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Track "seperates" on The Smiler

The way you guys are talking I'm surprised we have any coasters that survive a year in the midwest. :drinking:
 
Yep, loving all these posts about "extreme heat" being the cause....Guess all the coasters in Australia go popping bots what would be considered a pleasantly warm summer day.
 
Yeah, it's going to take a much more significant change in temperature to cause a bolt to shear this quickly. I'm not really sure what section of track this bolt was from, but if there is a decent amount of sway in this track section, there COULD be some abnormal heat generation. Even that is a stretch though.

I second Rollermonkey's question - was the bolt sheared or just not sufficiently torqued?
 
Either I'm missing something, or y'all are...

We know Smiler didn't fit together right. So it's likely under more stress than most coasters at the joins. Either it was deemed not a hazard, just a comfort issue... Or, I wonder if they were going to work it over winter?*

The incident happened after a pretty sudden drop in temperature.

No one's saying it happened because it was hot as balls by UK standards or that it was the change in temp ALONE which did it - people are suggesting that in combination with the fact that it was under more stress than in a normal situation.

Also, bolts come off coasters fairly often - it's not a huge deal. What is a huge deal is the amount of stress that track must be under if one bolt being removed produces such a gap. Presumably trains passed through it fine, so maybe it's not as wide as it appears. My concern was less the width though and more whether it's angled upwards/downwards, creating a step?

*I suspected Smiler to honestly be out of action until 2014 when the joins issue first came up. I guess they must have deemed it to be a non issue in normal circumstance and... I guess it was? I just can't help think that the amount of stress to the track MUST be a problem in some aspect, structurally?
 
Smithy said:
The worrying thing there is that there's another bolt that should have kept it in place but that too looks like it's slackened and allowed the gap to pull itself apart.

Very worrying, actually.
Click to expand...

If this is true, then it's an installation issue, as the bolts weren't torqued enough.
 
Gazza said:
Yep, loving all these posts about "extreme heat" being the cause....Guess all the coasters in Australia go popping bots what would be considered a pleasantly warm summer day.
Click to expand...

After 2 or 3 weeks of pretty hot weather (approaching 30 degrees), this weekend was rather cool.
My friends and I were happy because we were expecting a busy weekend at the park. It was the first day of the school summer holidays so we fully expected to be queuing in the heat and getting sunburn/sunstroke.

I think that the hot weather made a lot of people decide to stay away and the park was quiet. We only queued for 11 minutes for Nemesis, about 20 minutes for Air and 70 minutes for The Smiler.
However on Sunday it was even cooler, about 20 degrees. I had to go and buy a hoodie because I hadn't taken any warm clothes!

I'm trying to work out how to explain to you the part of the track that it had fallen off. We were coming towards the front of the queue before it enters into the building with all the trippy effects. The bolt dropped off about 10 feet away from us, I think it may have been the section that passes closely over the queue when you're under the cage, but there is part of it that doesn't have a cage under it. (I was surprised at that).
 
TheSmilerProgressPenultimateDay23rdApril2013_zpse1fe209b.jpg


I found this plan, and I think the bolt dropped from around the part labelled #3
 
Just my two cents about this. There are lots and lots of factors that could have influenced something like this happening.

-We saw the track having alignment issues during construction. If they've just winched the two pieces of track together and then put a bolt in to hold it together it's quite obvious that that bolt is going to be under more stress the normal.
-It has been hot here in the last few weeks. If the bolt was installed during the cooler winter, and now we've got the higher temperatures, it's not unlikely that the additional stress from the warmer weather could become a factor too.
-Material weaknesses. Nothing is perfect, it wouldn't be the first time that a bolt has failed because the bolt has a defect. These things are checked, are regulated, but failures to happen.
-Construction problems. Like was pointed out above, this bolt might not have been tightened to a high enough torque, or (just as risky) over tightened.

I think it's not difficult to see that this bolt failing isn't that crazy, and isn't that big of a deal. It's not great, it'll set them back a bit while they try and figure out the main cause (looking at the bolt and joint in detail would make it pretty easy to understand) and then they'll have to come up with a solution. I could see it taking a few weeks to be honest. As for the "we get it much hotter in insert-place-name-here" comments, the temperature is only one potential factor and could have simply been something that exacerbated the problem.
 
Re: Track "seperates" on The Smiler

So trains still travelled over this part of track when it was in this state?

So lucky that the train didn't de-rail. Could have been fatal if that had happened. Gerstlaurer & Alton must be wiping their brows and counting themselves lucky that no one at all was hurt here.
 
I don't think that gap is big enough to cause a derail... Like I said before, it would have to be angled to have caused an issue, causing a bump, I think.
 
Re: Track "seperates" on The Smiler

I don't think anyone is saying the heat caused the problem directly btw.

It was just a thought I had that as the track never really lined up properly there that the track expansion in the heat could have just put extra load on that area and caused the track/bolt problem.

Merlin have got lucky yet again. They got away with Saw brake problems, rush parts falling off and now this. Lets be honest none of the problems are actually their fault.
 
From the pictures the most I could imagine is causing the wheels to delaminate or end up with chunks missing out of them, would be noticeable on train but given the secondary bolt that held that bit of track in place was also slack if that was to give way (which it likely would given the strain on that sector added with the train going through it) then the track would probably warp slightly too as well as pull apart. I'd like to think/hope it'd be noticed before then though. Do we actually know how soon this was spotted?
 
Well, the bolt landed in the queue and IIRC, the article seemed to indicate that three more trains completed the course... Were any trains unloaded at either lift? (I'd have e-stopped the ride if I was told a structural bolt had come out of the track.) I'm guessing they stopped it pretty quick.
 
I see the AT facebook page is full of people complaining the ride is closed. No mention of the closure on Twitter or Facebook, the TV ad running constantly, and a mass e-mail - going to be a lot of very angry visitors to Alton Towers this week.
 
Re: Track

marc said:
I don't think anyone is saying the heat caused the problem directly btw.
Click to expand...
It's just a weird thing to bring up IMO. If you had a 3 month old car that started overheating would you start talking about how it is 90 degrees today or would you say the car is a piece of crap?

The weather was not outside the normal design parameters of the ride so even if the heat played a roll, it only exacerbated an existing issue.
 
Re: Track

njn63 said:
marc said:
I don't think anyone is saying the heat caused the problem directly btw.
Click to expand...
It's just a weird thing to bring up IMO. If you had a 3 month old car that started overheating would you start talking about how it is 90 degrees today or would you say the car is a piece of crap?

The weather was not outside the normal design parameters of the ride so even if the heat played a roll, it only exacerbated an existing issue.
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How is it a weird thing to bring up when you yourself have said it could have made the problem worse?

If my car runs fine for three months, then as soon as the temperature drops the air-con breaks, I'd probably wonder if it was linked (as those who brought it up did), I wouldn't blame it solely on that but I'd draw the obvious link and at least analyse it.
 
Official word from Alton about this (thanks to Ride Rater: http://riderater.co.uk/2013/smiler-inci ... of-debris/ )

Liz West said:
“Yesterday morning, in line with our standard procedures, Alton Towers Resort closed The Smiler to investigate a small piece of debris that had allegedly fallen from the track,” she said.
Click to expand...

Love "allegedly". Yeah, there are photos all over the internet dear showing a bolt missing and track split - that's a little more than allegedly.
 
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