S:UF Mishap - 6/9/04. 2nd train looses a piece!

I just captured the video from yesterday of the trouble with S:UF at SF:gadv. They were running 1 train all day, At around 6 pm, They transfered another train on. As it was making its first run, this is what happened.

As the train was coming in to the twist right before the brakes, It made 2 loud bangs...Shortly after, It lost a pretty big piece from what looked like to be the wheel assembly. It sounded pretty scary standing near it, 3 times as loud as it is on camera. The people in the line all turned around right away. Anyway, Here is the link to the clip...

www.xtremecoasters.com/public/sufbang.zip

*** Edited 6/10/2004 7:28:50 PM UTC by Big D***

Whoa. Wonder exactly what it was, and are they doing a train ispection because of it?

(BTW, what's with the music, they have a DJ in the queue now? :))

But guys - B&M's don't have problems. They are perfect. :rolleyes:

The train was being worked on all day, That was the first test run. I have no idea what it was, It does look like it came off the wheels.

...and yes, Those are DJ's in the queue's now :). Nitro has one too. Pretty cool, Guess the 4 year plan is starting to come to affect.

That's crazy! On the actual video, can you see the falling part?

Looks like it. Just as the train is exiting the final flip, it looks like a piece of something falls diagonally into a support just below the train (I assume that's what caused the sound).

Vater, I see it now. I kept looking and figured it hit the track below the inline twist (RCT rotted my brain) or was too small to notice on the compressed video.

No matter how many times I watch it I just can't see where it is coming from. Doesn't look like a wheel though but makes a cool "clunk".

All i know so far is that it came from the 4th car. Thats where to object appeared from. That is the area that the engineers were looking at before they transfered the train back into the storage building.

Someone forgot to take their wrench with them.

Yeah, it sure looks like a long, thin piece of metal, someone probably forgot to pick up their tools. Were they looking around on the ground near where the part fell?

I had thought that too about it being a tool. But you would think if there was a loose wrench it would have fell off the train during the Pretzel loop or any of the other series of turns before the inline twist.

The first bang sounds like it came from that piece hitting the track and the second bang looked like it came from the piece hitting a support. *** Edited 6/10/2004 9:19:11 PM UTC by CoasterDude316***

Wow. Thats not good. I just rode that last week. How many people stayed in line? ;)

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CP ismyhome said:
How many people stayed in line?

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Lol.. the guy with the blonde hair in front of the camera hears the sound and then turns around and exits the line in the video.

Hopefully this is just a tool and we won't have to worry about there being anymore mass changes to coaster restraints.

So the question that I have is that in your description, you say that it makes two loud bangs and then lost a piece. Did you not see the thing that fell off, and if so what peice was it?

There is a lot of stuff that could have been, but personally I don't think it was a tool or the wheel assembly.

B&Ms (as well as just about every other coaster manufacturer) makes it so that if a piece breaks during the ride, the harnesses will permanently remain locked until tools have been used to open them.

Ya. Its a wheel from the fourth car. left side, seems to be the the track wheel. I watched the video frame by frame and traced the wheel back to the car. It flew off and looks like it hit the next support (the louder bang) and then flew back a bit and landed on the ground.

Let's hope it was a tool. I saw a bottle of cleaning solution fall out of Batwing on a test run once.

Are you that nerdy that you have to make a comment like that Raven-Phile? Jeez.

I assume the took that train off the track after that?

No, they kept it running and put passengers on it all day. Im not joking, they serously did. No joke. Serously. Thats what happened.

OK, Im not normally this much of a geek, but since there is so much question over what flew off, if you can see it, etc - I decided to help out a bit.

Please forgive this one lapse into total geekdom :)

Here is a video clip which shows as much as can be seen. (right click and choose "save target as" or it'll try to stream - it's 1.5MB)

There are only 6 frames where anything can been seen 'flying'. That translates to 1/5th of a second.

There is no visual on the first, smaller bang. The clip of video here causes the second lounder one. You can not see the object after it hits the support.

I hope Big D doesn't mind my doing this with the video. It's slowed down to one frame per second (instead of 30) and cropped and enlarged. It's about as good as you'll see what's flying off the train.

So what is it, everyone?

*** Edited 6/11/2004 3:35:56 PM UTC by Lord Gonchar***