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“When is the Flying Turns going to open?”   The answer is the same today as it has been since the beginning of the project, “When it’s done.” - Knoebels website!

They're a little more hopeful with July 4th 2009 being an ambitious date, but hopefully by late summer 2009!

Flying Turns, being the first of its kind built in over half a century, is taking its time getting ready. It's to be expected of such an ambitious project by the inhouse Knoebels team. CF were on site last week to grab a quick update to what has been happening, what's changed and where they're up to now.

By lucky coincidence, Knoebels' President, Dick Knoebel, was on hand to talk us through the changes.

The first change sits on the initial curving drop from the lift hill, after the station. This is a very tight double helix down to the second lift hill. The cars have been struggling here, with the back ends "digging in" to the track. The helix has had to be brought out a little and modified to help the cars come round.

The area outside of the helix is where the car storage was set to be. This storage are and switch has now been removed, as can be seen by the blank footers in the image below:

(Click image for larger version) 

This shows the station in the back of the photo, with the short first lift hill, and drop into the newly modified helix. The footers are where the old storage track sat.

The second changes made have been to the exit to the first helix drop onto the second lift hill. The slope up off the helix was too steep, and the cars were trying to leave the track. Great fun for enthusiasts, nightmare for maintenance. This next shot shows workmen currently modifying the "bump" to get the cars to stay grounded coming off the helix:

(Click image for larger version) 

Work is now continuing by the side of the brake run, where the new train storage track is being constructed. Trains will be switched off from the brake run now. In this next photo, you can see where the footers have been laid down in a straight line by the side of the ride - ready for the new storage track:

(Click image for larger version)

The final piece of track work that has just been finished is at the end of the brake run. Initially, the cars would come off the brake run and into a banked corner before hitting the third and final lift hill back to the station. Unfortunately, the banking meant that the cars weren't straight enough to latch onto the chain. So the banked corner is gone and has been replaced with a flat, tracked curve section. In the following photo, you can see the newly laid track leading to the final lift hill:

(Click image for larger version)

The one final thing that Knoebels is having to do is get new cars. The new cars will have improved buffers on the guide wheels to make the ride smoother through the tracked sections. All in all, quite a lot of work still left to go, but the teams seem to be knuckling down.

We wish Knoebels the best of luck getting this fantastic project open to the public, and would like to thank Mr Knoebel again for the time he took talking us through the changes.

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