Dahlonega Mine Train

The Dahlonega Mine Train is a steel roller coaster located at Six Flags Over Georgia in Austell, Georgia, 12mi west of downtown Atlanta, Georgia. The ride has three lift hills with brief elements between each that wind through a wooded, hilly landscape. This is a family coaster that is named after Dahlonega, Georgia, a village in northern Georgia that was a center of the gold rush of 1828, the first gold rush in the United States of America.Operational informationWhen opened in 1967, the Dahlonega Mine Train had the capability to run four trains at once, the reason for its high capacity. In the mid-1990s, however, the O. D. Hopkins Company rebuilt and refurbished the ride, replacing some wooden supports with steel, supplying new track, and a fully computerized control system. This new system is not capable of running four trains at once (three is the current maximum number of trains during normal operation). Thus, the stated capacity of 2200 riders per hour is inaccurate. With three trains, the capacity is 1300 riders per hour, with two trains it is 800 riders per hour, and with one train it is 500 riders per hour.As with most modern roller coasters, a block system keeps trainsets moving and prevents trains from colliding with each other. Rarely, trains will "roll back" into the tunnel from the end of the station platform. The control program is set up to handle this problem so that another train cannot collide with the stalled train. When this happens, guests are unloaded in the tunnel (which has lights and a stairway for such an event) and a winch pulls the empty train back into the station.Trains feature a single lapbar in each row actuated by depressing a foot pedal near the front of each car, done by a station attendant. Unlike many roller coasters, though, there are no upstop wheels to prevent the trains from leaving the track; instead there is only a flange (upstop pad) which achieves the same result. This is common on "mine train" type roller coasters.