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Heide Park Colossos retracking (2019)

spicy

Giga Poster
If the coaster now needs retracking, it appears to have been the glulam that failed. Glulam is a relatively novel building material, it was only used sparsely until the 1990s or so. Could Colossos' problems be due to faulty glulam application?

If this was the case wouldn't Merlin have some grounds for a lawsuit against Intamin? Unless of course the Glulam was only guaranteed for a certain amount of time and that time has now passed with Colossos being 17 years old.

Will be interesting to see how the other Plug N Play coasters age. Could be a reason we haven't seen one since T-Express.
 

Hixee

Flojector
Staff member
Administrator
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If this was the case wouldn't Merlin have some grounds for a lawsuit against Intamin? Unless of course the Glulam was only guaranteed for a certain amount of time and that time has now passed with Colossos being 17 years old.
Yes and no. It would really depend on the specifics of the problem.

If Intamin's product didn't have the correct weather sealing (for example), and this has lead to it's premature failure - Intamin may have some of the blame. However, if part of the maintenance procedure wasn't followed properly, and this has accelerated the damage - Merlin will carry the responsibility. I have a feeling I know which of those two is likely to have happened too, if I was a betting man. ;)
 

Pokemaniac

Mountain monkey
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If this was the case wouldn't Merlin have some grounds for a lawsuit against Intamin? Unless of course the Glulam was only guaranteed for a certain amount of time and that time has now passed with Colossos being 17 years old.

Could be faulty maintenance as well, or even the contractor's fault. Either way, I'd be very surprised if they gave the materials a warranty for more than a few years, being novel and all that (of course, they would have estimated its service life beyond that, but it would not have been legally binding). Not sure what the wider EU regulations say, but over here, most buildings don't have any warranty for more than five years. Can't imagine wooden coasters having much more than that, particularly not on the track which is worn down all the time. If the problems had manifested in, say, 2005, there might have been more of a legal ruckus, but 15 years of successful operation before problems arose suggests things were designed within the requirements of the law. If the fault did not manifest until after a decade and a half of operations, it's hard to call it a design error. Anything serious would have been discovered during routine maintenance long before then.
 

djreplay26

Roller Poster
Glu-lam was just used as the track build up I think and not the structure, I’d assume that’s failed hence why the have to re-track the lot. I don’t think the structure has ever been the problem, the reason they call these models “plug an play” is all the structural components are (were) cut by a cnc machine in a factory and not on site so it saves months of site work.
 

Ethan

Strata Poster
I wonder what reprofiling it would get.

A steeper first drop would be quite awesome.
I honestly thing the drop is steep enough tbh. It doesn't look that steep offride, but it's deceptive. The times I rode it, it honestly felt like I was being thrown off a cliff when in the back row.
 

Ireeb

Mega Poster
I almost posted it as well, because the forums did for some reason bring me to page 5 instead of the latest one :D

It would be really interesting to read the engineering report on this. Guess I'd have to learn German first, though...
Or ask someone who speaks German (me for example). So if you find the report, let me know :D
 

TheCoasterCruiser

Giga Poster
Was actually just thinking, gonna be interesting to see if they invest in a big new ride before 2020 then. What do you guys reckon? It has been some time since Flug in 2014 after all...
 

balrog

Mega Poster
Was actually just thinking, gonna be interesting to see if they invest in a big new ride before 2020 then. What do you guys reckon? It has been some time since Flug in 2014 after all...
Apparently the video hints at some changes and new surprises for Colossos's retrack. I bet they will market the :emoji_poop: out of that as their big exciting new thing.

Unrelated note : It is interesting to notice that the park did not rule out the possibility of an RMC wooden retrack (topper), only the hybrid (I-box) is off the table for what we know. Altough I wouldn't bet on it, I wouldn't be overly surprised if Colossos ends up being RMCed.
 

CrashCoaster

CF Legend
If it will still have the airtime, I have nothing against them RMC'ing it, even better if it's a topper track. Although I think Intamin will just make new track for it.
 

Ireeb

Mega Poster
The way she said it made it very clear that it will be a normal wooden coaster. I wouldn't call a steel topper track a real wooden coaster. The decision was based on surveys, it would be weird if they asked the people what they want, they say "wooden" and Heidepark puts steel on the tracks.
 

JoshC.

Strata Poster
Was actually just thinking, gonna be interesting to see if they invest in a big new ride before 2020 then. What do you guys reckon? It has been some time since Flug in 2014 after all...

In Merlin's terms, Ghostbusters was a big new ride, so Heide wouldn't be introducing anything big till 2021 in theory. Be interesting to see what happens with that idea..
 

Ireeb

Mega Poster
In Merlin's terms, Ghostbusters was a big new ride, so Heide wouldn't be introducing anything big till 2021 in theory. Be interesting to see what happens with that idea..
Sounds logical from their view to me. 2017 Ghost Busters, 2019 Colossos 2.0, 2021+ something new.
 

balrog

Mega Poster
The way she said it made it very clear that it will be a normal wooden coaster. I wouldn't call a steel topper track a real wooden coaster. The decision was based on surveys, it would be weird if they asked the people what they want, they say "wooden" and Heidepark puts steel on the tracks.
There's always steel on the track. They may go to Intamin, GCI, Gerstlauer or else, the contact surface will be steel anyway.
 

Ireeb

Mega Poster
There's always steel on the track. They may go to Intamin, GCI, Gerstlauer or else, the contact surface will be steel anyway.
I know how both tracks work. For real wooden tracks, the wood gives the track the structure, with steel plates riveted onto the wood. The topper tracks are steel tracks, that are just supported by wood, but the steel still gives the structure. That's why I would call topper tracks hybrid as well.
 
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