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No, the new trains will also only have 3 cars [:(], see information and pictures here:
http://www.mrfunshine.co.uk/news/news_sep05_nash.html
To quote Peter Proctor, who recently took a visit to examine the new cars:
"Ah! - essentially they're the same as the old cars. The upholstery is presently a bit thicker and deeper, though I should think it'll bed down a bit in operation. The side openings feel a little tighter due to the upholstery, though I think the openings might be physically an inch or so tighter woodwork-wise, as from previous measuring of old and new three-row PTC cars, the new ones appear to be four inches shorter (I measured new ones when at PTC last year, and measured old Nash ones during a Cyclone trackwalk at Pleasureland).
The seat dividers are an L-shaped hard rubber thing as opposed to an upholstered wooden plate. The rubber must be moulded around some steel bar. PTC must be revising their designs.
I didn't try a belt but I pulled the lapbar down, which is standard-issue PTC. The ratcheting seems to start about halfway down, and goes right down. I hope during staff training when the cars are introduced and tested in January, that the issue of stapling is addressed - pulling the bar down a few clicks to the same height as the old bars is fine!
Keith reckons the belts will be an operational nightmare, but as PTC supplied them and strongly recommend their use, they have no option but to used them - if a bar came open mid-ride and the rider's belt wasn't fastened (or actually rather the belt had been removed by the park) and they stood up and became injured, BPB would be in trouble for not using the restraint systems "as designed" by the manufacturer. Knoebels get away with the removal of belts on Twister's PTC cars, but there's different regulations in different states over in America (either that or Dick Knoebel has the balls to risk it!).
The thing I'm most looking forward to really is having four trains running again. That queue must be eaten!
Also, as I was told by Keith and engineering staff, I'm happy to report that the new braking systems won't get rid of the manual levers. The magnetic brakes will be actuated ones before the final drop (replacing the winch-set caliper ones there, which have always existed by the way) which will regulate the speed as need be for entry into the station-approach brakes, which will be "dead" permanent magnets. The station holding brakes will stay manual.
The excuse why the cars can't yet be put into service seems to be the different brakes, but infact the new fins will operate with the present brakes - if they'll operate with the station brakes, they'll operate with the slowing brakes! The actual reason is that the electrical system operating the old bars needs to be replaced by a mechanical pushing bar mounted within the track, which will push up the plungers which control the lapbar mechanisms (the plungers are the things protuding down from the front beam of the cars, connected to the bar mechanisms via the yellow foot-peddle mechanism, which itself is for emergency evacuation only). Actually (the following being personal speculation), I bet the track-mounted control bar will be manually operated (they could even retain the slowing levers for the purpose) as there'll be no air compressor needed for the new brakes, which I would think would normally be used to operate the bar. I should've asked about that!"
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See more pictures here:
http://musical.pete.fotopic.net/c699003.html
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