction brakes with magnetic brakes. It's 2015 for pete's sake! (On any coaster for that matter)

Magnetic brakes cannot completely stop a train though (necessary on an MCBR) - you need drive wheels/friction brakes for that.

The train should still be able to complete the course even if stopped from the mid-course brake.

While waiting for Rougarou to restart after a rain shower they stopped the train at the mid course completely. Once it was released I thought several times it wouldn't make it into the station but it did. there have been many times that I saw Mantis, and several times I saw Rougarou stopped at the mid brakes.

Yes, there should be no problem restarting the train after stopping on the mid course brake run, unless a bad wheel bearing or something similar caused too much friction. It is also probably possible for a train not stopped midcourse to stall if it had a bad bearing or possibly a tire problem.

Paisley said:
Yesterday evening when we rode Rougarou there was some kind of malfunction going on and the stopped us at the trim brakes halfway through the ride and left us there for a while. A ride host came up to keep us company and let us know that if we were there more than ten minutes we would be evacuated. When we started back up we never picked up as much speed as usual and several times we seemed to be just creeping. I though we might valley then but we made it through to the station. I wonder if the ride was stopped in the middle again before this happened?

Have you ever watched my Mantis recovery video? Cue that up to about the 1:43 mark where they push the train off the mid-course and it completes the circuit and see how slowly the Mantis:TCFKAB train moved through the second half of that ride. That combined with the fact that it apparently originally valleyed just past the mid course suggests t hat the mid course on this ride is a little like the mid course brake on Wildcat: you can stop the train there, but it isn't a good idea if you don't have to do it.*

I have mostly ignored Mantis:TCFKAB for the past fifteen years or so as I couldn't actually ride it. So I am hoping one of you can confirm or refute this for me. I seem to recall that Mantis:TCFKAB stopped on a safety brake at the end of the ride and held on the brake that sits at a right angle to the station. Then when the train went around the corner, there was only one holding brake on the transfer table before entering the station. Rougarou seems to have added a third brake between the old safety brake and the transfer table so that the train doesn't have to stop on the old safety brake, but can be brought down further towards the station. I wonder if that was done to eliminate the need to stop on the mid course if anything goes wrong, possibly because the train is so slow coming off the mid-course if it stops there.

--Dave Althoff, Jr. ( No, I don't know what happened (yet), and I suspect the park isn't going to tell me)

*On the Wildcat, one of the mid course brakes was actually on an uphill section of track. At the top of that hill was a small winch, with its wire rope stretched out over the track and hooked to an eye 'uptrack' of the brake at the bottom of the hill. If the Wildcat was E-stopped or block stopped, a car could be stopped on that brake. When the brake was released for recovery, the car would just sit there, hung up on the anti-rollbacks. To get it going again, the winch cable would be attached to the back of the car with a quick-release controlled by a lanyard. Maintenance could operate the winch to drag the car to the top of the hill, and give the lanyard a yank when it got to the top to send it on its way. I got to see that happen once; I don't recall whether I got it on video.

--DCAjr

That's about how slow we were going. No people pushed us over that I'm aware of. It seemed to be a completely mechanical start.

I thought it was going to going to get stuck upside down in that video, they were going very slow.

The ride is designed to complete the course from a dead stop at the mid-course, as all rides designed that way are. What's crazy about this valley is that it almost got to the end. For it to not make it would imply something caused excessive friction that slowed it down. It has happened to a lot of other rides, and I would generalize objects getting in the way of wheels is certainly one of the more common scenarios (think objects of clothing).