It's finally happening:

http://www.timberlineresort.com/update03.asp

Also, a wiring problem with the cooling fans on the Silver Queen's engine caused the delays a few weeks ago. Timberline fixed that problem.

This extra uphill capacity should make for a nice MLK weekend.

[This message has been edited by johnfmh (edited 01-05-2004).]

True, it should lessen the crowds for the rest of the season... but lets hope that all the grips hold and the cable holds and nothing breaks. 400 pounds on each seat is a little extreme.

It's great news! 400 pounds of test material isn't extreme. three skiiers at 150 lbs. a piece weigh 450 lbs.

Yes that is true I would test with about 600 (three skiiers, gear, and snow + a safety fudge factor).

From an engineering stnadpoint testing with 800 would be better. Imagine 3 guys over 200 lbs in chair. thats 600+ right there add gear too...

I don't think the aim is to test the individual strength of each chair. That would obviously take more than 400 lbs to do. I think its more to simulate a typically loaded lift under operation. Chances are pretty good that you will never see on entire side of the lift loaded with 3 200 lb people in every chair. I don't know for sure how the testing works but I would guess that they will load half of the chairs (or whatever the requirement is) and do rollback tests to test braking and look at the overall performance of the entire system, not just the chairs. The chairs should have come from the factory designed to carry 3 large people and gear and have a safety factor added in.

that sounds reasonable, plus consider that the weight doesn;t come off for the trip down.

As far as anticipated load goes, just wait until the Skiing Santas come to town...

This is, you realize, absolutely nuts from an engineering standpoint. You never, ever want to "load it up and see what happens." That is both stupid and reckless.

The overall load is not a simple thing: you have several vectored forces on all of the components. An empty lift is in close to balance as far as going around the entire run - there's the same weight in cable and chairs going up as coming down. But when you load it up, all this changes in a complex way. The chairs themselves are likely of little consequence. I would be FAR more concerned about the design of the bull wheels, guide wheels, lift tower arms, traction wheel, drive motor and counter balance (the thing that takes up the slack when the lift suddenly stops.) If ANY of these cannot handle the significant load increase, the results could be very, very bad indeed.

I sure hope that someone has done the math on all these components. (And I sincerely hope they were using torque wrenches when they were hanging those chairs....) The costs to the whole ski scene in the mid atlantic could be very large.

Actually, I think the point of loading the lift up with weight was to check the operation of the lift.

They wanted to troubleshoot any new problems this season and double-check safety.

In fact, I trust Timberline got the job done properly because they simply don't have the bucks to throw away on a litigation.

Timberline did a standard weight test on this lift... there really isnt much discussing that needs to surround this. This was a pretty standard load test....