KCForce

I thought it was really cool that Six Flags chose to commemorate the Wright Brothers and their achievements with this ride's design and theme. Now everyone will know how it feels to be an aviation pioneer racing through the skies at 12 mph. Thanks, thanks for the Coca-Cola choke and burning in my nose. I KNOW better than to drink and read the TPR forums. Milk would have burned less. Thanks again.

Thanks for the wonderful report and pictures, Hanno. Now, if Wodan is anything like Prowler, I wasn't too impressed with it at first and thought, enh, nice family ride. By mid-season it had moved all the way up to my number 2 spot for woodies. The airtime and forces dramatically improved as it "broke in", and my hope for you is that Wodan will blossom like Prowler did. It'll be interesting to see what you think of the coaster after it is broken in later this season. Peace!

With a bit of creativity, it will work. Just wait!

A new year, a new project. I will get the tutorial videos done, it's just a much larger project than I thought it would be and very time consuming. Here's the "big reveal" of my latest endeavor, Project 35: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dSGxbA7k2cE The videos for this project will start rolling out next month sometime. Who's excited?

Yellow Cars. I think it'd look good. Red would be my second color choice, oh, with black poka dots, the Lady Tumble Bug Peace

Cool. Looks very nice. Will be interested to see this progress. Is it O gauge?

You do realize this park is in Glenwood Springs, CO, which is 157 miles west of Denver (about 3 hours through a very mountainous part of I-70)? That shouldn't discourage you, it is a beautiful drive, and this unique park which has been under the radar for a lot of folks, totally looks worth it. It's similar to Ghost Town in the Sky in that you take a sky tram up to the park on the mountain. You just need to schedule it in. KC "I used to live in Colorado" Force

Nice job. A bit slow here and there, but all in all a great coaster. Nice supports. Peace!

I propose "BGBW". BGW is Busch Garden's Williamsburgh, but I think we're (mostly ) smart enough to figure out the difference. I don't think anything else is close, please correct me if I'm wrong. Consensus and/or a Moderator "seal of approval"? Peace.

I have lots of praise, and then some, hopefully, constructive criticism. First, over all I like this ride. I thought it was going to be a 10/10 rating from me. But it ends up being an 7.5 out of 10. I prefer the lift hill design. I like that you included two versions of the starting methods. I love the 90 degree drop (it'll happen someday on a giga), and then was blown away by the low flying speed hills and banked turns and face paced ride and then the larger hills towards the middle/end that slowed the pace a bit, but still kept up with what was an exciting ride. I really liked the ride up to the mid-course break run. The severe slow down (are you designing for Cedar Fair? *cough* Mamba, Wild Thing *cough* ) killed the ride for me. You should have just done a Leviathan style break run from there. It would have been fine. Some light trimming would have been fine, but it was so dramatic! I realize there was a double down after, but you could have moved that element somewhere else. You in my (respectful) opinion killed a perfect coaster. Trim it back slightly and then if you need to, make the track longer to kill the speed or let it fly into the break run at the end. Yes, I suck at NL designs. I'll probably never match anyone on here with a NL design, ever. But I had to let you know what I honestly thought. It is a good design, very innovative with the reversal of the hill heights. Now I'll go see if I can butcher the design by reconfiguring the ending to suit me. Peace!

This was great, and you're already in my opinion a seasoned TPR Photo TRer. I laughed so hard several times. Not everyone can get me to do that with their Photo TR's. Welcome, and great job, great pictures. Peace!

I personally like most of it, except for the ending. I think the curves should be a bit tighter to fit the rest of the ride. The end seems kind of drawn out a bit. Perhaps take the route for the ending starting after the second corkscrew the opposite of the way you have, since I have a feeling you did the end to fit under the existing track. That's my 2 cents. Ultimately, it is a good layout for a B & M, and if you decide not to change a thing, that would be okay too, it'd still be a good coaster just as it is. Peace!

Thanks for your question. I get asked this a lot at the exhibit at Union Station. My answer is probably not, unless they remove them, though I have toyed with a Mamba recreation, but it would take up a huge amount of space. I have yet to actually build a wooden style coaster, thought plans are in the pipe for such a ride. Peace!

There's only so much room in the Coaster Cave in the basement. It's about 430 square feet. So after about 6 months or so, I take them apart and reuse the cars by putting new bodies on them, the chain, sprockets and other things like the chain lift guides and reuse them in new models. In short, I recycle them. The Worlds of Fun models are on permanent display at Union Station in Kansas City.

Cool. Will you send me a link? Or better yet, just post it here! I don't know how well it will ride, so it'll be interesting to see. Peace, KC

Here's my first creation using the Coaster Dynamix custom train I built. Note, this is not the original Project Kansas, but another model called "Mustang". I built this one to be featured in my forthcoming "Build A Model Coaster" series on YouTube. Which, I have set a firm deadline of March 15th to finish all 9 videos. So for now, here are some shots of my "simple" tutorial roller coaster. I swear it really did start out small and simple, and if you look, in reality it is. Here's a link to the video: Peace and enjoy! KC My sexy custom modified Coaster Dynamix Intamin train. And the box it comes in says it can't be modified to work on a model. Pshaw. Overall view of the model. I'm "famous" for always creating a unique station for each of my models so far. It's actually one of the bigger challenges for me to come up with something new each time. It has one of those "what do you call it" s-shaped zig zag hills that is slightly modified. I like how the dual tunnel/rock and landscaping turned out.

I like it. The layout definitely reminds me of the Starliner. Perhaps if the tops were smoothed out a bit on your next model. I think part of that could be eliminated by stretching out the hills a bit more, if you have room. The one thing I've hopefully finally learned about model building is that though most real life coasters look extemely steep, they in reality are not as steep as they often look, it's just when they are built full size, they look steep. Some coasters along this line would be most of the Arrow loopers, the Starliner for example. So you may be able to smooth the tops of the hills by keeping them a bit more proportional, looking at side views of real coaster hills (rcdb.com is a good source for pix) and perhaps making the track next time out of layered styrene plastic strips. Great job on your first model, sounds like a few folks around here would love to see what you come up with next! Peace, KC.

Okay, I'm officially "Scary" I got 19 out of 20. I even got the bonus question. The one I missed, what was the oldest wooden coaster in Japan. Peace. KC "I'm Scary" Force

I didn't rate it, I'll go do that now. I give it 5 stars overall. EDIT: It's now 3 out of 5 stars, I gave you 5. Regardless of the feedback I gave, I feel it is a great design. It's definitely a 4 star or better coaster IMO. That's the thing about ratings, it's an average of what folks think. And you know the story about opinions, right? Don't take it to personally. I hate it when folks down thumb my models on YouTube (which doesn't happen that often). Chin up.

A new smaller sized (with a very short, yet twisted track) working model, featuring Coaster Dynamix Intiamin trains running on my wheel and track design. Have to put the finishing touches on it in the next few days and then will update my thread here at TPR. (This is not "Project Kansas", but it will use the same train.) Peace! This is what you get when you combine a CD Intiamin train and my wheel sets.

Downloaded and rode. Very nice. I like that it's pre-lift is something new and unique instead of going immediately down the drop. Pretty well paced and the design is well thought out. I like the supports for the pre-lift area, it would be scary as hell to ride that in real life. The only constructive criticism I have is the ending. With the 2nd set of block brakes, it didn't seem as thrilling as the first two sections were. I increased the block brake speed, and that fixed it and still kept it in acceptable limits and made it a top 10, IMO. Peace!

Oh boy. Okay, everyone pay close attention. Regardless of the support structure material, which can be wood or steel, a roller coasters steel or wood categorization is defined by the material used to build the track. So if it's made of layers of wood (even though it has a thin flat steel rail to keep the wheels from shredding the track into sprinters), it's a wood coaster. If the track is steel, it's a steel coaster. If this coaster is built by RMC using their Iron Horse track, it will be a STEEL coaster. The track defines the category of wood or steel, not the support structure. It won't be "wooden" anything, if it is indeed Iron Horse Track. I will be quizzing you all later. So commit it to memory! As a Missourian, I'm stoked we're getting another coaster at SDC. I was hoping for a CGI woodie, but an RMC steelie will do nicely too, especially after trying out the "New Texas Giant". Peace.

Living in KC and having made the drive to Chicago many times, here's the BEST tip I can give you. Do NOT take I-70 back to St. Louis and then up I-55 to Chicago. I-70 is a very busy highway, and I-55 is insane during the summer, and the (seemingly) constant road construction is a pain, you can get stuck for an hour or more, easily on I-55 during the summer due to construction or accidents. Instead take I-35 North to Des Moines, IA (you could do Adventureland, its worth going to, you can usually do the coasters in a couple of hours, or save it for another time) and then head East on I-80 to the Quad Cities (Davenport and Bettendorf , in Iowa; and Rock Island and Moline in Illinois.) From there it's about 6 of one or a half dozen of the other, you can continue on I-80 or I-88 to Chicago. We usually go up I-88, as our family is in the north part of Chicagoland, near Great America. Once you get near Chicago, expect traffic, sometimes it moves, other times you don't. This is from my personal experience, on a route I travel at least two times a year. You can still be delayed either way, but I feel you're less likely to be delayed going up through Iowa, and it's only a difference of less than 30 miles or so, about 30 more to go north through IA.) It's a long haul, but worth it. Peace. PS if you're looking for something to do, if you get bored, you can go to Union Station near downtown Kansas City (about 15 minutes away) and check out the Screams of the Past: The First Five Roller Coasters at Worlds of Funexhibit with working models of the original five roller coasters from Worlds of Fun along with some coaster artifacts, historic pictures and memorabilia. I know the guy who put the exhibit together. It's free too.

Whatever TPR decides to do with it's website design, it will be nice to see it updated. I wanted to give some input and see if anyone else thought the same, evidently all the other old folks don't have as many problems as I do with their vision, guess I need to go see the optometrist again. I didn't want to wait until after it's done to give some input and say something . the new TPR front page will be great no matter what color the background is, grey, black with what ever lettering color is used.

Okay, I've read this entire thread and followed it (at least at my age, I *think* I did!) One important thing to PLEASE consider for Jeff Johnson and those of us who are of a certain age, please do not use a gray background with the white lettering. It's murder on our eyes. A black back ground with white letters works much better. Robb, trust me, in a few years you'll appreciate it too when you catch up to me After 40, even with glasses and contacts (and not being able to afford Lasik yet!), it makes a huge difference. And though I'd go out on a limb and say, most active TPR's are younger that me, there are plenty of us *cough* older regulars to. I think they'd agree with me about the gray background with white lettering, right guys? I've enjoyed watching this come full about, and think a marriage of the two "finalist" is an excellent idea. It'll still look like TPR, but updated, which was the goal. KC "Praying in Anton's name for a black background with white lettering" Force. (6 years to get to this, my 150th post, perhaps my most important ever...)