Good Operating Procedure and Maintenance

[LuminousAphid]

Hey everyone, here is the setup for this thread; I was just watching a Matterhorn Bobsleds POV because why not, and noticed that the brakes at the very beginning seem to be pretty aggressive, causing some people to jerk forward against the restraints when they stop. It immediately made me think, does that wear the brakes out faster? How about the restraints? Then I began to realize there is a whole gamut of things parks can do right or wrong when it comes to how they run their rides, and it might make for an interesting discussion among nerds. I suppose it's sort of like driving your car- you can treat it gingerly and help keep it looking and running well for a long time, or you can run use it to its full potential and pay for it down the road.

 

Now obviously preventative maintenance and quality of repair/upkeep can make a difference, but I'm talking specifically about normal operations; things parks can do just by operating the ride a certain way to cut costs, have less downtime, increase reliability, etc. In the case I mentioned, I'm actually wondering if Disney stops the cars so hard to shave off a few milliseconds from each cycle, or does that help the brakes last longer? Or is it unrelated and it's just how the ride operates?

 

One example I can give you is the old Arrow loop & screw our local park has. They let the train roll almost out of the station with no brakes, but then stop the last cars on the forward station brakes so it slows way down as it curves around to the lift. I'm pretty sure it's meant to prevent strain on the lift chain or motor, because I can see no other reason to stop the car completely every time it leaves the station, but wouldn't that also put extra wear on that front station brake? Oddly enough, they then put 2x the wear on the coaster because each ride includes 2 laps, just like those kiddie coasters!

 

[Vortex Lover]

One Thing I Noticed On Storm Chaser at Kentucky Kingdom is that when pulling into the station from the brake run is that it brakes HARD about a quarter way into the station

 

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