TalonRider

Way Too Happy

And if those weren't enough. Bush vs. Kerry 1 Republican vs. Democrat Fart Gas Hit Yourself! Spanking Yankee vs. Red Sox

Welcome c-robbins to my humble abode. Famous Foursome Hi-Ya

Here's what happens to hi-jackers when they come to my house.

This guy MUST really need the money to do something like this. sediata Trap Door Fighting

LIM/LSM Power:Extreme Thrills The traditional electrically driven chain lift is the method that most roller coasters employ to convey trains to the ride's highest section, of course. Typically, from that point on, the simple concept of gravity is all that's required to bring the trains back to the loading platform. In 1976, a Europ0ean conglomeraton including Intamin, Schwarzkopf, and Reinhold Spieldiener came up with a mechanical linear accelerator, which they used at the launch device in the amazing shuttle loop coaster. This method was quite similar to the way jet aircraft are propelled off carriers at sea. But two decades later, a new propulsion system involving revolutionary electromagnetic linear acceletators came into in the entertainment sectro following extensive experimentation in the passenger-train field, where the concept known as "maglev," for magnetci levitation. Trains are essentially wheeless and float above the troughlike track through opposing polarites between track and train. The trains are propelled by electronmagnetic impulses in the part of the track that surrounds the train. Basically, two forms of this technology are currently in use on amusment rides: linear synchronous motors (LSM) and linear synchronous motors (LIM). Once the intial bugs were worked out, the latter method proved to be much more reliable and cost-effective. I won't bore you with any further details at this point. If you want to know more, let me know. Twenty-Forst Century Zaniness As expected, the arrival of the New Age brings with it a number of rides which push the thrill envelope far beyond what anyone thought feasible or probable just a few years ago. Ther are three such coasters that fall into this over-the-top category. Son of Beast, Paramount's Kings Island Before Kings Island found itself under the stars of the Paramount banner. it became home to a legend call The Beast. In 1979, the park constructed the longest wooden roller coaster humankind had ever attempted (outside of the Mauch Chunk Switch Back Railway), and this pioneering theme park was again thrust into the limelight. And now, over two decades later, no other park had topped The Beast's claim to fame. However, in the spring of 2000, the big daddy of wooden coasters will unleash his progeny upon an unsuspecting world. From initial impressions, this wicked kid just may give his famous father a run for his money. This outlandish effort, to be called Son of Beast, is the planet's tallest and fastest wooden roller coaster, and the only looping one. The terrain-driven ride stands 218 feet tall, sports 7,308 feet of laminated wooden track, and is spread over a hilly 12-acre site. Though the rides two recording-breaking drops of 214 and 164.11 feet and record speed of 78 MPH earn it top honors, its 103-foot-tall vertical loop really puts Son of Beast in a class by itself. Designed by German steel-coaster guru Werner STengel for the Roller Coaster Corporation of America, Son of Beast may be an anomaly, but its extraordinary ride characteristics will most likely allow it to retain it world records just as its father has. After all, who would even dare challenge this mighty pair? Project Stealth, Paramount's Great America The public love something new and different. And when it's very, very different, people really stand up and take notice - or lie down, in the case of Project Stealth, the work name (as of the orginal writing) of the new prototype coaster ringing in the twenty-first century at Paramount's Great America in Santa Clara, California. Developed by Verkoma International of the Netherlands, this high-tech stomcah churner combines the rush of hang gliding with the controlled action of a steel looping coaster. As the train departs the station and begins to ascend the 115-foot, 30-degree lift hil backwards, guests are slowly tilted to a prone position in their seats. With guests lying down, the train then goes through the first inversion at the top of the hill so riders are suddenly flying face down toward the ground. Guests spend much of the 50-MPH ride on their backs and fronts, whipping along 2,766 feet of coiling twists and turns. (This ride has since been moved to Paramount's Carowinds and has been renamed Borg Assimilation). Millennium Force, Cedar Point Considering the high-profile, one-of-a-kind ultra-thrillers opening in 2000m in might thing Ohio's powerhouse themer's Cedar Point and Kings Islan, are in some kind of personal coaster arms race. But they both insist that competition is healthy. So it's probably nothing more than a business decision that Cedar Point is gleefully shattering the currrent world record for the tallest and fastest roller coaster. Appropriately dubbed millennium Force, this steel super-hypercoaster arrives barely 10 years after Cedar Point took the industry by storm with the introduction of Magnum XL200, the first hypercoaster. And like MOdanna, Cedar Point is re-inventing itself again by raising the stakes--to over 300 feet this time. It sports a lift hill of a record 310 feet and a 300-foot first drop (also a record) angled at a horiffic 80 degrees. With 6,595 feet of tubular steel track, this coaster features no conventional inversions but will instead have curves ove-banked at 122 degrees. So although the tree trains will not actually travel upside down, they will be tilted well past horizontal during certain points of the ride to compensate for the excessive speed. Besides its colossal rate of travel, the sweepiing course contains tunnels and a collection of drops and turns that guarantee you'll never forget Millunnium Force. Don't get let your guard down quite yet, though. This coaster war is hardly over. A larger steel coaster from Morgan Manufacturing is under construction for Japan's Nagashima Spaland, and it promises to eclipes Cedar Point's newest surreal monstrosity. In the summer of 2000, the as-yet-unnamed ride will become the worlds tallest (more than 300feet), fastest (more than 90 MPH), and longest (moe than 8,000 feet) roller coaster. NOTE: Since the publishing of the material I am using here, Cedar Point has reclaimed the tallest and coaster records with Top Thrills Dragster, 0-120 MPH in 4 seconds which sends you straight up and over a 420 foot tower to drop straight down the other side. Taken from: ROLLER COASTERS by Scott Rutherford Published in 2003 by Lowe & B. Hould Publishers Previously published in 2000 by MBI Publishing Company.

New Age Inversions In 1990, a new firm called Bollinger & Mabillard based in Monthey, Switzerland, appeared on th scene and breathed new life into the industry with a second-generation standup coaster. This ride, called the Iron Wolf, was built at Six Flags Great America and featured a complex layout packed with severe banking and multiple inversions. What really caught everyone's attention, though, was the precise engineering techniques employeed in B&M's debut effort. This stringent attention to detail made the Iron Wolf unbelievably smooth despite the wild gyrations it was performing. This superb coaster also featured a four-across seating configuration, a trait that would consistantly show up on nearly all B&M coasters. Several other notable B&M stand-ups materialized at U.S. theme parks, including Parmounts Great America and Paramount's Carowinds. At it turned out, these glass-smooth crowd pleasers were but a preview of what B&M had up its sleeve. In 1992, while other manufactures were churning out relatively normal looping coaster installaitons, B&M unveiled a brand neww roller coaster system that seemed downright unthinkable: the inverted coaster. The proto type dubbed Batman-The Ride, and it joined B&M's Iron Wolf at Six Flags Great America. When details of the attraction were first released, there was speculation that the ride just wouldn't work. As with the suspended coasters that came before it, Paramount's Kings Island - The Bat, it trains hung from an overhead track. Buy instead of pree-swinging coaches, these vehicles were rigidly fixed to their wheel assemblies. This novel arrangement finally made possible the introduction of upside-down elements to the suspended coaster concept. History was in the making. Batman - The Ride featured an ultra-tight layout, which included two vertical loops, a zero-G heartline spin, and a pair of corkscrews. But B&M pushed the thrill factor up yet another notch by making the vehicles resemble floorless ski lift-like cars, allowing riders' feet to dangle. This openness dramatically heightened the sense of flight. The world and the industry at large were justifably amazed. To date, numerous examples of the successful Batman - The Ride have opened at Six Flags parks around the country (along with clones of the same design at other parks). B&M went on to build even larger, more elaborate versions of this ride at parks around the world. North American installations that deserve mention include Raptor at Cedar Point, Aplengeist at Busch Gardens Williamsburg, Monte at Busch Gardens Tamp Bay, and Top Gun at Paramount's Carowinds. These latter two inverted coasters are heavily themed and incorporate underground tunnels with fog and other special effects. Other companies scrambled to hop on the inverted bandwagon. In the meantime, B&M introduced a succession of larger standup and sit-down looping roller coasters. Each of these rides featured the now familiar four-abreast seating and degree of smoothness in the engineering process that was second to none. The firm entered the non-looping hyper-coaster market in 1999 with installations at Busch Gardens Williamsburg (Apollo's Chariot) and Six Flags Great America (Raging Bull). In the late 1990's, other firms joined the hypercoaster craze by building emormous non-looping steel coasters. Each of these wonderful rides was a success in its own right, but none seemed to equal the appeal of the very first hyper-coaster--Cedar Point's Magnum XL200. Even today, Magnum still ranks as one of the most popular steel roller coasters the world has ever seen, probably in part because of its magnificent lakeside setting. Taken from: ROLLER COASTERS by Scott Rutherford Published in 2003 by Lowe & B. Hould Publishers Previously published in 2000 by MBI Publishing Company.

Maybe no network, or anchor, wanted to give it the attention it DIDN'T deserve or for that matter, deserved. We all know that New Services tend to sensationalize things more than they need too. Case in point, I saw a video on Real TV this year told about a roller coaster stopping with a train on the lift hill. To hear the commentator talk, it was stopped at the top of the lift hill when the video clearly showed the train stopped about 3/4's of the way to the top. No one was injured. This coasters lift hill is 200 feet tall. On this particular day, the coaster had an electrial problem which shut the ride down for safety purposes. The riders on the train were released car by car and escorted back to the loading platform by park staff. Information would have been abtained from the riders and each person involved would have been given something from the park for the inconvience. As to what that was, I don't know. Having been on a coaster in the same park that stopped suddenly on the brakes coming back into the station, I know a little bit about it. For the inconvience, I was given a coupon for a free drink on the park. I hope those other people got something a little better, like a free pass to visit the park on another day to try it again. drool

Dewey, a note of interest since you mentioned Paramounts Great America, and I just remembered this, but your family may have noticed that coaster is missing from the park. Stealth, which was the first flying coaster made, was taken down and moved to Paramount's Carawinds park in the Carolina's. It was put up there and themed and renamed Borg Assimilation. If your familiar with Star Trek: TNG, you know who and what the Borg are.

But sometimes its not that easy to find some place to stop. : :

Looks like SHE blew it for a year. Shock 1

Good one, Pat. clapping

Technoloygy has vastly altered life as we know it on this planet. One can look at is as an invasion into the realm of "it's just fine the way it is, thank you!" or as a launching pad for new opportunities and experiences. And this includes the world of roller coasters, too. There are a tremendous number of coaster enthusiasts out there who simply prefer the joys of a John Miller wooden classic built in 1927. Oh, they may sample the new-age coaster that just opened next to the venerabel woodie, but afterwards they'll head back to their tried-and-proven friend from the Roaring Twenties. One the other hand, there are those aficionados who simply love coaster thrills any way they can get it: wood or steel: chain-driven lift hills or linear-induction catapults (LIM); up-and-down camelback humps or mind-numbing loops, boomerangs, and other countless inversions. Hypercoastering: Scaling New Heights In 1989, Arrow Dynamics rocked the amusement park industry by being the first ride manufacturer to achieve the elusive 200-foot height mark for a contunuous circuit roller coaster. Called Magnum XL200, this groundbreaking steel thriller debuted at Cedar Point in Sandusky, Ohio. It earned the title of the worlds very first "hyper coaster," a term coined to designate a coaster standing 200 feet or taller. Though it was fashioned completely of steel--tubular rails atop a galvanize metal support structure--it had no loops and mimicked the traditional up-and-down motion of the classic out-and-back wooden coaster. It was an instant success. *(I might add myself, that now there is a Giga, 300 feet or higher, and a MEGA, 400 feet or higher, that have been built.) Arrow Dynamics and rival steel-coaster builder Morgan manufacturing introduced seveal more hypercoasters over the next few years. Each is and entertaining ride in many respects, but two stand out: Arrows DEsperado aat Buffalo Bill's near Las Vegas, Neveda, and the looping Steel Phantom at Pittsburgh's Kennywood Park attained the record for North America's tallest coaster drops: 225 feet. Desperado isn't at a park, but is part of a hotel and casino complex at Primm, Nevada. In fact, Desperado's loading station is in a casino! Trains engage the lift hill and then exit the building through a opening in the roof. The lift hill crests at 209 feet, but--using a trick pioneered by Chicago's Riverview Park which had to circumvent city coventants limiting the height of a coaster--the first drop tunnels underground to achieve its record drop of 225 feet. Beyond are classic hills--some with outrageous negative G's--and swooo turns as coaster trains roar past parking areas and building fronts. The mile-long-plus ride concludes with an enclosed upward sprial. Kennywood's Steel Phantom accomplishes its 225-foot drop in a similar way, as the lift hill is stands "only" 160 feet high, towering over the park's nearby coaster star, the Thunderbolt, with its 70-foot lift hill. The Steel Phantom's second drop is its record-breaker, diving 225 feet down through the structure of the old Pippin section of the Thunderbolt (actually under the bottom of the Thunderbolt's second drop) and over the bluff. The pullout is on a ledge partway down the bluff, and it sends trains back up to the mail level of the park where they go through the usual set of inversions found on today's steelies: vertical loops, barrel rolls, and such, some of them causing near blackout conditions for some riders. NOTE: I might add here, that since the publication of the material presented here, The Steel Phantom has gone through some major changes. The inversions have been removed and the course reconfigured. The coaster still has the 225 foot second drop with it speed of 85 mph. The ride is now called Phantoms Revenge. Taken from: ROLLER COASTERS by Scott Rutherford Published in 2003 by Lowe & B. Hould Publishers Previously published in 2000 by MBI Publishing Company.

Roller Coater Trains Roller coaster vehicles come in all shapes, sizes and styles. Many early coasters and some later steel coasters such as the Wild Mouse and Jet Stars, use individual cars seating between two and four passengers. Traditional coaster cars seat four, six or eight passengers, with six being the most common. On larger rides of both wood and steel variety, cars are linked together of varying lengths ans passenger capacities. Larger rides usually ude two or more trains to increase capacity and keep the queue lines flowing. In fact, some German portable fairground coasters use asmany as five seven-car trains, all operateing on the same track layout. This type of operation requires split-timing on the operator's part, as well as an advanced computer systen capable of keeping the trains all properly spaced to avoid collisions. Typically, wood coastes use a boxy, low-slung collection of cars made of a combination of wood and steel or aluminum, and there have been a few instances of wood-track coaster trains incorporating fiberglass carbodies-though some judge their comfort and ride quality to be inferior to wood-and-steel carbodies. Steel-coaster trains are almost always constructed of fiberglass, steel, and aluminum. Generally, there are three types of coaster trains: conventional, articulated, and trailer articulated. The cars of a conventionalTrain are coupled together railroad-style and each have their own set of wheels (usually four wheelsets to a car). With an articulated train, adjacent cars share "truck" or "bogies" (wheel assemblies), thereby reducing the overall weight of the train and allowing for smoother flow over the course. Most steel-track coaster trains are of this design. With a trailer-type atriculated train, the foward end of each car is wheelless ans is supported by the wheeled back end of the preceding car. Trailered trains have flexible wheelbases and therefore are ideal on wooden coasters that have partricularly gnarled track layouts. The model of train chosen for any given coaster depends on the type of ride itself, the maxumum number of patrons the park wishes to handle efficiently, and construction budgets. Some parks will adjust train size to meet anticipated customer demand. After King's Island (Cincinnati) opened it Beast roller coaster in 1979, the wild coasters popuilarity required the park to add a car to each of the rides three trains. Taken from: ROLLER COASTERS by Scott Rutherford Published in 2003 by Lowe & B. Hould Publishers Previously published in 2000 by MBI Publishing Company.

Patterson said he was told to keep walking to avoid complications as the wound healed. "It hurts fiercely now," he said while walking slowly and gingerly. I should think so. devil-winks

Ain't it the truth.

Good Question

SAFETY DEVICES Anti-Rollbacks: That familiar clanking sound associated with most coasters during the lift hill ascent is caused by a safety device patented by the prolific John Miller back in 1910. Chain dogs, also called "hoisting dogs," not only enable the coaster train to climb the lift hill, they also serve as anti-rollback devices. Basically, the device consists so a pivoiting mechanism that latches on the moving chain during the climb up the lift. A second pivoting safety dog works independently by making contact with a series of ratchets located on the track alongside the chain. This acts as a backup safety measure during the lift sequence as well as near the crests of certain hill out on the course. Should the chain break during a lift, or if a train fails to mount a hill during it circuit, the backward motion of the vehicles will be restricted by the anti-rollbacks, securing the cars in place until the situation can be resolved. Though virtually all lift hills use a version of this ratcheting anti-rollback system, not every coaster features them along the circuit. Brakes As the roller coaster progressed from the simple switchback- and Scenic Railway -format of the late 1800s to the high-speed wooden and steel coasters we know today, the braking systems devised to slow or stop the trains evolved as well. Through the mid-1980s, the most common braking systems for wooden coasters were called "skid" or "sled" brakes. These devices involved a series of long, flat parallel bars situated between the running rails. In normal position, these bars were raised so that when the train approached the loading platform, the skid brakes would make contact with brake shoes mounted on the undersides of the cars. The friction created brought the train to a smooth stop, sometimes actually raising it slightly off the rails. Once the train was unloaded and refilled with passengers, the operator lowered the brakes by pulling one or moer long wooden brake handles or levers inside the station area. With brakes released, the train coasted out of the station and began its next run. Though another braking system know as the "squeeze brake" was developed for use on some wooden coasters built in the mid-twebtuetg century, it was the steel coasters (especially the looping rides that came along in the mid-1970s) that benefited from and perfected this style of brake. Also known as "fin brake," this configuraton features long metal fins hanging beneath the train or attached to the cars' lower sides. When these fins pass through pneumatically controlled brake units between the rail (or on the sides of the track), the fins are caught in a tight clamp, effectively and sometimes abruptly bringing the trains toa screeching halt. Taken from: ROLLER COASTERS by Scott Rutherford Published in 2003 by Lowe & B. Hould Publishers Previously published in 2000 by MBI Publishing Company.

Way Too Happy

clapping Thats a good one to tell some one who works in a Nursing Home. I sent a copy to my Administrator at work. Face Splat

clapping

Another good one Pat.