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.
Will this have an impact on all coaster operations from now on?
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...?"
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.
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?
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.