Top Thrill Dragster's trains

rathofdoom said:
Question: Just how would you mount a lapbar on Raptor? How would you not use an OTSR on Mantis?

Raptor would be the easy one. You use a lap bar that drops down from overhead, similar to the setup on a ski lift. That's how Setpoint does it on the Swing Thing (ref: Roller Soaker at Hersheypark). Intamin has come darned close to doing it with their new shoulder bar design (Storm Runner, Kingda Ka) except that they include that ridiculous shoulder bar assembly as well as the lap bar. That type of lap bar actually has certain advantages over shoulder bars in terms of securing more different sizes of people more effectively. S&S has a reasonable design on their Screamin' Swing, as well.

A stand-up coaster would be a bit more difficult, I admit. Hmmm...I recall noticing on a Togo stand-up that I would have been perfectly secure had the shoulder loops not been digging into my shoulders, but while simply chopping the top off of the shoulder loop would have made the ride a lot more comfortable, it might have created a possible failure mode as well. When you straighten out the rider, you lose a lot of opportunities for securing it in place.

For now, we can keep the shoulder bar on Mantis:TCFKAB. But let's agree that its purpose is nominally not to hold the rider *down*, but rather to offer support to the upper body. To do that it wouldn't have to go over the shoulders, but by going over the shoulders it makes it really difficult for the rider to go straight up and out.

--Dave Althoff, Jr.

Shawn Meyer said:
So has this been confirmed that Top Thrill Dragster is getting OTSR?

No
For the last time I was just joking.

(To quote myself)
"Let's just hope that the 3 Dragster trains that are in tarps aren't in tarps because they were fitted with the OTSR's during offseason. ;)" <-------sarcasm.

I'm done arguing about it. I'm now leaving for Castaway Bay to have a good time and not worry about this stupid argument.

RideMan said:
Raptor would be the easy one. You use a lap bar that drops down from overhead, similar to the setup on a ski lift. That's how Setpoint does it on the Swing Thing (ref: Roller Soaker at Hersheypark). Intamin has come darned close to doing it with their new shoulder bar design (Storm Runner, Kingda Ka) except that they include that ridiculous shoulder bar assembly as well as the lap bar. That type of lap bar actually has certain advantages over shoulder bars in terms of securing more different sizes of people more effectively. S&S has a reasonable design on their Screamin' Swing, as well.

Morgan has a design that could be expanded upon for this, on the fabulous Phantom's Revenge cars. Large side-mounted bars that swing down. The trick there is that the bar wouldn't necessarily be level, though, so I believe coming straight down (as you said, "ski lift" style) is the best way to go.

As for stand-ups, I think that's the one case where "OTSR"s (or ATSR's -- around-the-shoulder-restraints, like Togo used) are needed, since with the rider's body being straight, you really only have one place to put something over/around the rider to secure them. Unless you want to clamp their feet in place somehow -- ouch.

The green trains have been moved again.

^All but one train is on the storage track. I'd guess testing on all the rides will start next week. Since some of the seasonal employees are starting and they're expecting temps. in the low 60s making it good to start testing the rides.

I thought it was called a transfer track.
*** Edited 3/28/2005 1:35:05 AM UTC by CPfan200***

Technically the "transfer" track is the section that moves back and forth, meaning it transfers the trains. The storage track is where they store the trains. There's a lot of logic there.
*** Edited 3/27/2005 11:51:53 PM UTC by Gomez***

There's a crane next to the______color train and transfer track. Looks like they're going to put the last train on.

More news at 5. :)

OH MY GOD!

I don't see no stinking crane.

I do see 5 trains on the transfer though. It appears there there is someone working on the last train on the ground. From what I heard, there are the first batch of employees processing in today for rides. That means they could be launching trains as soon as tomorrow.

Looks like a low of 36 and a high of 58 degrees. This is barily warm enough to start testing. I'd throw a small kerosene heater in the hydraulic room in the morning if I were them. Cold oil is thick oil. The pumps and motors will cry when they are forced to operate with thick oil. They cry harder when there is air bubbles in the oil. Run air bubbles all day, keep maintenance at bay. I might as well add that burning oil is worse than air bubbles, contamination, or thick oil. Might want to turn the heaters off before running.

There's no crane because he posted 2 and half hours before you did. They got their work done and the crane gone before you saw it.

If that's barely warm enough to start testing and training, why would they start? Last year Dragster was one of the last to start (mid-late April) I wouldn't expect it to be any different this year.

Looks like the green train is siting outside the station in some pieces.

The ride tested late last offseason because something went wrong in the hydraulic room and took a while to fix. Some technical people could help me on this one. In another topic it was stated that they didn't get a chance to fix the difficulties they had by moving the trains around station last season.

If I recall, when I went to the park Closing Day 2003, the weather wasn't very much better than it will be this week. The ride can run in the upper 50s no problem.

They were testing into the early morning hours last opening day. From what I had heard it was very tense on the platform that night.
*** Edited 3/29/2005 2:06:26 AM UTC by fat chris***

ForgottenEE said:

This is barily warm enough to start testing. I'd throw a small kerosene heater in the hydraulic room in the morning if I were them. Cold oil is thick oil. The pumps and motors will cry when they are forced to operate with thick oil. They cry harder when there is air bubbles in the oil. Run air bubbles all day, keep maintenance at bay. I might as well add that burning oil is worse than air bubbles, contamination, or thick oil. Might want to turn the heaters off before running.

It's not just oil, its hydraulic oil. Now somebody can correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe that hydraulic oil, like that used for Dragster, preforms better than normal oil.
Plus It was pretty cold last opening day and Dragster ran fine.......ish.
My guess is that Dragster can run fine in temperatures as low as 50°f. or lower?

And also regarding heaters, I heard somewhere that the hydraulics room has its own heating/cooling system AKA air conditioner. I'm not exactly sure of that though. I was at the park near the hydraulics room watching the trains launch when I asked my friend if the room gets hot with all the equipment inside and this guy comes up out of nowhere and says that it has its own heating and cooling system for cold mornings and hot days. Whether he knew what he was talking about or whether he was just crazy I couldn't tell. *** Edited 3/29/2005 8:55:24 PM UTC by TTD 120mph***

fat chris said:
They were testing into the early morning hours last opening day. From what I had heard it was very tense on the platform that night.
*** Edited 3/29/2005 2:06:26 AM UTC by fat chris***

We were? It was? News to me.

I don't know why so many of you are worried about TTD getting OTSR. Yea all the trains are tarped up but don't they tarp the trains every off season. The only reason Cedar Point would do such a thing is if they thought it would be a risk not to have them. Its obviously not a risk or else they would have made the extra safety harness awhile ago. The only reason Kingda Ka is making OTSR is the fact that Six Flags has a bad reputation when it comes to safety and Cedar Point is still number one for a good reason.

Yeah actually the night before Opening Day was extremely stressful. I believe we were there until 2 or 3 in the morning trying to get her to work, just wouldn't go. Sat there freezing my butt off while everyone else was out celebrating the night before opening day lol.

But somehow Dragster started up and was going for my 11:30 start the next day.

Getting back to the temperature thing...

Hydraulic fluid could be just about any liquid. It's usually an oil, quite often something like automatic transmission fluid...for Dragster, it would probably be a lightweight, high-temperature oil.

In that system, I would think that any temperature above about freezing would be no trouble at all. Yes, the oil would be heavier at lower temperature, but once it has been pumping for even a short time, the friction in the system generates a considerable amount of heat, and even on a cold day the system is far more likely to have too much heat than to have too little.

It's very much as in your car (which, incidentally, if it has an automatic transmission, is also a hydraulic drive) where even on the coldest day of the year the engine gets hot enough to boil water...

--Dave Althoff, Jr.

I was told in an offseason tour once that there is a system that somehow uses chilled water from the lagoon to keep the hydraulics cool. Whether or not that has actual merrit I'm not sure about.