If you had planned to ride S:ROS at SFA...

Accodring to Dave's site, the retractable brakes on MF are similar but not exactly the same as the ones on S:RoS DL.

Yes, the brakes are designed to be in the "active" position at all times, unless the train is advancing, in which case pressure has to be applied to remove them.

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Be polite and ignore the idiots. - rollergator
"It's not a Toomer" - Arnold Schwartzenkoph
"Those who know don't talk and those who talk don't know." -Jeff

Thank God the other train was not in the station. That would be scary.

I agree,after the negative press over the whole Two face fiasco in July that's the last thing SFA would need.

How do they plan on getting the train off? I don't think they can get in under there to somehow release the chain dog,now if they can do that then they can re-start the lift to advance the other train & the anti rollback ratchets can hold the red train near the bottoom of the lift.

I agree,after the negative press over the whole Two face fiasco in July that's the last thing SFA would need.

How do they plan on getting the train off? I don't think they can get in under there to somehow release the chain dog,now if they can do that then they can re-start the lift to advance the other train & the anti rollback ratchets can hold the red train near the bottoom of the lift.

Superman was running one train at about 4:00 today

BATWINGFAN SFA, there is more than likely a true manual way to get the lift started (not sure). getting the lift running just long enough to let one train over would be the most simple way to solve two trains on the lift. Plus it must not be too hard of a thing to correct as I belive that Raptor had two trains on its lift several times a few months ago.

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www.RideWorld.com

Sorry for my double post there but halfway through the dang PC somehow activated the reply feature on it's own.

Mark Burleson,I agree with your theory on how to re-start the lift & it can easily be done,however unlike Raptor SFA's S:ROS has already broken 2 lift chains in it's opening year.

I'm not sure if the weight of both trains (empty of course) would be too much for the motor...let alone the chain itself to carry.

I was @ SFNE last night...and well I was in line for SuperMan when it suddenly stopped working...No announcments made...They closed it but never said anything and the blue train was stuck on the breaks with people for like 20 mins and then they ran the red train and unloaded the blue....then put the red on transfer tracks and ran blue a couple of times then patrons in the station yelled down to everyone there closing the ride for tonight...Everyone was pissed and there was almost a mass riot...I was very dissapointed even though an hour before I rode it in the front seat on red train @ night!!! I got in line @ 7:50 and we were told to leave @ around 8:45...

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#1 Canobie Lake Park Fan!!! My top 7 coasters:
1. S:RoS @ SFNE 2. Montu 3. Yankee Cannonball 4. Kumba 5. Gwazi 6. Cyclone (SFNE) 7. B:DK 8. ThunderBolt(SFNE) 9. Scorpion 10. Canobie Corkscrew/Python 11. FlashBack 12. Mind Eraser M/M

I know almost all coaster are computer controlled. What if someone put a computer virus into the computer systems of the Superman Ride of Steel computers?

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http://coastertrackrecord.tripod.com/

This really is a terrifying possibility, though. I was lucky enough to ride it in early October, on the first night of Fright Fest, and Peabody and I got only one ride before the proxies acted up, and shut the ride down for the rest of the night. Even though we were the only 2 on the train, we still moved into the station at a good clip. Give it a full train, and nasty consequences abound. I dearly hope Intamin can solve this problem once, and for all. That, and all the proxy-detecting-a-ghost-train problems.

Still, I think Jeff and I broke it. ;)
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Count me in as coasterer® #2.

running one train, Superman was back up and running today, from what I can
gather, they got real lucky! and the reports appear to be correct. apparenlty
something went wrong, and while an empty train was climbing the lift, the
inbound train failed to completely stop in the station, proceeded thru and
stopped on the lift.

There was apparently at least 15 or more feet separating the trains.

No injuries occurred.

SAM
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never met a coaster I didn't ride (except Junior Geminii) :(

nasai said:

Still, I think Jeff and I broke it. ;)

Absolutly you broke it. At least Dorney had the sense to shut down Steel Force when they saw you guys coming ;)

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The Phoenix, its Schmecktacular!

PLCs that control rides don't generally run operating systems prone to viruses. They don't even use the same kinds of CPU's. The only part of 'em that might even run an Intel CPU, much less Windows, would be a display frontend that talks to the PLC over the COM port.

Anyway.

This is a pretty serious failure. Good thing it happened at the end of the season... but still... I don't get how this happened.

S:ROS opened at 3:15 today. Wow, was it scary to see the two trains on the lift at the same time last night. Luckily, the crew had not been following protocol as to dispatching trains, which is to wait for the other train to return before dispatching the train in the station. My ride, Krypton Comet also developed a problem simulataneously, so they told me go down to S:ROS. They then told me to go back to KC, but I told them that my ride wasn't fixed yet. I called base to get maintenance, and was told (paraphrasing) "Don't you worry about Krytpon Comet (because of Superman), you just sit there and earn your hours." That didn't sit well with me, as I had a father with his kids in my face about only being able to ride three rides since 6pm. The look on his face when I told him my ride was closed was depressing to me to say the least. He vowed never to come back, and to tell others never to come to the park either. My ride did get fixed after about half an hour, and the man and his kids were able to ride thankfully. I don't know if I agreed with the decision to move everyone up to Joker's Jinx while the evacuation was underway, since Batwing was still working. There were thousands of people in the park last night, and they were quite upset. I believe they even stopped the haunted train ride (Midnight Express), which goes right in front of Ride of Steel, just so no one could take pictures. They tried shutting the lights off to the ride, but they quickly decided it was too dark down in that area. After about five minutes, they let everyone go back down to Batwing. I think between Friday night and Saturday night, a lot of public relations damage was done. It's a shame.
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Did anyone ever bother trying out the seats on the KMG Tango? And if so, were they male?

ApolloAndy said:
Accodring to Dave's site, the retractable brakes on MF are similar but not exactly the same as the ones on S:RoS DL.

Most of MF's braking is done by fixed position brakes, the retractable brakes are at the very end of the brake run and the train is going slowly by then. They are a different design also, so I doubt that MF is subject to the same type of failure.

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I'd rather be in my boat with a drink on the rocks,
than in the drink with a boat on the rocks.

Jeff Mast said:
Ok I don't post much but wanted to comment on the Orient Express issue. I don't know where this rumor started but the ride has always had computer controls. That was not caused by human error.
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Jeff Mast
www.themeparksonline.org

You know good and well that Express was parked by hand by the driver. OE had a safety system but that system did not park the trains, the driver did. The safety system was block based and that was it. By all means, please share your "knowledge" of how Express was parked by the computer with no interaction from the driver.

Then explain why three times two trains were placed on the lift and in all the instances, the driver was holding open the brakes. By the time the safety system caught it (remember one train is on the lift, the other in the station) there was not enough brake strength in the station (remember the train is travelling fast into the station, after being allowed to go through the transfer at or near full speed, which is not what the station brakes were to be used for according to driver training, although in previous years they had worked fine in this scenario) to stop it, thereby allowing it to join the other train already on the lift (the safety has stopped the lift by now, obviously). They never hit each other, but this same scenario occured THREE times, with two of them by the exact same driver, who was demoted after the second time.

Then you can explain why no mechanical adjustments were made after these incidents to prevent it from occuring in the future. But amazingly, driver training was modified and they got a frequent babysitter. Hmm, interesting.

Or maybe the two individuals that were driving when this occured were demoted for different reasons. Then again, maybe people who actually worked at the park and were present when the driver explained what occured would know this better than someone who "thinks" they should be running the park.
*** This post was edited by Matt 11/3/2003 8:38:40 AM ***

Out of curiosity on S:ROS, if the block brakes failed would the ride and the park was able to fix the problem when they have ran two trains yesterday instead of one? It appears to me the problems could have been with the blue train and the blue train only. Then again appearances can be deceiving.

Clearing two trains off the lift is easy...

Start the lift, as the upper train approaches the top, be ready to shut the lift down so that the second train doesn't go over until the first train clears the next (functioning) block.

The 2001 incident at Six Flags New England was because of a blown air supply line...but the follow-up to that incident was the replacement of the air lines and a re-design of the mechanicals of the braking system...additional pressure monitoring was added, valves were changed, and the braking system was split into more segments so that each pair of brake calipers now has its own control valve and supply hose instead of several calipers sharing a single valve. My assumption was that the same changes would have been made on the other Supermen. Anybody know for certain?

--Dave Althoff, Jr.

A virus in the controller is pretty far fetched. It's not like people are checking their e-mail on it. It's probably not even connected to the net.

Dave, can the motor handle pulling both trains as the same time? I think that was more of the question...

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Be polite and ignore the idiots. - rollergator
"It's not a Toomer" - Arnold Schwartzenkoph
"Those who know don't talk and those who talk don't know." -Jeff

Simple when you say that it does not have a computer then people think that it has none. It's does have one and yes the operator parks the train. There is enough brake "strength" in the station brakes when the ride was installed but something was changed since then. The train was brought in hot (fast from the trims) and slide through the station brakes. Now this should have not happened as the system was designed to stop the train in the station. We did this back in the early 80's when the ride was new and we were running 3 trains. You even said that it worked before so how does it all of a sudden this stops working with out it being a problem? They probably would not have been demoted if they know what causing the problem.

The manual gets changed all the time. They changed it after two trains collided in 87 so that one could not dispatch the train until the other train had cleared c-brake but the system still worked as designed.

Do you really think that a park would put a ride out there if there is a chance for an accident to happen? Sorry I guess the Op manager doesn't know what they are talking about and he was the one who first put two trains on the lift.

I did work there before and after this had happened and notice that the brakes where different and when asked maintenance told me what was changed. If you want to know why this happened then email me as I will not say it here.

Matt said:
You know good and well that Express was parked by hand by the driver. OE had a safety system but that system did not park the trains, the driver did. The safety system was block based and that was it. By all means, please share your "knowledge" of how Express was parked by the computer with no interaction from the driver.

Then explain why three times two trains were placed on the lift and in all the instances, the driver was holding open the brakes. By the time the safety system caught it (remember one train is on the lift, the other in the station) there was not enough brake strength in the station (remember the train is travelling fast into the station, after being allowed to go through the transfer at or near full speed, which is not what the station brakes were to be used for according to driver training, although in previous years they had worked fine in this scenario) to stop it, thereby allowing it to join the other train already on the lift (the safety has stopped the lift by now, obviously). They never hit each other, but this same scenario occured THREE times, with two of them by the exact same driver, who was demoted after the second time.

Then you can explain why no mechanical adjustments were made after these incidents to prevent it from occuring in the future. But amazingly, driver training was modified and they got a frequent babysitter. Hmm, interesting.

Or maybe the two individuals that were driving when this occured were demoted for different reasons. Then again, maybe people who actually worked at the park and were present when the driver explained what occured would know this better than someone who "thinks" they should be running the park.
*** This post was edited by Matt 11/3/2003 8:38:40 AM ***

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Jeff Mast
www.themeparksonline.org

*** This post was edited by Jeff Mast 11/3/2003 11:07:46 AM ***