Orion chain lift

[Miss Force]

I was wondering how Orion's and newer B&M giga coasters' chain lifts operate. I look at Diamondback and can see it has a square platform at the top of the hill with a chain trough that returns to the station. Orion's just goes up and disappears somewhere. Does it travel back and go down inside the blue track? seems like a tight fit. 

[DoomPlague]

It you look closely at the bottom of this, you can see that there's a second chain-track for the cable to return through: https://rcdb.com/11437.htm#p=122182

I think it just turns around tightly at the top of the hill.

[Shaggy]

Trough is there, its just in-between the running rails and the spine.

I added some arrows to a pic of mine to show how the return trough runs down to the motor.

The ascent and descent chain troughs are close to each other once the lift starts its climb.

There's a cog at the apex of the lift that lies inside the spine, it flips the chain 180 for its return down to the motor.

[Buckeye Brad]

Great info, thanks. 
I’ve wondered about the B&M giga lift hills too.

Back in the ‘90s, I recall reading that there were engineering challenges with long chains. This was seemingly backed up by reading about chain failures on Magnum, the innovation of the cable lift on Millennium Force, and the separate chains on Steel Dragon.

Then in 2012 B&M unveiled Leviathan with what appeared to be a regular giga length chain, that’s almost as fast as the cable lift to boot. I still have not figured out how they solved the problem using a long chain. Maybe the hidden trough has something to do with it? It is certainly more elegant than the traditional chain return gutter far below the hill. 

[Miss Force]

thanks for the info, I now realize since it looks more attractive on a coaster, why didn't they do this on older coasters? Now that i know a chain can bend so tight inside the spine, but older rides have that giant gear wheel/obvious platform at the top so that it's spread out more.