State ends investigation of Top Thrill Dragster accident at Cedar Point

Is that like Michael Scott declaring bankruptcy?

RideMan said:

The thing shouldn't be able to stop on the top of the tower, either.

--Dave Althoff, Jr.

That looks like fun. :)

It happened during a (very cold, very windy) Halloweekends one year too. I was very, very glad not to be on the top of that tower.

Raven-Phile said:

Is that like Michael Scott declaring bankruptcy?

Forgetting the "should it come out" argument...imagine if it did. And, to go a step further, imagine if they removed Dragster and Corkscrew. That would open up an interesting (and large) footprint for a future coaster.

Remove Corkscrew or Iron Dragon. Make it a multi-launch family friendly racing themed coaster. Reuse the station and bleachers for the nostalgia.

BrettV said:

If I didn't know it was the Register I would swear it was a middle school newspaper

https://sanduskyregister.com/news/371893/dragster-needs-repairs/

I'm just happy it doesn't say "Dragster needs repaired."

Or "needs replaced", when did this become so commonplace?

That construction is common in Pittsburgh.

http://theglassblock.com/2016/07/07/pittsburghese-expertise-dropping-to-be/

One of my first real jobs out of college was being an education reporter for a small town in Ohio that's roughly the size of Sandusky. I didn't particularly have any journalism experience or training, other than a degree in English and editing the sports section of my high school's paper. And my pay was commensurate to my experience, $80 a week for what was officially a half-time gig, if I remember correctly. (This was admittedly a long time ago, but not so long that that was a decent pay rate.) My colleagues had different credentials but not necessarily better. We had a court reporter who had a hard time remembering what the word "inadvertently" meant, which seems like it might be a useful thing for a court reporter to know.

Anyway, based on that experience I was inclined to cut the Register some slack; they're doing the best they can. But then the second half of the article devolved into scraping Pointbuzz, and that's just sheer laziness. If you're a reporter in a town where the biggest industry is an amusement park, you've gotta have a decent set of contacts to talk to about something like that (industry pros, the tourism board, Walt, Jeff ...)

Also, our paper loved headlines like "High School HVAC Needs Fixed" which used to drive a college classmate nuts, but does save you a couple picas if you're trying to squeeze it into three columns. Unforgivable in the copy, though.

I stopped responding to interview requests from that paper a long time ago. Ditto the Blade.

My favorite is the one reporter they always send to media events. That one is an “avoid at all costs”, if I’ve ever seen one.

I'm exposed to the "needs fixed" type speech all the time here in Ohio and it's my biggest pet peeve. I don't know why it bothers me so much while "ain't" and "I'm doing good" aren't nearly as annoying to me.

Then again, I felt the same way about "warsh" when I used to live in "Missourah."

Posted this over at P-Buzz earlier. I had some spare time this morning and stitched together a timeline of the report based on the interviews. Nothing is exaggerated; this is what the people said.

8/2: 3rd shift was told to investigate a "ticking noise” in the brake run. Found that bolts on the “L brackets” were loose. 3rd shift ran out of time to finish tightening them all and assumed that the day shift did it. Reported that the brake-brackets are out of alignment.

8/13: 3rd shift had to tighten 16 brake-run bolts (hopefully the 8/2 bolts were eventually tightened?). Bracket again out of alignment. Removed bracket and re-aligned and installed with new stuff.

The key here is that this is where the damage on the track is. One could conclude that the bolts are routinely becoming loose, making the brackets loose, and also throwing them out of alignment.

8/14: Damage is noticed on the Black Cherry train (it was “hit” by something) and some metal was found in the guide wheel. No one could figure out how this happened.

8/15: In the morning, it is observed that several stop blocks (I don’t know what that means) have bolts that are sheared off on the launch side. No cause is ever found, and they are just replaced.

8/15: Later that day, maintenance is called because of “noises” coming from brakes. The mechanic finds some “bad bolts” (whatever that means) and replaces the blocks and bolts.

This guy, who is the last person to do something to this part of the track before the **** hits the fan, is in his very first season.

8/15: “The (left) flag plate on Green Train somehow caught the bracket”. This is the accident.

8/16: During the investigation, it’s found that the blue train (that did the test runs on 8/15 and was then parked) has “wear marks” on the left flag plate. The same piece is literally loose on the purple train. It’s also noticed that there are multiple bolts, brake fins, and brackets loose on both sides of the track in the brake run.

Everyone involved states that nothing was out of place/loose/worn the night before and/or that morning.

That’s it.

A few years ago I came across an article called “How Not to Be Stupid” that was a total epiphany for me. In simple terms, stupidity is defined for this purpose as making a decision in spite of information that is readily available or obvious. The article identifies seven factors, which you can read about here:

https://fs.blog/how-not-to-be-stupid/

Based on what OhioStater wrote, “fixation on an outcome” feels like a big one. You have a ride that’s very popular, and has a history of downtime, in the middle of the season. The goal is to keep it running; nobody wants to be the guy who says “there’s something wrong, we need to figure out what it is.” So everybody keeps not asking why bolts are breaking and parts are loose.
That might not be accurate (hence “feels”). Another factor might be whether anybody was looking at the pattern, or whether there were several individuals fixing what appeared to be one-off issues. But it sure does seem like the information was there waiting to be noticed. Very sad that it wasn’t, and I say that without intending to blame anyone.

I think there is also another piece at play here. Obviously, I know there is some turnover in the maintenance staff each year, but given the previous year's long shutdown and short season, and the very tight labor market last summer, I also have to wonder if while thoroughly trained, the staff doing the maintenance on Dragster may not have been as experienced as previous crews. Every job has some level of learning from experience, and given the unique nature of CP rides (OK, aside from when there were two sets of antique cars and maybe Blue Streak and Mean Streak both being wooden coasters with PTC cars), no two rides are in any way shape or form the same. That is harder on maintenance than if, say, for example, there were four identical copies of TTD in the park...

All in all, it is a sad situation, and I am sure there are quite a few staff wishing that things might have been handled just slightly differently and this entire event avoided. But, then again, this is not uncommon in accident investigations.

We all know that there are a lot of forces in the brake run of a ride, especially at the initial contact of the brake run (this applies to both friction and frictionless brakes). I have often wondered about the criticality of the clearance between the fin and the brake cavity on the train, and what would happen if it somehow misaligned. Think of the brake failure on Wild Thing a few years back as an example.

I have often also thought about the alignment of the free fall towers and their magnetic braking fins as well. A loose or misaligned fin would cause all sorts of chaos there too.

Reading through the report like OhioStater mentioned certainly can imply that something was off, but nothing obvious was off. Something as simple as the wrong type of bolt/nut or amount of pounds that they should have been torqued with could have led to this. The key word in this whole thing though is "could"...it is all speculation of course.

I am uncomfortable with the findings OhioStater summarized. I work on an FDA regulated Internet connected and have to give a more detailed explanation of why something broke than they did. I can't just say "it wasn't working so I fixed it." It seems like they just defaulted to fixing it because it's always something and didn't stop to evaluate why.

After reading the summary above, I think the issue isn't just the "simple" fix of keeping parts from flying into the queue. Rather, I think the issue is how to keep the flag plate from being able to come into contact with the brake bracket, and I suspect this is a far more complicated fix, that is probably going to be quite expensive to implement. Now the park has to decide if its worth putting a chunk of change into fixing a 19 year old ride that is a maintenance headache even before this incident. On top of that, Intamin doesn't exactly have a great relationship with Cedar Point. I just don't see the fix being worth what I expect it will cost. I could easily be wrong, but I don't see them opening the ride again.

I wonder what these potential fixes mean for the other hydraulic launch Intamins. Is there going to be a service bulletin with required fixes? Will it be on Intamin's dime? TTD isn't operating in a vacuum.