Best (and worst) looking "standard" trains?

[Jarrett]

By "standard," I mean trains that haven't been themed by the manufacturer. No fancy sculpting, just typical generic trains that have been painted and stickered, maybe with a logo screwed to the front but nothing beyond that. The park bought a painted standard train from the manufacturer, busted out the decals, and went to town.

This is a standard train.

This is not.

So post what you think are the best (and worst) standard trains!!

Best:
*Voyage
*Legend
*Afterburn
*Leviathan
*Millennium Force
*Gemini
*Carolina Cobra
*The Beast
*El Loco
*Alpengeist
*X-Flight
*Shambhala

Worst:
*Time Warp
*SFMM Colossus
*X2
*SheiKra
*Invertigo

 

[TilenB]

Are we supposed to rate them in terms of looks or in terms of ride quality?

 

[ThomVD]

^ It says "looking" in the title, so that :wink: . I'm still thinking about it so I'll post them whenever I'm done thinking, which might be a while later. Tough one.

 

[BBH]

Re: Best (and worst) looking "standard" trains?

Off the top of my head:

-Outlaw Run
-Wildfire
-Thunderhead
-Goliath GAm
-Twisted Collosus
-X-Flight
-American Eagle
-Helix

Worst:
-SFMM Old Colossus
-Twister at Gröna
-Dauling Dragon

 

[Hyde]

Can PTC be both the best and worst at the same time?

 

[BBH]

Re: Best (and worst) looking "standard" trains?

PTCs look fantastic when decorated well, but on Dauling Dragon they're bland, solid pastel colors and look vile. So I'd say so.

 

[Jarrett]

Yeah, PTCs are pretty basic trains. To me, I feel like this makes it easy to make them really nice, but if you don't do anything cool with them they're ugly. It's the perfect blank canvas in the world of trains in my opinion.

Take two of Holiday World's woodies. Legend...

And Voyage...

I feel like both of these coasters had owners that cared about the train design, so even though they purchased basic, inexpensive trains for them they did something to make sure they looked stunning, which they do. Voyage has the gold accents that match the red and yellow streamer pattern on the blue train. Legend has the unusual purple color with the flame pattern on the side. It's not hard to make these trains look at least decent.

Now look at, say Dauling Dragon.

It's literally a conga line of shoeboxes painted blue or red carrying people. Looks so basic and unimaginative it isn't even funny.

So in short, yes, it's possible. If you really care and have someone with artistic ability in charge of train colors and graphics, like Holiday World, you can have pretty PTCs. However, if you don't care, PTCs look bland and uninspiring. So I think they have just as much chance as any other train to be the best, but greater chance than others to be the worst.

 

[TilenB]

Old NAD trains with headlights on are my by far favorite ones

Practically I like all the trains with those quirky lights on. Does anybody know which rides still have these?

And these. Just pure winners:

 

[bmac]

not even going to comment

 

[Tomatron]

The new Premier launch coaster trains looks awful and ride awful.

 

[Smithy]

Not necessarily the train but the restraint on them;

Looks like a bloody horse collar.

 

[Hyde]

I would venture that the B&M Inverted roller coaster train is indeed the best looking standard train.

Point being, the design for majority of B&M Invert trains is the exact same, just with a change-up in colors.

This is a clean roller coaster train design that has seen little cosmetic alteration since its debut 22 years ago. The most major alterations have actually been structural - eliminating the cross beam support underneath the seats, and Banshee's use of wing rider restraints.

 

[Jarrett]

^^Gotta admit, I disagree. I didn't list Full Throttle's here since I thought they had been altered on it but I love how its trains look and I found them very comfortable. Good trains on a great ride. <3

^I did mention a few in my initial post. I was thinking more along the lines of "which coaster with standard trains has good-looking standard trains" than "which standard train type looks the best?" But that's definitely a valid point. I'd definitely say B&M invert trains are prone to looking nice but I typically don't like them unless some stickering occurs. PTCs are definitely up there as well. Of the ones you posted, Patriot and Banshee are ones I'd say I forgot in my initial post.

 

[ThomVD]

I like the look of Python's trains:

Leviathan's are also awesome:

Black Mamba's as well.

There are so many actually, I can't name them all

Worst is probably Twister.

 

[ECG]

I really like the trains on Canyon Blaster at the Adventuredome. Although the look pretty standard, they don't look like the ones on other Arrow Dynamics custom loopers. Are they Vekoma or does anyone have any other info about them?

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0s2KXL6Z8Zk[/youtube]

 

[Tomatron]

^If I remember correctly, Arrow came up with an altered train design for Loopers in the early 90's. The same sort of trains also made their way on to Drachen Fire, but I can't think of any other of the looping coasters which had them.

 

[andrus]

This is a though one! Several of the trains mentioned in the thread are definitely custom; like Helix and Shambhala for example. Don't know for best looking "standard" train? I mean all B&M invert trains look fab, but to pick one that's better looking than the rest is hard, would probably be Katun then:

Another personal favourite would be Wildfire; the only version of the newer, improved B&M sitdown train. With it's rusty look, raised seating and a slightly altered fron it looks fab:

But then again, I don't know how "standard" that design is. If another B&M sitdown will be built, it probably wouldn't feature the bolts and grille on the front of the train...

 

[BBH]

This is a though one! Several of the trains mentioned in the thread are definitely custom; like Helix and Shambhala for example.

Looking at it, Helix is less standard than I previously thought, so I've revised my list accordingly. However, Shambhala's look pretty bog standard:

 

[TommyAlex]

At BPB, Big One trains and the trains of the coatsers in Nickelodeon Land.

 

[andrus]

This is a though one! Several of the trains mentioned in the thread are definitely custom; like Helix and Shambhala for example.

Looking at it, Helix is less standard than I previously thought, so I've revised my list accordingly. However, Shambhala's look pretty bog standard

I looked further into this and realized that Behemoth uses the same lead car. I actually didn't know this, so my fault! I guess the v-shaped trains uses a different style of lead car than the normal 4-across B&M hyper trains (just that all of them except Behemoth and Shambhala have been customized).