NL2 Riverview Bobs

[Coasterkidmwm]

I was going to tell you the exit looks a bit steep (which makes it look too thin) but you already figured that out

Coasterkidmwm wrote:

I was going to tell you the exit looks a bit steep (which makes it look too thin) but you already figured that out

It's almost certainly my fault. I hurried that final section to get it ready for the photos, and it probably explains the remaining red spike, which is also in that hurried section.

Just a note on my corrections: problem spots are always double checked with both the horizontal plan and the layout diagram. Sometimes the correct bent height is in one and not the other, as was the case with bent number 70, the one just before the top of the lift, where the profile gave me the correct figure. Red spikes are always treated as suspicious - some of his rides were severe, but none of them were dangerous as far as I'm aware. The g-force comb goes smoothly into the yellow at the bottom of the first drop and on the downhill side of the fan turn anyway, so there's plenty of positive forces for everyone to enjoy.

[herman116]

Still looks very good!

As my brother succinctly put it: the tail is wagging the dog. In other words, the fan turn is still not entirely fixed and its problems are holding the rest of the ride hostage. I lost several hours today not realising this. However, I have the advantage now that the lift hill is built. This means I can start a new rollercoaster next door from a point perfectly aligned with one of the lift bents, and complete the coaster from part way through. Then when I get back to the fan turn, it will be easier to see what is wrong because I will have more reference points, and if it's still slightly out, well then it's slightly out and that is okay. We'll still have a pretty good idea of what the rest of the ride was like.

The new plan is to start with the straight course leading up to the second block brake. I won't be starting with the drop out of TA3, the internal fan curve, because again there have been position issues with this curve and its exit. Another advantage of doing it this way is we will be able to see the high straight hill up against the lift for the first time, and as a bonus TA5, the final major curve, will be visible. I've yet to see a photo of this curve as it was stacked directly under the big fan curve of TA1 and disguised by TA3, so that will be a nice surprise.

Just a few quick pics showing progress today. The lift hill and first drop is a separate coaster, but I need it there as a reference point while I work my way back to the station. As for the rest, this is the two runs to and from the second midcourse safety block (the high flat) with the lower front turnaround of TA4 in the foreground. As you can see, the game has imposed some interesting kinks in the hill following TA4 which I will remove later, but for now, the main thing is to get all the positional relationships right.

Here's a side-on shot of the midcourse. Normally this view would be visible only from the station:

Taken from the midcourse looking down towards TA4:

Looking back towards where the turnaround 1/3/5 stack would be. I love this shot.

:

Just amazing to see this coming together, Lobster. Keep up the great work!

Today's update doesn't look like much but it represents at least two hours of work. Having completed the parallel hills of courses three and four, the next section was the curve taking the train to TA5. It started so well and then I noticed that I'd got the bent spacing wrong on one of the previous curves and I had to rip up and rebuild three hills! Then once that was fixed, I couldn't get TA5 correctly orientated in relation to the first drop. It was only a few feet out. Eventually I built the TA1 fan curve flat to act as a template and reference point, and it was immediately obvious that Church or his draftsman had screwed up again - the radius of the curve between course four and TA5 was marked at least 10 feet out from its true value. There's a couple of things I need to tidy up but you can see in the photo that TA5 now sits exactly under TA1 as it properly should, and the exit of this curve, where the train runs parallel to the first drop, is getting there too.

[mkingy]

Your workrate on this in fantastic - keep up the good work!

I always find your "day by day" updates and long commentaries, amazing!

Oh thanks, you're very kind! No pictures tonight as I was mucking around with the exit of TA5 and getting nowhere. The turnaround consists of a 192 degree curve followed by a 20 foot straight section and then a turn of 30 degrees out into the sunlight to run parallel to the first drop. Unfortunately the radius value of this curve is not marked on the plan. From looking at the two angle points I'd guess the turn has a 22 foot radius. I've experimented up to 39 feet. The difficulty is that either the node comes out too far away from where it should be, or it's more or less in the right place but parts of the rise into TA1 stick out over or through the catwalks! I can accept the two sets of tracks sharing a handrail - the lift and its two adjacent runs of courses 3 and 4 all share handrails. In the end it may be that I have to introduce an error of my own in order to produce an acceptable result. For now I'm going to put off that decision by recreating the sections from the brake run to the start of the lift.

[Coasterkidmwm]

Eeeesh sorry you had to go through all of that.

Coasterkidmwm wrote:

Eeeesh sorry you had to go through all of that.

Don't worry, I'll get there eventually Placing the station correctly is more important in reality because it will help to solve the problem of the crossover. I think NoLimits is a degree or two off in its rendition of the fan curve, which aggravates the problems with the crossover curve. My plan is to rotate the coaster 10 degrees so that the run back to the station will be straight aligned with the grid when I model it. Also once the station and rollout are done, I can then remove the lift hill coaster template and build the REAL lift and drop.

I had a crack at getting the TA1 fan turn angle correct tonight. On the blueprint, it is 260 degrees. To get that in NoLimits I had to go as far as 264 degrees! No wonder the recreation was all screwed up.

As it is my birthday today, I have taken the day off working on the coaster. See you all tomorrow!

[mkingy]

Lobster wrote:

As it is my birthday today, I have taken the day off working on the coaster. See you all tomorrow!

Happy Birthday!

^^ Let me say that your birthday is the day when we all think that your project should belong to our community forever! Becoming one part of our greatest history!

Thank you very much for your birthday wishes! I had a very good day

Back to the coaster: tonight I experimented a bit because I wasn't satisfied with the way I'd "fixed" the TA5 problem. I ought to keep notes about each section on paper. The good news is, it's better than before and I was able to get the exit point a lot closer to where it should be. A little more tweaking should do it but it's late and I need to sleep. If you look carefully at the screenshot, you'll notice that the exit of TA5 is sufficiently far away from the first drop that sharing a handrail is pretty much the worst it gets, which means that the clearance for the riders is safe. No, lol240, it doesn't pass the tunnel test!

Lobster wrote:

No, lol240, it doesn't pass the tunnel test!

Wow you like my avatar, thanks!

[Coasterkidmwm]

Well back in that time if you reached out of the car and hurt your hand everyone thought you were an idiot so oh well.

[mkingy]

Coasterkidmwm wrote:

Well back in that time if you reached out of the car and hurt your hand everyone thought you were an idiot so oh well.

We still do don't we Gouldy...

Hope that Lobster is working on the rest of this track!

Sorry, I've had a busy few days with a friend's wedding and other real life matters. One mistake I made was not saving my work at the end of the last session because I thought I could do it better this time. Wrong. I got it correct and even if it was slightly off, getting the brake run and roll out section in place was becoming quite important. Still, it's fixed now.

Tonight I did three things. First, I redid TA5. Second, I added the brake run and then sketched up the station and roll out. I had to add 1 degree onto the angle of the jink onto the brakes so that the end of the roll out lined up with the lift. Not a big deal in the scheme of things. Finally, I fixed a problem with the fan turn: it appears that by making the turn out of three separate sections I was inadvertently causing errors in the total angle of the turn. In other words: 30 degrees plus 180 degrees plus 50 degrees isn't the same 260 degrees as a continuous 260 degree arc. I don't know why this is, but it's easy to demonstrate.

The rough draft now looks pretty good. A couple of superfluous nodes need to be removed from the brake run segment, and then I'm going to work on the double station and transfer track, plus a final version of the roll out. I think the two outer curves are 10 feet too close to the start of the lift. Then the lift itself gets replaced, and THEN we tackle the problem of the crossover curve.

Here is the rough look so far:

[Coasterkidmwm]

That's a really odd layout now that I can see the whole thing from above.

It's too hot to sleep, so I gave the crossover curve one last go. IT'S FIXED! And yes, I've saved it. The problem was the fan turn - for the purposes of the game it has to be 264 degrees. That means that the crossover curve can then have its proper radius as marked on the plan. I've added in the flat versions of courses 1 and 2 following the crossover and you can see how everything now lines up (the gap between TA2 and the roll out is marked on the blueprint). Previously TA2 was too close to the roll out curves.

And here you can see how the inner fan turn of TA3 now fits exactly within the outer fan turn of TA1, exactly as per the blueprint! Previously this curve was too far away from TA1 no matter what I tried with the crossover curve.

Coasterkidmwm wrote:

That's a really odd layout now that I can see the whole thing from above.

It is a bit, isn't it? I think Church decided to take the design for one of his pier Giant Dipper coasters (like the Ocean Park/Lick Pier Giant Dipper of 1924 or the Revere Beach Cyclone of 1924) and then open out the lower levels so that they formed wings either side of the lift. On the blueprint it says, "Giant Dipper Plan for Riverview, Chicago Ill" which seems to support this idea. There aren't many aerial photos of the park on the web which show the footprint of the Bobs clearly, but this one will do. You can see the station sandwiched between the two outer turns of TA2 and TA4:



Man, I'm so excited now. One of the major barriers to a successful recreation is finally dealt with.

Two things wrong here: the exit of TA3 isn't steep enough and part of that exit goes through the crossover track. I'm probably only a degree out on the TA1 arc measurement. Lesson learned: clearance when flat isn't the same as clearance when banked, but at least it's now recognisable as the Bobs.