Steel Vengeance closed for minor accident

The trains are Digger, Chess and Blackjack. They're named after the characters in the Steel Vengeance storyline. They were the townspeople that were slighted when Maverick came and took over the town. They are now out for "Steel Vengeance."

If Chess would have had a faulty wheel they never would have loaded the train. It all boils down to information being unreliable when it comes to eye witness accounts on the Internet. There were people in other online forums who claimed that Chess and Digger were damaged and couldn't run, plus that the track itself had significant damage. They sure had to eat crow when Chess started running with riders later that night.

In response to i305 above: Wow.... that's really goofy.

So is Boneville, and taking a trip to Alaska from ohio with space pirates. But it grows on you.

Speaking of, how's the price of fur?

Pete said:

If Chess would have had a faulty wheel they never would have loaded the train.

Chess definitely had something out of the ordinary when she made her last circuit before the incident - likely one or more wheels going bad. But it likely has nothing to do with the bumping incident. Unless someone on the crew or a maintenance guy under the platform notices it when it was rolling in, they may not have known about the wheel and would have loaded the train like normal. From the midway in front of the ride, it was obvious that the train didn't sound the same as every one before it that I had heard. But the station is full of music, spiels, screaming guests, etc. It may not have been as noticeable from there. I'd bet money (or beers :)) that they fixed a wheel or something on Chess before they opened again later.

A bad wheel isn't really a safety hazard though and it is likely a total coincidence that there was a bad wheel on the train sitting there and the next one bumped it. When they're noticed, they're fixed, but it's not uncommon for a train to make several circuits with a bad one. When we noticed a bouncy car on Magnum, we'd call maintenance and when they arrived, we's shut down. If it was really bad, we'd not load the seats above it or maybe the entire car, but we'd always keep cycling until maintenance showed up to change it. It just sucks for the guy who gets a ride on top of it. :)

The Twitter guy in the story said "Chess train makes weird rattle noise." Now... I don't know what kind of "rattle noise" it made before the accident, but:

Coasters make a "ticking" noise all the time. B+M's especially. At CP, Gatekeeper and Valravn do it all the time. It seems to be coming from the wheels at times of high positive G's. I don't know what it is, but I've come to accept that it must be normal, as I hear it a lot.

One of the trains, not sure which, was making the noise I described above on the 2nd day of the Hoedown. Again, I assume this is okay because it's a brand new ride, and they were running only 2 trains. They could easily have replaced that train with the standby train if something was wrong.

But, no, I wasn't there on Saturday to observe. I'm not a mechanic either. I have no idea what happened. I'm glad no one was hurt and hope that CP can remedy this issue quickly and without further incident.

They really missed the opportunity to roll out ye old Dispatch Master Transport name for a day.

Vater said:

Ok, so from the context, Digger and Chess are the names of the trains? If so...why?

I gotta be honest, this annoys me as much as calling it SteVe. In fact, I will refer to this ride with a stupid abbreviation in protest from now on.

Also I like how people throw this out there like everyone else knows what the hell they're talking about.

The fact that Tony Clark basically tweeted the parks disapproval of SteVe should tellenthusiasts something.

Calling them by their names, in this case, is the same as referring to them by color on something like Magnum - because that’s how they are described. The names are written on the sides of the train. I guess they are different colors, but they are similar enough that, in my memory, they’re mostly the same - but don’t ask me to name Maverick’s trains, even though they’re labeled, too. I know they’re all some variation of silver, black and gold.

And brass and gunmetal and copper.

k, bye!

I'm kind of surprised that (at least from what I've seen/read, which admittedly isn't much) no one has mentioned why it only opened with 2 trains. Is the third not ready? Have they not gotten the programming right for 3 trains? Just curious when we might see 3 trains running. I know there are still times when Lightning Rod doesn't run 2 trains. Talk about an RMC that's had a lot of problems.

I imagine the state didn't approve it for three, which implies it wasn't yet programmed for it.

Two trains were on the transfer tracks on Sunday (one with water dummies in it) while a third train was operating on the tracks. So all three trains were there. In the unofficial sample size I had (over about 4.5 hours in line with parts of that with no riders at all), intervals were averaging 4.5 to 5 minutes. Occasionally they did a little better but often it was worse. Accounting for the time on the course, I don't think having a third train would have mattered.

At one point when they were testing after a shutdown, we were right under the first drop. Someone noted that it was a different train than they had been running previously (it had water dummies in it but presumably that wasn't what the person had identified). I was like huh? I never pay that much attention to the trains. Even the colors aren't always helpful for me to notice. They do have signs up in the queue (near the end of the long straight away before the right/left jog to get to the stairs) with blurbs on the three train character names. And there were three costumed employees walking around frontier land taking pics with guests who presumably were Chess, Digger and Blackjack (otherwise they were wearing what appeared to be way too heavy clothing for the temps for no good reason).

Did get great views of the coaster from just about every angle winding through the entire queue at a very slow pace. Totally awesome ride. Best in the park and one of the top (if not the top) I have ridden. Got to meet some new friends in the line in something that became a bonding exercise (and a quest, a quest for fun).

FWIW, when NTG opened it ran 3 trains for maybe half a season and always stacked. It would take a small miracle to make use of the third train in more than 10% of dispatches and even then it'd only be saving a few seconds.

kpjb said:

I gotta be honest, this annoys me as much as calling it SteVe. In fact, I will refer to this ride with a stupid abbreviation in protest from now on.

You sound as bitter as a hockey fan who's team lost a playoff series to a team that never beats them.

;)

But yeah, it annoys me too.

Also I like how people throw this out there like everyone else knows what the hell they're talking about.

This.

I really don't see how this is a huge incident. The trains gave each other a gentle lovetap. One was in the station, one had finished the run and had gone through the final brake run. I bet that I they didn't shut down the ride and get everyone off, guests wouldn't have even noticed or cared. If they were super GP, they may have just thought that it was part of the ride. Boats in the boat rides give each other gentle lovetaps all the time in the station. It probably feels about the same.

I could see it being bad for the trains, but I don't think that the humans in the trains had any more trauma to their bodies than the G forces they would sustain during a ride.

This is what a 5 mph crash does to a person:

Care to revisit your statement?

Doesn't look like it did much of anything to a person.

It doesn’t cause serious injury, obviously, but my point is that the forces involved are greater than one would encounter on the ride or on a boat ride. The reports of people asking to get checked out by paramedics and getting treated with ice packs are consistent with what people experience in the video. While ultimately harmless, this is something you’d never want to happen to your guests. It could have been much worse if someone had a pre-existing condition.