Train Graveyard

To maniaman: ok, so they take them off after the season, your right, but i menat during the year. lol, good catch though! And as far as the airgates screwing up the blocking system, yea...then shouldnt magnums be all screwed up? cuz it never used to have airgates...ohh wait...and what about mean streak? hmmmmm intresting that it woudl only happen to gemini...?

Notice that Gemini hardly ever ran 6 trains last year.
Running 6-trains requires the trains to get in and out of the station fairly quickly. The safety brake right before the station must clear before a train enters the midcourse break run. Gemini's MCBR wasn't quite designed right, and a stop there requires a team of maitenence to push the cars out of the MCBR and through the turn. I believe that if you were an employee responsible for a MCBR stop, you could get fired.

Just wondering, how do they get the trains from the holding tracks to the actual ride tracks? Do you have to take it apart and lift it over or what? Obviously they're not connected, so what has to be done. I assume it's just like taking a train from anywhere and just putting it back on the track; though, a bit more convinient with the location.

-Eagle-

Eagle- the transfer tracks have a section of track that slides over. They just slide that track over, roll the train onto it, then move it back out of the way. Vice versa for putting a train back on the track.

Anyone one have pictures of the boneyards and it contents? Does anybody have pictures of the coaster cars being refurbed over the winter? I heard they move most of the coaster cars to raptor/bluestreak midway to work on them during the winter months.

I have some photos of Blue Streak, Iron Dragon and Wildcat cars stripped down. I probably should've posted them with the Dragster construction photos, as they were taken the same day.

When they strip down and rebuild vehicles, they do so mostly in the picnic shelters. They put up walls and heaters to make these nice big spaces to work in. Stuff is stored all over the place, but a lot of it ends up in the Breakers lots when not being refurbished.

DemonDroppin' said:

Chief Wahoo said:
Storing trains on the track when they know very well they will never be put into use invites a great deal of criticism. "That line was so long and looks at these trains they could have put on the track."

So if the extra trains are right there on the holding track then they can be put on when the lines get long, isn't that the point, having the extra trains accessible if need be?

Sorry for bringing up an old topic, but a lot of parks take one of the cars that it can no longer use legitimately (ex- Mantis can NOT run 3 trains... It never conceivably could) and makes these trains the "repair" trains. They're there, easy to pull parts from, and can sit near the ride and not look out of place or exceedingly trashy like hundreds of extra spare parts would.

I know formerly Six Flags, now Geauga Lake, did this with X-Flight for sure. They had so many problems with the trains and the GAU motors (that lay the cars down). They'd just take the pieces and parts off the train, and then order the parts catalogued from where they took the pieces from.

This is most likely why you see old trains laying everywhere. They give a good "how this piece is suppose to look when it's installed correctly, and how this piece is NOT suppose to look when installed wrong" type scenario. After a while it will just be a shell or thrown out, most likely, but until then you've got a 'train graveyard'

Ok so what are the cars that are shrunk wraped under the mantis?

Ben, TTD or any other coaster at CP usually doesn't have problems with the cars themself. If they do it's never a major problem keeping it off the track for a long period of time. Wheels and restrant issues most likly what go down on the rides, I think I'm not 100% sure on that though.

I think it be a smart idea to have all three trains on Mantis and only run two of them. Look at TTD, they have 6 trains on the track but run 5 trains, but if one of them have problems they have that 6th train tested and ready to go. They just have to launch it a few times and it'll be ready to go. Now if a train breaks on Mantis their stuck with only 1 train. If they had 3 on there in the first place they would have 2 trains always running. I don't know about you but even the thought of 1 train operation sounds like a boring, annoying, one heck of a long wait. (Unless we're talking about WT)

Matt D said:
Ok so what are the cars that are shrunk wraped under the mantis?

That's the extra Mantis train.