- November 9th, 2009, 11:33 am
#35901
Intamin's trims, correct me if I'm wrong, have always come as an afterthought. Some like Bizarro at SFNE probably have them because of things like their brakes failing and others like the Superman hyper clones because the brake runs weren't made long enough.
From a design standpoint obviously B&M is better off than Intamin here. I've never heard of a B&M ride requiring re-welding or extra supports as an afterthought, and with the exception of Alpengeist's trim brake I haven't heard of any trimming later down the line for a B&M. (Alp's trim is actually a rare example of a trim making a ride better, if you've ever had an untrimmed blackout-style ride in the back row you know what I mean)
The rider in me appreciates Intamin's balls-out style of "run it and we'll trim it later if we have to, begrudgingly" but the engineer in me respects B&M for having the forethought to plan their coasters well and not require repair work later. That said, I've never felt a B&M hyper feel so out of control that the trims were ever needed. None of them approach overshooting the brake runs, none of them have painfully high negative G's, and none of them seem to tear themselves up to bad. Maybe I'm not seeing what goes on behind the scenes, but they seem to be quite a shenanigan. Someone must have told B&M that ejector air is "too intense" or something because they seem awfully terrified to let the train haul over their beautifully designed parabolic hills.
Brake-pad replacement cost would have been a reasonable explanation before the age of magnetic brakes, but now the first mid-course brake clamp and the final brakes are magnetic. No matter how fast the train hits them, they're going to leave the magnets at the same desired speed.
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