Hate to start a new thread, but I wanted it to be read.
I was standing in front of "Toot Sweets" on Frontier Trail when they started testing MF Thursday morning around 9:45. The wind was gusting hard off the bay, maybe 30-40 mph. The first train they ran was the blue train; it cleared the 182' hill - well, it didn't exactly fly over, as a matter of fact it got some "whoa!'s" from the crowd, but it made it. Then came the red one. Not so lucky. It almost cleared the hill; I'd say a third of the train made it, and then back she came! It disappeared into the tunnel - backwards - only to re-appear about 15 seconds later. Needless to say, it came no where near clearing the hill the second time! At that point I left the line, knowing it was going to be down for quite a while. I told the people near me in line it was not going to run for a long time, but they just stood there, hoping I was wrong I guess. It was still rolling, slowly, on the turn going into the first tunnel when I went back through the Frontier Trail. Oh, and there were NO water dummies in the train.
From what I saw, and I believe most people standing there agreed, it was the wind that pushed it back. It was a very gusty and swirling wind.
They had it pulled off the track and sitting on the ground in pieces when I went past around 4:00 PM. At 6:30 the yellow (and slower!) and blue trains were up and running. Oh yeah, the wind had shifted to the northeast, and there it stayed all day today, leaving Magnum parked in the station the entire day (but that's another story!).
Why is one train faster than another? Does it have anyting to do with how broken in the train is?
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"the Force of the new Millennium will be felt by those who choose to seek it.