Serious accident on Xcelerator caputerd on Video

coasterguy3014 wrote:

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all words are created equal, that they are endowed by their creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

I never thought of words as having liberties, being alive, or pursuing much of anything. If you take excessive liberties with language, arguing that there is life in the language, you run the risk of hindering, rather than facilitating, communication.

The first part of that statement, though, reminds me of George Carlin's observations about language in which he was trying to rationalize the existence of such a thing as a "bad" word. It was either the standard intro to the Seven Words You Can't Say on Television, or to his monologue about euphemisms, I forget which. Maybe both.

* * *

Is it "unalienable" or "inalienable"?

* * *
This also reminds me of the sign I saw on the loading platform for the Big Bad Wolf, which says at the bottom, "• Please follow all posted and verbal safety instructions."
as if the wall of text is not itself "verbal".

--Dave Althoff, Jr.

I am curious to see if on-ride video systems are still around next year on Xcellerator.

I came upon by accident a couple photos of Stealth at Thorpe Park that make it much easier to understand the construction of the launch channel, especially the terminus of the sled's path:

http://www.rcdb.com/3081.htm?p=15430
http://www.rcdb.com/3081.htm?p=15435

Great shots; they reveal (especially the second one) more exposure of the haul rope than I thought there was, but you can see that the rope does run in an enclosure. The end of that enclosure just ahead of the launch sled stopping point also suggests a place for debris to come flying out.

--Dave Althoff, Jr.

RideMan said:

This also reminds me of the sign I saw on the loading platform for the Big Bad Wolf, which says at the bottom, "• Please follow all posted and verbal safety instructions."
as if the wall of text is not itself "verbal".

Well in its truest definition:

Verbal - adjective

expressed in spoken words; oral rather than written.

So no.. Wall text isnt really verbal.

I see where you are going, but this remark covers all bases if they say posted (written) and verbal (from ride ops).

Screamscape has a few aftermath photo's.

Might help shed some light on what exactly happened.

The way the car is split on the "top" part, I would suspect then that cuts to the leg probably happened from the top - not the cable coming up through the bottom.

I just looked at the pictures. Wow. Less visual damage to the car than I was expecting. I'm sure we'll be hearing from Dave sometime today for his analysis. So, I'm just guessing. But, it looks like they couldn't roll the train back into the station. After seeing the fins, I'm not surprised. If that's what the fins look like, I can't imagine what kind of damage was sustained on the bottom of the train.

Aftermath photos taken durring evacuation. 

It's entirely possible and more like Probable that the

rides carraige was bent upon hitting them fins going backward 

as they were bent up.

http://coasterfusion.com/e107_plugins/forum/forum_viewtopic.php?4559.20#post_4783

That seat sure looks moved to me. The damage suggests to me that someone was lucky not to lose a leg.

Holy crap! That's pretty crazy. I feel really bad for the kid and his dad. I wish someone would release an update on the story.

...And I'm pretty reluctant to ride a cable launched coaster now. That could have been very serious.

Yow! Holy stinkin snot! That cable let go in a BIG way.

That cable, Under tension is like a razor blade. Final Destination 2 comes to mind where the barbed wire fence flys at and .... the guy. IMHO I see MF as no different and that cable has snapped twice and there are tons of ft that are unguided from the spool to the station.

You know the day after this happened I was on Kingda Ka and the video played through my head over and over again as we went down the launch track.

Now that I received those photos, I think I might wear Knight Armor the next time I am on an Intamin Launcher!

Over on RRC these pics are being discussed. Bassistist replied with this funny comment (that I wish I'd thought of):

"I'm scared that Intamin will figure out a way to kill people OUTSIDE the park some day...like you'll wake up, and a lifthill cable will have chopped off the foot of your bed."

Coasterfusion said:
You know the day after this happened I was on Kingda Ka and the video played through my head over and over again as we went down the launch track.

Now that I received those photos, I think I might wear Knight Armor the next time I am on an Intamin Launcher!

My question is, WHY WERE ANY INTAMIN CABLE LAUNCHED COASTERS IN OPERATION AFTERWARD? Yeah, Im yelling!

Now that I have seen the photos...

Okay, we have a "one-of-two" kind of situation here. The launch sled, assuming Xcelerator works similar to Dragster, is not very long, and connects under the middle of the train. That means that the haul ropes extend a little less than half the distance under the train from the launch sled to the front of the train.

I am going to guess that the haul rope broke some distance from the front of the train. Consider that when the rope breaks, the driven end is going to still be pulled, and will probably not do a whole lot to the train. Although that end is unsecured and could wiggle all over the place, it should remain somewhat stable until the motor slows or stops. If they are truly lucky, the break would be far enough forward of the launch sled for the loose end to pull clear through the sheaves and end up inside the bunker.

The other end of the rope, though, has a bit of a problem. It's attached to the front of the launch sled, and the recoil when it fails is probably enough to send it up and out of the track. The problem is that it is attached to the front of the launch sled, but not to anything else. So the launch sled is, at this point, effectively pushing a rope, which is not a very effective thing to be doing. That loose end is going to make a big mess, which I think is what we see in the track photo. After all, it's not just being pushed, it is being pushed by a very large mass which, you will recall, is itself still being pulled by the other rope. There is no telling where that end will go, but I am inclined to think that it was this "dead" end that probably came up and busted through the "hood" of the car...but I am also suspicious that it didn't do the damage that it did in the way you might expect. Remember, that rope is attached to the launch sled which is not only moving, it is moving at exactly the same speed as the train. So initially it would be like a rope under tension breaking while stopped. That part of the incident might not be too terribly traumatic, and perhaps the best possible outcome is for the rope to recoil and land on the 'hood' of the car, meaning it is not being pushed down the launch track. Note also that at this point the brake fins should be down.

At the end of the launch, though, things start to get messy. The train and launch sled are now moving at nearly 70 MPH, when the launch sled hits its brakes and slows, then stops, with the dead end of the broken rope still attached. I think it was at this point that the train, now disengaged from the launch sled, literally pushes through the rope, causing it to pull through the "hood" of the train. That would explain the neat slice through the hood rather than a jagged smash from below. Note also that the bumper and front axle, what we can see of them, appear to be in relatively good shape. The extent of damage to the nose of the car seems to be not because the cable action was so violent, but because the car nose is so fragile.

The train goes on up the hill, then comes back down again, and the real mess starts. The train probably dragged the haul rope out into a fairly straight line across the track ties when it was on its way up the hill. But when the train came back, it obviously caught on the rope and pushed the rope backward with it. By this time, the brake fins had come up to stop the train, and the train and rope caught on the copper plate fins and damaged them. Notice in the track photo that the normal direction of travel would be uphill, right to left in the photo. Notice that the brake fins are all damaged from the left-hand side? That makes sense: the fins weren't even in the way until the train started down the hill, then it "grabbed" the loose rope (possibly caught by brake magnets?) and pushed it through the brake fins. The copper-cobalt brake fins are apparently less durable than the steel rope that pushed through them. Of course, the rope is still attached to the launch sled, which is still attached to two other ropes AND sitting on a magnetic brake. All that was apparently enough to keep the returning train from taking the launch sled for a ride, so the dead end of the rope ended up shredded and wrapped around the brake fins on the launch track. I'm thinking the undercarriage of the train didn't get too badly damaged, because in the evacuation photos it looks like the leading edge of the brake fins under the train are in good shape, so the train didn't beat up on the fins once it let go of the rope.

That's all speculation based on the video and on the three photos I have seen. Comments?

--Dave Althoff, Jr.

Your "after" analysis (roll-back to stop) sounds spot-on, but based on the pictures, I am of the mindset that the cable moved through the front of the car on launch of its own force, not because it was lying on the car already and was forced through as the train started its movement away and up.

I think the break in the front of the train seems a little too clean to me to be a "slow" (relatively speaking of course) forced break. Dave, would you say that its possible that if a decently long length of the cable (and the tangled mess in the first picture certainly looks like it would be longer than about half the train) ahead of the sled was suddenly free of that pulling tension, that there could be enough recoil to push part of the rope closer to the front of the car up and back enough to slice through the front rather quickly? I realize that the fiberglass body is rather fragile, but it would seem to me that it wouldn't be as clean of a break if the cable had simply been lying on the "hood" of the car and was forced through in that manner.

Question, how does the launch sled connect to the train? I remember on both TTD and XLR8R that the 'roll back' occurs right before launch, so the "sled dog" must engage at that point. Is the dog activated from the train, or sled?

I am asking because I am wondering why the train didn't recatch the sled on the way back, or any other rollback.

There is essentially a rod that drops down through a slot in the bottom of the train. It is lowered electrically; there are contacts at the launch point that make contact with "shoes" on either side of the slot. The rod swings down, and is either spring loaded or counterweighted to pop up when disengaged. Ever notice that the train rolls backwards before launch? On Dragster you can actually hear what goes on if you stand right next to the fence. The train rolls up to the starting line, then you hear a "clunk" as the engagement rod is dropped into the slot in the launch sled. Then the drive wheels are lowered, so that gravity can pull the train backwards until the rod jams tight against the back of the slot in the sled. That keeps the rod from disengaging. Then the train is launched. So long as the sled is going faster than the train, the rod stays engaged with the sled. As soon as the sled starts to slow down, the train over-runs the sled and the rod swings up and out of the way. If you're riding in the middle row, you can hear and feel the rod hit the bottom of the train (another clunk). Thanks to the counterweight or spring, the rod stays retracted so that in the event of a rollback, it *won't* re-engage the launch sled and either bring the train to a sudden stop or take the launch sled for a ride, either of which would be a Bad Thing.

maXairMike: Anything is certainly possible...my thought, though is that if the recoil sent the rope through the "hood" from below, it would act more like a hammer, whereas if tension were being applied to the rope and essentially dragging back on it, it would behave more like a saw. I was thinking that the rope being pulled over the advancing hood would explain why the damage is a groove which appears to be perfectly straight and aligned with the right-hand side of the launch sled track. I would expect that a recoil off the back of the rope would be in a less well-defined location and would look more like someone had smashed the 'glas from the bottom with a sledge hammer. That damage looks to me more like someone used a very large hacksaw on the train.

--Dave Althoff, Jr. <- not the authority on the subject...

Charles Nungester said:

Coasterfusion said:
You know the day after this happened I was on Kingda Ka and the video played through my head over and over again as we went down the launch track.

Now that I received those photos, I think I might wear Knight Armor the next time I am on an Intamin Launcher!

My question is, WHY WERE ANY INTAMIN CABLE LAUNCHED COASTERS IN OPERATION AFTERWARD? Yeah, Im yelling!

I have no idea. But it seems weird that that wasn't one of the procedures they took after the cable had snapped. If I remember correctly, after the Kentucky Kingdom cable snap weren't alot of the parks closing down their drop towers....?