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The Smiler Incident 02/06/2015


Ian-S

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A colleague and I were pondering over the Smiler issue and wondered:  Suppose test car sent out, stalls in Block 2.  Passenger car sent on it's way, but computer stops it on the lift hill (correctly, because it recognises there is a car stuck within the next block).  Car stays stuck on lift hill for 10 minutes (as was reported somewhere), engineer does some form of block reset, so the computer system clears its memory and believes the track is clear of obstructions, which in turn releases the passenger car?

 

I believe that is exactly what has happened. 

 

Gerts will have a log of exactly what has happened in the control room so will know if that's the case anyway.

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My question is, how does such a system work on rides such as Dragon's Fury and Spinball?  With these, it seems that several cars are sent in a 'production line', and there aren't defined 'blocks'.  So is there a risk that a car on one of these rides could stop/stall, and if so how could the system prevent the next one along from hitting it?

 

Cheers

 

Electricbill has it kind of spot on. The block areas start from the first drive in the break run. The start of the ride from a cycle point of view is the drive before the alignment gate. So you have drive 1 where the car initially hits the break run. Drive 2 and 3 are the alignment gate itself. Drive four is the transfer track. during wet weather, the reason the ride goes down to two people per car is because the cars can slip through drive four and collide with the car sitting on drive 5, the first one in the station. Drive 6,7,8 are the middle of the station and drive 9 is the dispatch.

 

The dispatch cycle doesn't speed up the rides lift chain and drives, what it does is determine how often cars are dispatched to allow a consistent operation. What you don't want on say a five car operation is all five cars going round together and then nothing in the station. With all cars going round together as it were, you're more likely to encounter a block shutdown. For those interested, the car has 9 dispatch cycles and the general rule of thumb is on a seven car operation the ride would be put onto the eight car cycle. On the 9 car setting you can dispatch a car the moment the previous car has reached the top of the lift hill. The eight car cycle allows you to dispatch a car when the previous car is at the bottom of the first drop. There isn't a sensor at the immelman (or at least there wasn't in 2009)

 

Rattlesnake is a little more primeval, a dispatch can be allowed when a green light on the console lights up. That ride is far more up to operator discretion as to when a car can be dispatched. 

 

#geek.

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^ That got posted on the previous page, and it turns out it's a load of rubbish.

 

How do we know? Just out of interest, not wanting to argue :)

I believe it to be true because of the chap I've been speaking to, who was involved with the construction of the thing you see.

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Just an update: the park will remain closed tomorrow.

I was so shocked when I heard about this. When I first saw it on my FB news feed - not gonna lie, I wondered if it was a prank, or something minor blown out of proportion by the media! Until I clicked on the links and read the articles obviously. I felt awful for the rest of the day, and that video was just... :( I couldn't help but think things like, "The people there watching/queueing would have known what was about to happen. You wouldn't know whether to watch or look away."

Thoughts are with everyone involved, with particular concern for the staff involved, who will undoubtedly be traumatised and devastated. If it does turn out that it was their error (either partly or fully), then that's even more tragic and I hope they have lots of support around them, because there will be some people whose consideration for their feelings will be drowned by anger and hate. (Sorry for being so depressing!)

Also agreed that Merlin and Nick Varney have handled it well. He must be absolutely gutted and he looked so upset in that Sky News report :(

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How do we know? Just out of interest, not wanting to argue :)

I believe it to be true because of the chap I've been speaking to, who was involved with the construction of the thing you see.

It got shot down on the last page, no idea what to believe now!

 

Just to let you know, they're taking all the Smiler merchandise down in the shops.

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How do we know? Just out of interest, not wanting to argue :)

I believe it to be true because of the chap I've been speaking to, who was involved with the construction of the thing you see.

Just to butt in here but there was an link posed to the Telegraph article immediately above Ryan's post which is no longer there, so unless Ryan posts otherwise, my impression was he wasn't talking about Mark's theory over what happened, but he could have been referencing a post that is no longer the.

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I can't believe the complete tripe that some of these newspapers are publishing.

 

Ride stopped on the inversion and then carried on?  Surely even someone who knows nothing about rides would know that such a thing wasn't possible?

Then there's the horrible thing of making it sound as bad as possible.  It's a terrible thing to happen, and needs reporting, but get your bloody facts right!

 

I expected better of BBC news it has to be said, some of the others are well known for publishing rubbish.

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Blimey. I was just saying - I personally don't think it will re-open until next year. I can't see it being removed entirely though, especially if it's human error and not mechanical error - but then, we haven't really had a severe accident of this nature (that I can remember) before at a Merlin park to go by as a comparison?

 

There's some sick irony in the fact that it was the Smiler's birthday mere days ago and the other week AT were advertising for a rollercoaster tester too  :mellow:

 

It's all just so awful.

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From a commercial 'brand' standpoint it is good practice to withdraw/remove any merchandise on a temporary basis after an accident, I wouldn't read too much into it at the moment.

They have probably done this to try and minimise bad press, could you imagine the headlines when the place re-opens, if the first thing you saw entering all the shop was a smiler logo? The press would tear them apart with claims of insensitiveness and poor taste saying they were still attempting to profiteer from the ride after what happened etc.

As I said a few pages back, I think they'll reopen either at the weekend, or do a soft opening next week, and when they do, the entire ride will have a temporary solid fence around it like the WC16 site at Thorpe does presently to stop ground level gorpers.

Does anybody know if they've removed the cars yet from the ride?

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Article from one of the victims of the crash:

 

 

A WALSALL woman who was victim of the rollercoaster crash at Alton Towers has told how she and 15 others were left crying in pain as blood "dripped from their carriage."

 

Vanisha Singh described the horrific aftermath as rescuers battled to reach them, 25ft up on 14-loop ride The Smiler.

The mum-of-two was in the second row with her mother Chanda, 49, and sister Meera, 26.

She said: "The metal safety bar smashed into our legs.

"There was loads of screaming. I felt a burning sensation in my pelvis, and back and neck pain.

"It was terrifying. There was blood all over the floor because it was pouring out of their legs in the carriage and dropping down.

"The doctors and firemen were covered in blood as they scaled the scaffolding to treat the guys on the front row."

Vanisha recalled how passengers had joked they were "guinea pigs" moments before the crash on Tuesday afternoon at the Staffordshire theme park.

She said: "We were taken off the ride at first then put back on. They said there were technical difficulties and started sending a load of test cars round.

"They'd sent a load down and forgot to take one off, obviously.

"But even once we got back on the chain to take us to the top wasn't working properly.

"We finally went up and were kept at the top for ten or 15 minutes chatting, joking that we were the guinea pigs.

"Then we plummeted down and smashed into the test car after doing a couple of loops.

"We were rocking back and forth quite a lot on the track."

She spoke as it emerged that two teenagers on a first date, Joe Pugh and Leah Washington, were among the worst hurt when their carriage slammed into an empty one.

Joe, aged 18 is understood to have two broken legs and Leah, aged 17, suffered severe leg injuries.

The 800-acre site remained closed today and will close tomorrow as Health and Safety Executive officials continue their investigation.

Park boss Nick Varney, the CEO of Merlin Entertainments, said he was committed to identifying the cause of the accident and was concerned for the injured.

He said: "I'm at the beginning of having meetings and inquisitions to find out how something that should never have happened, happened."

http://www.walsalladvertiser.co.uk/Walsall-victim-Alton-Towers-rollercoaster-crash/story-26636665-detail/story.html

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They've taken all The Smiler merch and anything to do with the big six challenge, changes are being made quickly it seems

 

I saw on social media the other day they said you can still complete the big six challenge, as they would create a QR code for you to scan to complete it. Strange they seemed to of scraped the big six challenge now.

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