Originally Posted By ecdc >>because if the wind is strong enough it will indeed catch the sails and get the boat moving too fast.<< That's really interesting! I hadn't thought about that or the mechanics of how the Mark Twain or Columbia actually work. I assume they follow a track, correct? But then there's CMs that determine speed and still have to perform functions? Anyone aware of an article or website that goes into detail on this?
Originally Posted By phruby They work just like the Jungle Cruise boats. They ride within a track. The Columbia has twin electric propellers on the back. I think they use to run it with sails up. <a target="blank" rel="nofollow" href="http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v470/bananaphone5000/GORILLA3/58__Columbia.jpg">http://img.photobucket.com/alb...mbia.jpg</a>
Originally Posted By monorailblue The Mark Twain is considerably more involved than Jungle Cruise, however. The Mark Twain pilot doesn't directly control any movement of the boat--there's an engineer down on the main deck that controls the engine from there. The pilot is his eyes and ears for the river, but like the Railroad conductors, doesn't actually have her / his hand on any movement controls. In Jungle Cruise, the lone CM on the boat has direct control of propulsion. In neither case does a CM control turning, though. I've often been surprised over the years how many people have not realized that the canoes, rafts and, formerly, keel boats have no tracks.
Originally Posted By Dabob2 Decades ago they absolutely ran the Columbia with the sails, and not just the front ones either. But I've read more than one place (and again I have no idea if it's true, but it seems plausible) that on windy days the sails could make it run faster than the steady speed they like to maintain and so they stopped running it with the sails. When it's stationary during the river rehab, though, it would be nice to have them out.
Originally Posted By FerretAfros But the river is a circle, right? So even though the Columbia might speed up from the extra wind in one direction, shouldn’t it be proportionally slower on the other side of the river? Sure it might mess with the speed in the individual areas, but the overall trip time should be about the same It’s just always confused me to see a tall ship that’s supposedly ‘sailing’ around the river with no canvas flying
Originally Posted By CuriousConstance Ferret would you please leave your engineering talk out of this please?!
Originally Posted By FerretAfros I mean...I'm just thinking about what happens to me on a windy day. Walking in one direction is difficult, but the other way is super easy. Trying to avoid getting too technical here! : )
Originally Posted By Kar2oonMan >>It’s just always confused me to see a tall ship that’s supposedly ‘sailing’ around the river with no canvas flying<< It's in a river, so it's just going with the flow, cruising down river towards the sea.
Originally Posted By RoadTrip <--- Not sure he wants to stake his safety on the sailing ability of an entry level DL CM. <<It’s just always confused me to see a tall ship that’s supposedly ‘sailing’ around the river with no canvas flying>>
Originally Posted By Yookeroo The propulsion from the sails mostly isn't from the direct force of the wind pushing the sails. It's more akin to how airplane wings generate lift. The wind gains speed over the curve of the sail creating lower pressure that pulls the boat forward. I don't know how that affects the Columbia, which isn't a real sailing vessel. But it's probably more complicated than the wind speeding you up on way and slowing you down on the opposite side.
Originally Posted By Dabob2 That's correct. Sails catching the wind will generate more speed going in that direction than "blocking the wind" will slow it down the other way.
Originally Posted By CuriousConstance I would imagine something on a track wouldn't be effected much by the wind.
Originally Posted By monorailblue The Mark Twain and Columbia float in the river. They move over, but not upon, a guide rail track that controls all side-to-side movement, but they are otherwise free floating and powered completely from the vessel itself. Their connection to the track is from a pair of very heavy poles with a bunch of roller wheels at the bottom that straddle and sit upon the track--but the pole is not fixed to the boats--it sits in basically a greased tube that opens through the floor of each boat so that they remain on the guide track whether the boat rises or falls in the river. This is the same type of mechanism employed at Jungle Cruise and Storybook Land Canal Boats. Wind would definitely affect propulsion with sails up. A strong wind would affect it for either boat anyway. Pirates, for its part, has boats that float in a channel. The bateaux have attached wheels on either side that roll along the channel walls. The also have wheels on the bottom for rolling down the drops and up the lift at the end. (This is essentially how Splash Mountain logs also operate.) "it's a small world" boats, however, have fixed guide posts below the center of each boat that ride in a center channel in the flume to guide each boat. (That was essentially how Motor Boat Cruise boats operated.)
Originally Posted By CuriousConstance "Pirates, for its part, has boats that float in a channel. The bateaux have attached wheels on either side that roll along the channel walls. The also have wheels on the bottom for rolling down the drops and up the lift at the end" Is there anything the propels the boats forward other than when you're pulling out of the loading area?
Originally Posted By berol The river flows downhill all the way around. See <a target="blank" rel="nofollow" href="http://homepage.ntlworld.com/andrew.lipson/escher/waterfall.JPG">http://homepage.ntlworld.com/a...fall.JPG</a>
Originally Posted By smd4 >>>Anyone aware of an article or website that goes into detail on this?<<< <a target="blank" rel="nofollow" href="http://miceage.micechat.com/stevedegaetano/sd092308a.htm">http://miceage.micechat.com/st...308a.htm</a> Most of the technical stuff is in part 2, but there are links at the end of every chapter.
Originally Posted By Dabob2 <Is there anything the propels the boats forward other than when you're pulling out of the loading area?> I remember an old guidebook saying that the Pirates (and iasw) boats were propelled by "silent and unseen" jets of water.
Originally Posted By FerretAfros The iasw flume actually has a series of "hills" where the water is pushed up by the pumps, and then flows naturally down to the next pump. While this lets the boats float freely, it does occasionally cause backups when one of the pumps fails (like that spot by the Mountie, which seemed to always be a deadspot before they rebuilt the flume) Because Pirates uses a flooded show building, the hills wouldn't work. Instead, the pumps simply push the water horizontally through the channel that contains the boats. The current then pulls the boats along with it, creating a (generally) smoother ride that has less variance in speed If you're looking for information about how some of the older rides work, I'd definitely recommend checking out Rollercoasters, Flumes, & Flying Saucers. It's about the early days of Arrow Dynamics (later Arrow Development), the ride builders who built a lot of DL's early rides and eventually went on to create the first modern log flume and first corkscrew coaster. It's got some technical information (and patent illustrations) but is very easy to read and has a lot of interesting stories behind the stories
