The "Technical" side of roller coasters

I'm sure a few of you are , like me, interest in the technical side of roller coasters, as well as riding them, soo this topic is to discuss anything to do with the technical side of roller coasters.
for starters, i saw this video on You Tube of the California Screaming having a break down, and the re-start fails dramatically.... (skip to 2:20)



discuss!

[Coasterkidmwm]

Good maintenance guy!

Lift walks with park guests are so goddamned annoying. At least that looks like an easy lift to walk down for their sake and no one was being an idiot.

Having been evac'd from 14 different coasters over the course of 4 years, I can agree with that statement.

Olmisery wrote:

Having been evac'd from 14 different coasters over the course of 4 years, I can agree with that statement.

ouch, that's a lot of gantry climbing!
i'm one of these people who would love it if they had to be evacuated from a roller coaster
on the technical side (which this topic is about), either the ride's safety system prevented the train from rolling all the way down the hill, or the maintenance guy had very good reactions!

Yep, 9 on California Screaming, 1 on Xcelerator, 2 on Revenge of the Mummy, 1 on Flight of the Hippogriff, and 1 on Jaguar.

PS:

Olmisery wrote:

Yep, 9 on California Screaming

Yes you read that correctly.

[Coasterkidmwm]

skyscraper wrote:

Olmisery wrote:

Having been evac'd from 14 different coasters over the course of 4 years, I can agree with that statement.

ouch, that's a lot of gantry climbing!
i'm one of these people who would love it if they had to be evacuated from a roller coaster
on the technical side (which this topic is about), either the ride's safety system prevented the train from rolling all the way down the hill, or the maintenance guy had very good reactions!

You say that, but on some rides it's a pretty not-great experience.

Magnum XL200 for example really shakes hard in the wind, the floor on many B&Ms bends when you step on it, etc.

Coasterkidmwm wrote:

skyscraper wrote:

Olmisery wrote:

Having been evac'd from 14 different coasters over the course of 4 years, I can agree with that statement.

ouch, that's a lot of gantry climbing!
i'm one of these people who would love it if they had to be evacuated from a roller coaster
on the technical side (which this topic is about), either the ride's safety system prevented the train from rolling all the way down the hill, or the maintenance guy had very good reactions!

You say that, but on some rides it's a pretty not-great experience.

Magnum XL200 for example really shakes hard in the wind, the floor on many B&Ms bends when you step on it, etc.

well then, spare a though for the maintenance people who have to climb it every day....

Olmisery wrote:

Yep, 9 on California Screaming, 1 on Xcelerator, 2 on Revenge of the Mummy, 1 on Flight of the Hippogriff, and 1 on Jaguar.

PS:

Olmisery wrote:

Yep, 9 on California Screaming

Yes you read that correctly.

Yay for Intamin! lol

[Mr. Freeze]

Coasterkidmwm wrote:

Lift walks with park guests are so goddamned annoying.

They really are

^Seconded

[Mikey]

What you guys did:

What a real evac actually is:

stuck1.jpg (17.68 KiB) Viewed 2783 times

stuck3.jpg (15.29 KiB) Viewed 2783 times

[Turbo]

GOOD GOD THE EL LOCO EVAC!

well technically it's still an evacuation of the coaster, so...

[slosprint]

Is the el loco one really an evac or is he just pushing it? Those cars look super easy to move.

[Coasterkidmwm]

The one with Demon was extra special since the rear axle broke off and jammed itself in the track.

I do have to say I'm a bit puzzled by that El Loco situation. I can't figure out how it got stuck there and why they couldn't get it to go back or forth to valley the car into an easier evac position.

[Mr. Freeze]

Sometimes the conditions are just right and it causes it to do that. The real fun with lift walks is when you have to be in a harness the entire time because of the lift angle... #valravnandgatekeeperprobs

Olmisery wrote:

Yep, 9 on California Screaming

Is it some record that I got 11 rides on it in one day with 0 breakdowns?

Also, speaking of California Screamin and the GP, I found this incorrectly titled video on youtube, everything the guy says makes me cringe.

[herman116]

tiepilot35 wrote:

I do have to say I'm a bit puzzled by that El Loco situation. I can't figure out how it got stuck there and why they couldn't get it to go back or forth to valley the car into an easier evac position.

Maybe it also has to do with the safety. I can imagine that the coaster won't work in automatic mode if something like this happened. They can probably give the train a little push and manually stop the train pretty safely but normally a themepark will never use the manual mode when there's a train full of visitors (except for maybe Alton Towers )

Something like this also happend in Walibi Belgium a lot of years ago. They had to evacuate while the train was stuck in the loop of their Schwarzkopf shuttle coaster. Apparently the launch didn't get it's full speed and the train just couldn't make the loop backwards.

[Coasterkidmwm]

I'm still not understanding why they couldn't winch it in either direction unless a component of the train broke and jammed in the track, like what happened when Demon valleyed upsidedown.

[Dirk_Ermen]

Coasterkidmwm wrote:

I'm still not understanding why they couldn't winch it in either direction unless a component of the train broke and jammed in the track, like what happened when Demon valleyed upsidedown.

Same story as Demon, a certain component jammed the train, slowed the train enough to make it stall in the loop and lock on the track.

[mkingy]

Now would you rather have OTSR's sharing your weight with the lapbar or just the lapbar itself like on that shuttle loop?

lapbar, OTSR are kinda a useless addon on most rides, I prefer the weight on my lap than on my shoulders. So in the 1 in a trillion chance a ride stalled upside down, I'd want a lapbar or even a vest restraint.

[Mikey]

herman116 wrote:

Maybe it also has to do with the safety. I can imagine that the coaster won't work in automatic mode if something like this happened. They can probably give the train a little push and manually stop the train pretty safely but normally a themepark will never use the manual mode when there's a train full of visitors (except for maybe Alton Towers

Normally when something gets stuck or valleys, the PLC doesn't throw an error unless the train is trapped on a PX switch. Even then sometimes nothing happens. You just get a block cascade as logically all it knows is that a unit has not cleared the block and its going to wait until it does. I was one of the first process controls folks to start implementing time based blocking safety checks in ride control systems.

Essentially all we do is monitor X input and Y input, and have a separate piece of logic that says if X input does not trigger by Y input after X amount of seconds, this is a process fault trigger the STOP function.

Most modern control systems have three modes, Automatic, Maintenance, and Maintenance Over Ride. Which breaks down to, does not let you do anything stupid, requires thinking but still will only let you clear errors (ESR) and clear blocks, and Maintenance Over Ride. The last one just so happens to remove all the safeties and does not give a damn if your input results in some catastrophic event happening.

It was never acceptable to go into MO while the ride was loaded, it was semi-acceptable to use ME to fix silly problems, and AUTO was so dumbed down the squirrels could make run it safely.

^ Props to the true answer!