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Accident at Alton Towers

Crazycoaster said:
What are the queues like on the Smiler these days? I haven't been to AT since before the accident (not because of the accident, more because I cba with Merlin anymore). But if the coaster still gets big queues, all this media coverage probably works to their advantage, the coaster is infamous now.
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It constantly pulls the largest queues in the park, Galactica sometime gets bigger queues but that's down to terrible capacity.
Put it this way, it reopened yesterday to a 90minute queue.
 
Queen Vicky is on ITV's This Morning giving her opinion on normal breakdown that occurred yesterday. Saying how the ride needs to be shut down.


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The hysteria around it is incredible, social media helps feed the news outlets feelings on it. Funny how this was one has so much attention but Tornado at M&D has dropped off the radar.
 
Aye, and the Tornado one is far more worrying from a safety aspect.

I know it's the absolute pits even by Tabloid standards (and I'm surprised there's not a Diana or a weather or an immigrant slant on it) but the Express have been running it as a "SECOND DISASTER ON ALTON TOWERS CRASH COASTER" complete with an image of the ride mid-inversion.

Did notice on FB though that most of the top comments on the BBC story link were people saying what a non-story it was, and most of the top comments on the Daily Mail story link were people demanding the death trap ride be closed immediately because they don't understand why anyone would go on that death trap
 
Actually an interesting article on the One Show right now showing how Magnetic Brakes work.
They used the Alton thing as a link... so so am I :p
 
Two points raised that attracted my attention (from Daily Mirror updates):

The court head earlier how the ride was operating in 46mph winds - despite guidance saying it should not operate in speeds of 34mph.
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Will this have an impact on all coaster operations from now on?

The judge also said one of the “aggravating features” of the crash was the difficulty in getting emergency services to the scene.

Victims with horrific injuries were left on the ride while emergency services attempted to get to them.
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Does this mean that we'll never see a "mess" of track at a UK park ever again? Every part of a coaster should be accessible for maintenance, inspection and obviously for rare rescue operations, but will this limit design?

On a side note, my respect for Joe and Leah has increased over the last few months. They both try to lead normal lives, not making a huge deal of it, not flaunting their injuries for any personal gain and at the same time quietly raising money for charity. Good on them!
 
Ian said:
Two points raised that attracted my attention (from Daily Mirror updates):

The court head earlier how the ride was operating in 46mph winds - despite guidance saying it should not operate in speeds of 34mph.
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Will this have an impact on all coaster operations from now on?

It will, if they've been shown to go over the recommendations then slap wrists all round. Will see a lot of rides closing quickly and lots of frustrated visitors at all Merlin parks.

I'm also reading the engineers are not to blame because they had no system of checking if the train had stopped. Could they not visually go and check via the lift hill or brake run platforms etc?
 
Ian said:
Two points raised that attracted my attention (from Daily Mirror updates):

The court head earlier how the ride was operating in 46mph winds - despite guidance saying it should not operate in speeds of 34mph.
Click to expand...
Will this have an impact on all coaster operations from now on?
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I interpreted that as Gerst covering their backs. I mean, essentially this whole accident happened because the coaster design wasn't good enough - it was pointed out on here that valleys were going to happen before it opened. So I reckon Gerst have added that afterwards to cover up poor performance "oh, sorry, didn't we say...?"

There also seems to be disconnect between Gerst and Merlin. While the latter have obviously cut corners shouldn't the manufacturer be part of the process of putting systems in place for crashes, evacuation, basic operations? I don't know how it works across the coaster industry but I'd have thought a runthrough of procedures would be standard.
 
Robbie said:
I mean, essentially this whole accident happened because the coaster design wasn't good enough - it was pointed out on here that valleys were going to happen before it opened. So I reckon Gerst have added that afterwards to cover up poor performance "oh, sorry, didn't we say...?"
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At least according to Wikipedia, John Wardley designed that coaster. So can we really blame Gerstlauer for it? I don't think the fault lies in the trains or something like that.

Also the argument "They couldn't see that the train was stuck there" - they could see that it didn't come back to the station, and it's rather unlikely that it arrived at another station. What I'd like to know is whether the ride actually warned about the winds which were to strong and the operators ignored it or whether there was no clear warning, that would be a fault of Gerstlauer (not completely because even if there is no alarm the wind speed should be checked before starting the operation. But then again they must have known about the winds, or why else should they send out a test carriage?
 
The 34 mph bit was in the manual from the start, the Merlin guidelines say "a constant 34 mph" while the Gerst manual makes no mention of "constant", just winds faster the 34 mph.

Four of the engineers had never read the ride's operating manual and two of those hadn't seen the risk assessment for the ride.

The court has heard that the employees weren't at fault, they were following the procedures they had been told about. Those procedures just weren't good enough, and that's Merlin's fault.
 
Robbie said:
Ian said:
Two points raised that attracted my attention (from Daily Mirror updates):

The court head earlier how the ride was operating in 46mph winds - despite guidance saying it should not operate in speeds of 34mph.
Click to expand...
Will this have an impact on all coaster operations from now on?
Click to expand...
I interpreted that as Gerst covering their backs. I mean, essentially this whole accident happened because the coaster design wasn't good enough - it was pointed out on here that valleys were going to happen before it opened. So I reckon Gerst have added that afterwards to cover up poor performance "oh, sorry, didn't we say...?"
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From my experience of working as an operator at a Merlin Park, every single ride that I trained on had a section on when the ride could and couldn't run in the COSWP, including wind speeds. Even on rides that could run in any wind, it would specify that, so I find it highly unlikely that it would have been retroactively added by Gerstlauer.

There also seems to be disconnect between Gerst and Merlin. While the latter have obviously cut corners shouldn't the manufacturer be part of the process of putting systems in place for crashes, evacuation, basic operations? I don't know how it works across the coaster industry but I'd have thought a runthrough of procedures would be standard.
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The way it's being phrased sounds more like it was Alton Towers' not fully training their staff. I'm sure Gerstlauer provided all the support that they were contracted to, but Alton Towers evidently did not sufficiently train their staff. I mean, the engineers have said that they thought the ride worked like other rides on park, but make it clear that four engineers working on park that day hadn't even seen the COSWP for The Smiler. This is quite common practice weirdly, I'd regularly have engineers from other rides come over to Samurai when it was broken down and just knock a few things around until it came back on with no real guidance.

Ireeb said:
Also the argument "They couldn't see that the train was stuck there" - they could see that it didn't come back to the station, and it's rather unlikely that it arrived at another station. What I'd like to know is whether the ride actually warned about the winds which were to strong and the operators ignored it or whether there was no clear warning, that would be a fault of Gerstlauer (not completely because even if there is no alarm the wind speed should be checked before starting the operation. But then again they must have known about the winds, or why else should they send out a test carriage?
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Merlin have already stated that the train was visibly valley'd through CCTV for around 2 minutes before the block was overriden. I find it very hard to believe that a coaster like The Smiler would not have extensive CCTV covering the whole ride. On top of that, I also find it hard to believe that a modern coaster like The Smiler wouldn't have numerous other ways to detect where the car is. The engineers and ride operator should have immediately been able to tell where the car was, and I really don't understand why them saying that they thought the ride 'malfunctioned' and so overrode it holds any water.

I want to say the blame should go to Merlin for not fully training everyone, but I personally think the fault lies with the individuals who took action without being fully trained rather than waiting for orders from above or someone who was fully trained.
 
trav said:
I want to say the blame should go to Merlin for not fully training everyone, but I personally think the fault lies with the individuals who took action without being fully trained rather than waiting for orders from above or someone who was fully trained.
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The thing that's become clear today is that there was no-one "above" to give orders - apart from park management saying they'd lose bonuses if the ride wasn't restarted. There was no structure for fixing a problem, only getting it going again (and it's unsaid, but that's why they didn't check on the valleyed train - they were so used to problems that just getting it going again was the norm; they'd gone beyond attempting to fix it).

Regarding the wind, Merlin are saying it wasn't the wind which caused the other train to valley. So what was it? There's definitely some buck-passing going on here.
 
I dunno, but I'm annoyed at Vicky Balch for saying that the ride should be torn down and the park should close for two reasons.

One is that it wasn't the park's fault, it's the ride ops that weren't keeping track of the ride and the block system, therefore overriding it.

Secondly, she doesn't understand that the ride cost millions and they aren't going to get it removed any time soon.
 
Ian said:
Does this mean that we'll never see a "mess" of track at a UK park ever again? Every part of a coaster should be accessible for maintenance, inspection and obviously for rare rescue operations, but will this limit design?
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My instant thought is of a dystopian theme park world in which all coasters have the same distinct track design and a continuous emergency platform running through the duration of the circuit like a TOGO coaster monstrosity. Will this usher in a new era of post-Smiler regulations, like a theme park 9/11?
 
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