Fire fighters rescue riders from stalled Rescue roller coaster at SeaWorld San Antonio

Not enough information to know for sure what caused it, but appears the train just stalled on the apex. I wonder why they just didn't give a "push" to the train, versus evac via ladder?

Was wondering the same. In this case, you need to strap down the train, put harnesses on people and what not. That's a lot of time and risk, unless there's a bound wheel or something.

I also was wondering the same thing, but then found myself wondering how they would push it. I would assume that they would put some sort of block on the back of the track to prevent the train from rolling backwards, but how do you do the actual "push"? With some sort of machine? If you tie a cable to the train to pull, how do you release the cable once the train starts moving?

Again, this is based on the theory the train could move. We haven't seen any news to what actually happened here.

Someone on Reddit (who seemed to have the pics to back it up) claimed that they unloaded half of the train on the hill and then pushed the train backwards to unload the rest. I have no idea what could possibly have lead to that outcome.

https://www.reddit.com/r/rollercoasters/comments/jmf6ht/wave_breake...got_stuck/

Perhaps the infamous hamburger struck again! At Geauga Lake, the "Beaver Land Mine Ride" valleyed because someone lost their stuffed hamburger while riding, which fell into the wheel bogey and acted like a brake which valleyed the ride that day.

Picture of said Hamburger taken after work that evening...

Maybe it is not a guarantee that the ride could complete the course from the point at which it stalled? I know that is true of a mid-course brake run, but not necessarily from any point on a coaster.

I do like the irony of the headline. :)

I would hope the ride could complete the course from its highest point...

Launched.

Should that matter? Should it not at the very least be able to make it to the next (or previous) launch or brake run? Maybe there are examples out there that can’t, but if so I would argue that’s some poor design.

For as much as I love to reminisce about Geauga Lake, it's been a minute since I've thought of the name "Beaver Land Mine Ride"

I can't tell for sure, but I assume there are lot of launched coasters that can't finish the course even clearing the first element. Hulk's loops is almost the same height as the zero-g and there's a cobra roll between them. I'd also be surprised if Rita could finish if dropped from the first hill and I want to say the FoF's had problems stalling from the MCBR which is why they were removed? Maybe?

I find that odd if true. I don't know much about Rita (other than the fact that it's not very tall or particularly long), and I've had several rides on Flight of Fear at KD that came to a complete stop on the MCBR, and it always made it back to the station fine. Did they remove those MCBRs? Or did you mean Premier removed them on their subsequent clones? If the latter, I assume that's because they had 2 trains vs. FoF's 3.

As for Hulk, I don't know. To my untrained eye, the loops look quite a bit shorter than the zero-g roll. Has it ever valleyed?

Even if the ride can't make it back to the station or up to the mid-course/end of the ride, if you can give it a shove and get it unbalanced (assuming that's what happened) you can at least get the train to settle in a place where it's closer to the ground and therefore easier to unload.

Obligatory plug: remember when Top Thrill Dragster got stuck on the top of the tower while I was waiting to ride Maverick -- https://vimeo.com/78602774

If you can push it backwards, there's a bonus in that you can just launch it again.

As for pulling a train up a hill with a wire rope and letting it go, that was part of the design of the Schwarzkopf »Stahl-Acht-Bahnen« (WildCat). Right in the middle of the ride, across from the operator console, there is a block brake on an uphill section of track. Mounted beneath the top of the hill is an electric winch, which is stored with the rope stretched over the track and hooked beneath to the bottom of the hill. There is an anti-rollback on the hill along with the block brake, and the rope has a quick-release hook. In the case of an E-stop (or any stop where a car ends up on that brake) the block is cleared by hooking the rope to the back of the car and operating the winch. When the car crests the hill, the winch operator can pull a line to trigger the quick release so that the car can proceed unimpeded down into the helix.

I got to see this done once at Cedar Point, but I don't know if I caught it on video...

--Dave Althoff, Jr.

Vater said:

Should that matter? Should it not at the very least be able to make it to the next (or previous) launch or brake run? Maybe there are examples out there that can’t, but if so I would argue that’s some poor design.

Intamin.

The train getting stuck on the apex perfectly is the most likely explanation. It happened to a Schwarzkopf Shuttle Loop in 1998 and over the summer at Sunac Land Wuxi on a Mack Blue Fire clone. There is actual on ride footage of the incident and its crazy to see how the train just stops at the right point:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=04K6WxePlw0&feature=emb_title

P.S. I didn't ride that ride, but got to stand on the brake run at the end while the programmers were doing their thing and sending trains out. What a wild experience!

Given the frequency in which this happens you'd think more launch rides would have a mechanism to push trains that happen to get stuck at the high point after a launch. (Or even just an easier way to access them.) Do-Dodonpa has a drive wheel at the top of its loop, for example. https://rcdb.com/1423.htm#p=81003

I think Kingda Ka supposedly has a drive wheel at the top of its tower.

--Dave Althoff, Jr.

RideMan said:

If you can push it backwards, there's a bonus in that you can just launch it again.

Oh it's not as easy as Top Thrill Dragster to do that. You have to send the trains all the way around, then you have to test the trains again without people in them. Certain safety aspects here.

New guy explaining how rides work to Dave