Skilifts.org / SORT Forum

Hello :)

I just thought of a question : Why do some older high speed lifts have a 'fixed grip terminal' behind the station as opposed to a vault, and does it cause the lift to run differently?



Poma also did this:

I know at least some of the Poma HSQ's you're talking about they actually were fixed grip lifts before they were upgraded, like the Falcon Superchair at Breck and possibly High Lonesome at Winter Park but correct me if I'm wrong.

The fixed grip terminal addition you are talking about was a way for manufacturers to provide a combined drive tension terminal, notice that most of the lifts with this arrangement are bottom drive.

Some were top-drives when constructed/converted. The Falcon SuperChair and Pioneer Express come to mind when I state that.

Oh and with the Orient Express, the drive is housed inside the terminal proper, not in a vault under the lift or in a separate fixed grip terminal.

I'd attribute the moving of the vault drive into the terminal as the evolution of lifts. Example - Colorado Superchair had a vault drive. The electric motor and big diesel would have not fit in the old terminal of Colorado, both were oversized for the application. The new Colorado six-pack has all the equipment in the terminal and has a higher PPH. Also terminal equipment has been streamlined. Contour haulage chain and bullwheel-driven driveshafts and splitter boxes have been replaced with rope PTOs and tire contours freeing up space.

IMO the two main manufactures were in competition with each other and had to build lifts at a competitive price.

Detachables were evolving because of Doppelmayr, so Poma wanted to enter the game quickly without having to develop new drives and such. :P Lazy world.

True, but the original forerunner quad at Stowe was a Dopp and had the separate drive terminal from the detach terminal. I'd give it to evolution of the detach system and being able to house the more compact components in one terminal.

woofydoggie, on 18 January 2015 - 02:26 PM, said:

Not a lot of room for drive equipment up here.

That looks simialr yet so different from Colroado's orignial terminal.

We had to put a new access ladder in when we moved the bottom terminal (major mod and all that). Is that the difference?

I think it might be the "in house" design / built guards.
Dino

Three things
- The painted black iron used as guards/hand rail is visually a big difference.
- Distance memory but I recall two splitters driving the terminal. There is only one splitter in your picture.
- The bullwheel brake cylinders were by the ladder. The ladder entrance seems similar to old Colorado.

There are still two splitters driving my terminal; the second is behind me in one view and outside the downhill wall in the other. Hard to see. The guards are definitely a custom job. There are four brake frames. Two are under the walkways :)

Yes, I recall the four brake frames.

2milehi, on 18 January 2015 - 07:18 AM, said:

You were right about the oversized vault drives, even after the Falcon / Alpha Falcon were discontinued the drive terminals were pretty big

With Poma, I think the current sized detachable terminals came into existence when the Challenger terminals that lifts like most of Snowmass's TB-41 quads (save for Big Burn and Coney Glade), the TB-41s at Crested Butte, and more, were introduced in the early 90s. Those only use two support columns, as compared to the Competition terminal which had at minimum three support columns (compare the Competition terminals on the Beaver Run SuperChair with the Challenger terminals next-door on the Mercury SuperChair, for example).