Colossos (Heide Park)

Colossos at Heide Park Soltau Resort at (Lower Saxony) is 120 km / h, the fastest wooden roller coaster in the world. The railway, which was designed by Stengel and built by Intamin, was opened after construction costs of € 21 million on 13 April 2001. It is 1344 meters long and has two trains.

Ride sequence and Technology

For, designed by Werner Stengel web specially a new rail profile was developed. It was designed by the Swiss roller coaster manufacturer Intamin and the German timber construction company Cordes. After the lift hill, is a 120 degree turn and then hurtling down the track with a maximum of 120 km / h with an inclination of 61 ° the first drop down, followed by two airtime hills. Then comes the turning point and an elongated hill, is felt on the " floating airtime ". The rest of the ride consists of a downwardly extending spiral, three bunny hops and a 180 ° turn. At the end of the journey, the train is braked by eddy current brakes and brought by friction wheels back into the station.

At most, at accelerations up to 4.5 g for the entire trip. In addition, in places, act up to 1.5 g, the passengers will therefore be " pulled" with the one and a half times the acceleration due to gravity from their seats to the sky.

The traveling time of the 1344 m long roller coaster is 2 minutes 23 seconds per run. There two trains on the track, each of which holds 30 people, resulting in a maximum theoretical capacity of almost 1500 people per hour. Passengers are doubly secured by having to wear a seatbelt, and then the safety bar first. The rows of seats of a car are arranged in the so-called " Stadium Seating", so the riders sit like in a stadium from row to row 10 cm higher to get a better view.

When planning because of the new trains and rails was not exactly predictable how this would affect the speed of the web and it became clear only later that the roller coaster was faster than planned. Therefore, each an eddy current brake has been since it opened in first drop, and in the first two runs in the Hills, installed the brake down the train a bit to keep the g - forces on and between the Hills bearable. This eddy current brakes are designed switchable today and may be required automatically switched on and off from the control of the web. The need for a flexible deceleration is due to the fact that roller coasters depending on the weather conditions can have significant differences in the maximum speed.

In 2012, the upper part of the Statue of Liberty to the park was mounted at Colossos. The roller coaster is now part of the "Land of the Forgotten ".

Records

According to the Guinness Book of Records the track was the steepest wooden roller coaster in the world until the spring of 2003, but was replaced by Balder Liseberg in Sweden in 2003. Although more trains Colossos obsolete in the coming years in this classification, the Heide-Park adorns the entrance of the station to the cottage today with the Guinness World Records certificate, which identifies Colossos as the steepest wooden roller coaster in the world.

To the title of the tallest wooden roller coaster in the world " fought " it for a long time with Son of Beast (Kings Iceland, USA ), which was higher but was until 2006 not always recognized by its looping steel as "pure" wooden roller coaster. After an incident in 2006, then the looping of Son of Beast was dismantled in order to equip the train with lighter trains can. This lacked the controversial steel portion of the web, which Colossos lost every title in a global comparison and only the fastest wooden roller coaster in the world was. However, in terms of speed lies, as already mentioned, is theoretically more expected of a roller coaster as the visitor. The current record holder in height, the 56 -meter-high "T Express" ( Everland / South Korea) and the 55.2 -meter-high "El Toro" ( Six Flags Great Adventure / USA).

More

In the Internet and other sources some of the height of the web is usually given as 60 meters and also advertised in accordance with the park. In other and older publications, however, is also the more realistic height of 52 meters to find.

The layout of the Colossos was taken from Six Flags Great Adventure as a model for the resulting there roller coaster El Toro. Also the tried to Colossos technique was used to build the roller coaster Balder and T Express.

Pictures

Braking distance and station house Colossos

Overview of Colossos

Size comparison

New train on the lift

Old train on the Bunnyhop