Sandusky City Hall

Jeff said:
The chances of a train ever being stuck on the top hat in all its years of operation are about zero to none. Gravity, you know?

Yeah... I gotcha. ;)

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gravity: down to earth, without the sugar coating.

www.geocities.com/gravityjmb

You may call me krazay! but if they are going to build a 400ft coaster, they are gonna need a 400ft crane. add a lil basket to the end of it, put a guy or two in thre, and wah la! its been done one too many times.

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D/\MN GINA!!!!!!!!

Do you think the crane is going to stay there?

No its not gonna stay there but im sure it wont be to far away.

and i too saw the thing where the metal stopped a coaster upside down...i dont think a piece of metal is going to stop that heavy of a thing going 100mph+

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D/\MN GINA!!!!!!!!
*** This post was edited by Check It 8/15/2002 1:34:06 PM ***

Re: Forcedude & raptor323: Hokie Pokie, Tootsie Roll, YMCA, whatever it takes to get the train down! ^_^

Check It: If you've seen the videos of Xcelerator in action, that train is at a crawl at the peak of the top hat...

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Tommy Penner - Variable X
Cedar Point FanBoy since 2001.

Cedar Point doesn't own a crane. They are rented when ride assembly occurs. They have bucket trucks but that won't do much good.

Cranes are usually brought onto construction sites in 2 or 3 pieces. It would be very time consuming to get a crane to the Point, assembled, and a rescue begun. I know, the chances of this happening are beyond remote BUT stranger things have happened.

I've seen some video of the testing of Xcellerator and it just rolls backwards back into the station when it can't get over the tophat.

Krigger228 said:
I've seen some video of the testing of Xcellerator and it just rolls backwards back into the station when it can't get over the tophat.

You sure about that? Does Xcelerator have brakes on the straight track before the launch? That would be a lot of work to try to stop a train using only station brakes.

Yes, Xcellerator does have fin brakes that raise after every launch. I believe their natural position is upwards and are held down for every launch. And if it makes people feel better, I am sure if CP wanted to, they could put some sort of advancing wheels/tires on the top of the tophat that could be raised in case of a stall on top of the tophat even thought I doubt that would ever happen in the first place.

Now that I think of it the park does have to fill our forms for the FAA. I have a copy of the layout of MF thats was given to the FAA that lists the heights of all of the three hills and of the three banked turns. With the rod at the top of the lift hill on Force it is listed as 318ft. The funny thing is that the other hills are listed as being higher then what they actually are, some day I will have to dig it up and post the numbers.

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long live the sky slide

Well then...you best be gettin' to work on contacting your FAA source once again! ;o)

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James Draeger
"Make it stop!"
"There goes the body buggy"

MF Mole, if the rod on top of the Force is at 318, the ride should be listed at 318 feet too. They did it with Magnum, why not the force? ;)

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Turkeys, the only animal smarter than man-Homer J. Simpson

I think that Cedar Point could rent a huge crane for most of the high places, but not quite a 400 foot crane. They could use a freight helicopter to hover and place the track at very tall at the crest of the tophat and possibly lower sections of the tophat. Sure it's not necessary, but it would be dramatic and get some publicity. :)

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

The odds of a train on Xcelerator stalling in the tophat are virtually nil. Yes, it does crawl through that element, but you're still looking at a train that weighs tons travelling at maybe 10mph... that's a lot of momentum for a broken wheel assembly to stop in a very short amount of track.

And yes, Xcelerator *does* have brakes along the whole length of the launch track. They're basically the exact opposite of what's on MF. On MF, there are metal "fins" on the cars, which pass through U-shaped magnets to stop the train. On Xcelerator, there's a pair of fins sticking up from the middle of the track [rcdb], and the U-shaped magnets are mounted upside-down underneath the trains. Before an Xcelerator train is launched, the fins are retracted down into the box track, then raised after the train passes over them... this creates a cool looking ripple effect as the train heads for the tophat.

That's also A Good Thing (tm) for stopping rollbacks... the fins are already up, and so if the train comes back down the wrong side of the tophat, the magnets will gently stop it before it gets to the station... which brings up an interesting complaint I've heard -- apparently if a rollback does occur, it takes *forever* for the train to get back to the station. I can't vouch for that since it's never rolled back when I've been there, but it makes sense. The launch track is angled up slighty towards the tophat as well, presumably so that if the train is stopped on the track after a rollback, they can retract the fins and let gravity take it back to the station.

*phew* Time for some fresh air... :)