ATA have some pics from 10 7 09 :)
[url=http://forums.towersalmanac.com/index.php?showtopic=17266&st=0" target="_blank]http://forums.towersalmanac.com/index.p ... 17266&st=0[/url]

"Altonator" wrote:

ATA have some pics from 10 7 09 :)
[url=http://forums.towersalmanac.com/index.php?showtopic=17266&st=0" target="_blank]http://forums.towersalmanac.com/index.p ... 17266&st=0[/url]

Things are definitely starting to gather steam!

No real Alton Towers rollercoaster would be complete without some kind of pit.

Excellent! A pit. There is no other theme park in the world that I would get excited about a pit during coaster construction! So this must be for the drop/reverse launch section of the ride.

Having had a nose today whilst in th Rita queueline, I can safely saythe pit is, to say the least, rather quite deep.

Ok so no Oblivion tunnel deep, but I was expecting to see 3 foot deep trenches, not a massive big pit. :D

What you have to think about is whatever is going to be built with the building there will have to be some kind of serious foundations going in. What ever happens within the building will need the forces to travel over a large amount of reinforced foundation to take the load.

I was looking over the plans the other day, there will be some interesting excavations being made very soon to depict how deep within the ground the helix starts. The plans show that the helix doesn't emerge to existing ground level till over half way round. This will give us an idea of what will be happening within the building. It will give us a scale of what the height difference will be between the entry point to the building to the exit point into the helix.

Photo Update coming shortly... watch this space.

Well think about it, this hole has to accomdate tilting/dropping track. So whatever the headroom required to allow the train to travel underground.

Imagine nearly as deep as the air tunnel, or the ones on Nemesis.

I cant see that happening! Did they not say in the planning that there would not be an exessive amount of excavation for this ride. If the case this would be very restrictive to what will happen within the building.

For Oblivion and Air, did they not have to dig up the entire length where the track would be, lay the track, then full the excavation again? Or is there a way to lay track in an already excavated underground tunnel.

I think this landscaping will be telling as to whether it is a possible drop section or a tilt. I'd imagine a tilt would need a much longer excavation.

I get the feeling that this is going to become a completely square ditch, dugging up the part where the digger is sitting in those pictures. If so, it's looking far more 'drop' that tilt.

I cant see that happening! Did they not say in the planning that there would not be an exessive amount of excavation for this ride. If the case this would be very restrictive to what will happen within the building.

I'm not sure but i think that refered to the back end of the site and the woods as thats where there was some concern over the archeology on the site

If it was a tilt, it'd still need a square hole, to house the mechanism.

It'd need a larger hole though would it not? More 'rectangular' as opposed to square, as it's gonna take a much longer piece of overground track to get it to the -1 level.

Quick photo update from the mini meet yesterday. Not too different from Fridays update on ATA, there's one big hole, the trench and also several smaller pits dotted around but they were hard to get near to take photos of.


From Rita's queue line.


From Rita's station.


From the sky ride - OMG Dan get outta my way! :P


Smaller holes in the distance.


From the smoking area near Sky Ride station. If you look carefully there's some kind of green vehicle/digger/ excavator through the trees.

Brilliant Images!

Coming along very nice...

Reminds me of those very brown landscapes we saw when Air was being built! I hope we see something on the same scale...

There were also smaller square holes filled with concrete alongside Rita's maintainance shed. Looked like footers?

I would stick my neck out and say it almost looks like they are preparing to dig a tunnel. But quite why they dont dig a trench then fill it in like on Air's tunnel construction I am unsure.

Javz I can assure you that they are not digging a tunnel in that manor, they are using the cut and cover method. I have heard that there are excavation bits being used on site which suggests this is going to become a fairly deep hole.

"Kaz" wrote:

Javz I can assure you that they are not digging a tunnel in that manor, they are using the cut and cover method. I have heard that there are excavation bits being used on site which suggests this is going to become a fairly deep hole.

Tilt and drop then vertical backwards launch? That would be new!

"PeteB" wrote:

Tilt and drop then vertical backwards launch? That would be new!

I was thinking the same thing recently! World's First and flippin' awesome.

That trench looks like it could take some kind of mechanism for some kind of drop. It could just me dreaming. Just think what the size of the footers would have to be to take the load for a lift, let alone a lift mechanism for a length of track.