Rollercoaster ride for Castors

With the summer holidays over, this is the time of year many theme parks and amusement parks up and down the country, are cleaning and maintaining their rides, cafes and equipment.

With the summer holidays over, this is the time of year many theme parks and amusement parks up and down the country, are cleaning and maintaining their rides, cafes and equipment. With the summer season at an end, maintenance crews have an opportunity to replace and repair equipment. Theme parks use a large variety of castors and wheels, and specific castors and wheels are required for the roller coasters. Advances in technology means roller coaster rides are becoming more and more adventurous, providing greater and unexpected thrills, which requires large strains to be placed on any castors and wheels that are used.

Roller coasters use a large amount of castors and wheels. For example roller coaster trains have a combination of wheels and castors that either run on their sides, as guide wheels. As well as these friction guide castors, they have wheels running both on top of the roller coaster track and underneath to lock the roller coaster train to the track. In addition the separate compartments of the roller coaster train are often linked together with wheels or castors both in-between compartments and also at the front and rear.

Roller coaster castors and wheels have to endure tremendous forces of gravity, momentum, heat and friction. The most appropriate wheel to deal with these forces tends to have a steel core with a polyurethane tyre. These castors provide core strength of steel, with a smooth running surface of polyurethane, which provides a quiet but extremely strong and smooth running surface. The polyurethane tyre is bonded onto the steel core, which produces an extremely strong wheel that can last for many years. Some roller coasters utilise nylon wheels as guide wheels on the tracks, as they do not produce as much friction against the steel tracks.

Walking around theme parks, castors and wheels are utilised in a number of ways. Anything that moves will have wheels or castors attached to it. From smaller, less thrilling rides, such as merry go rounds, even to mobile ice cream trolleys and catering outlets. Castors used in catering outlets tend to be stainless steel housings, to prevent corrosion from water and cleaning chemicals. Stainless steel castors are popular choices in theme parks, as the British climate often throws inclement weather at most pieces of equipment during our summer months. You never can quite trust the British weather! Stainless steel castors do not rust and therefore perform their function for many years.

Behind the scenes in Theme parks, the maintenance teams monitor the performance of their roller coaster castors and also are on hand to replace castors and wheels as required. Even in the goods in area, where all the Theme park deliveries are made, castors and wheels are used on a variety of trolleys and pallet rollers, to manoeuvre the goods to the correct area within the park. As deliveries arrive in the theme park, tail lifts and fork lift trucks unload the goods, and once in the goods in area items are sorted and despatched around the park. So not only docastors and wheels keep the thrilling rides moving, they also ensure the restaurants and gift shops are well stocked.