• ℹ️ Heads up...

    This is a popular topic that is fast moving Guest - before posting, please ensure that you check out the first post in the topic for a quick reminder of guidelines, and importantly a summary of the known facts and information so far. Thanks.

Incident on The Smiler 02/06/2015

Status
This topic has been locked. No further replies can be posted.
People need to know though if the park is open,towers need to make a decision pretty soon, cant see them closing it.

I planned to go tomorrow , and i sort of would like to know, but im not asking on fb!

Its not bad of people wanting to know.
 
Eyewitness says that the ride was initially stopped with the empty car valleyed and the car with people on e-stopped at the first lift hill for 10 minutes.

For some reason the ride was restarted and then the crash occurred.
 
Sky News is referencing 'coaster forums'.

And to clarify I meant to say people were enquiring about whether the Smiler would be open.
 
For those who don't have access to Sky News - appears as the emergency services are doing all they can to treat/rescue those on board.

9K5RsZq.jpg
 
Balb0wa said:
People need to know though if the park is open,towers need to make a decision pretty soon, cant see them closing it.

I planned to go tomorrow , and i sort of would like to know, but im not asking on fb!

Its not bad of people wanting to know.
Click to expand...
It's not bad people wanting to know if the park itself will be open, I am sure it most likely will be.
What is stupid is people asking if the smiler will be open tomorrow, which ofcourse it will not be, and most likely will not be open again this season.
 
Sky News pictures just show how difficult this operation is to get all the guests off the train.
 


They keep going back to it but they're trying to fill time too much.. pulling any odd person walking by to chat with comments such as "the rides like not as safe when it's crashing"

I know most people aren't as clued up on specifics like people in this forum but just shows you how much journalism is a case of "winging it" all the time. "The Slider, in Sector X"
 
Sky News coverage can be so pointless sometimes, they must pay thousands for the 'sky copter' to be there, yet they are going on about completely different stories.
 
Yeah and they keep going back to it having a technical problem earlier in the day and sending around an empty train, speaking like that's something that you should be really worried about... When they were speaking to a guest later that said Air broke down earlier today the presenter said something along the lines of "that's strange when two rides have problems on the same day" err, no, stop with the scaremongering.

The female presenter earlier speaking to an emergency services guy asking 'has someone died' is just outright disrespectful too.

But ah well, typical media/news behavior.
 
This isn't good for any people involved. Alton towers have had multiple problems with this ride, Gerst has another one opening on Friday, Junker at Powerpark in Finland. Luckily there has been no official reports of a fatality yet.
 
Does anyone know the more technical ins and outs of the ride? I assume the block system is more complex than the roller coaster tycoon image I have in my head.

An empty train would insinuate they were having some sort of issue with the ride. Is the ride put into manual mode whilst the issue is rectified or are the block sections still in force?

Would it be likely that the ride op sent the train from the lift hill or would the system have mistakenly done this (for whatever reason). The fact the train sat at the top of the lift hill for several minutes would suggest the ride op should have been aware that there was a stalled train on the track - considering how many cameras monitor the circuit.

I'm not an expert but any clarification would be appreciated.
 
AirFAN said:
Does anyone know the more technical ins and outs of the ride? I assume the block system is more complex than the roller coaster tycoon image I have in my head.

An empty train would insinuate they were having some sort of issue with the ride. Is the ride put into manual mode whilst the issue is rectified or are the block sections still in force?

Would it be likely that the ride op sent the train from the lift hill or would the system have mistakenly done this (for whatever reason). The fact the train sat at the top of the lift hill for several minutes would suggest the ride op should have been aware that there was a stalled train on the track - considering how many cameras monitor the circuit.

I'm not an expert but any clarification would be appreciated.
Click to expand...

Sometimes it is normal for them to send around an empty car, as others have said, the weather may have caused some trains to go through certain points slower than normal, so they decided to send around an empty car which would tell the operators if wind was a problem. It does look like either computer / human error, as people have also said the ride was stopped and then moved on again with the train stalled.
 
I thought that a car had to be weighted to enable it to run? I remember reading in John Wardley's book about a car stalling because it didn't have sand bags in (not The Smiler, I forget which one it was) Plus, I live in Stoke and it's been really windy here today, so I doubt this would have helped an un-weighted car.
 
Gierg said:
Im a mega "Forum Lurker" but just had to post this...
https://www.change.org/p/alton-towers-removal-shutting-down-of-the-smiler?just_created=true
Saddest part is people actually signing it.
Click to expand...

There is a lot of bandwagon jumping, some of the tweets are shocking, this will all calm down soon, and we can learn exactly what has happened, I feel sorry for Alton Towers staff, someone is going to be responsible for this. This may be the price we pay for such high throughput.
 
Status
This topic has been locked. No further replies can be posted.
Top