Woman hurt by falling beam on Enchanted Forest carousel

Now this is just terrible news. Im making a trip to this park in August and now I fear it may be closed. The only way a beam like this can fail on a carousel is if the weld breaks or bolts come loose. It also depends on if the Carousel was a kiddie version or an adult version. Just having an adult on a kiddie ride could break it.

I wonder what kind of electrical issue is goin on with the other 3 rides. Perhaps they all share the same Transformer.
I hope this ist enough stuff to shut the park down with. We have lost enough small parks in recent years.

A few years back, I was at Great America with my family when the wrought iron gate from the second tier broke off and hit a woman on the head. My mother, a nurse, helped the woman who was out cold and bleeding all over the sidewalk. My mother was covered in blood and we had to buy a new shirt for her at the gift shop.

Goes to show you that carousels can be pretty dangerous. Just combine moving parts and lots of people...

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"SOME people have NO class!" - Mom from the Whizzer queue

When an incident like this happens, inspectors start looking real carefully at all of the rides. Most likely the electrical problems were code violations that the inspectors found on the other rides.

Almost any ride can be dangerous if not properly maintained, operated, and ridden safely. Several deaths have occurred on park trains, and those antique cars are notorious for neck injuries. That's why they have all of those signs telling you not to bump the car ahead of you.

I wonder how feasible an automatic break for the cars would be?

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"SOME people have NO class!" - Mom from the Whizzer queue

What this sounds like is that one of the parks "maintenance people" put retainers on the crankshaft open pillow blocks on the spreaders. (Heavens we can't have the shaft just sitting there without something to "hold" it in place!) A horsepipe telescope jammed (which they will do if they are not lubed properely) causing the crank to raise out of the blocks. Only it couldn't because of the bolts run through the ears on the pillow block. What happens next is that the crank starts lifting the spreaders out of the sweep sockets and everything starts coming down. There are reasons why the oldtimers didn't use solid bearings on the crankshafts. This is one of them. The other is that the shafts have to flex according to how the machine is loaded, both vertically and horizontally. If it works don't fix it.