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Incident on The Smiler 02/06/2015

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srdonelan said:
Like everyone else, I was shocked and upset to see the images of the Smiler accident and to hear of the injuries sustained.
I was also thinking that this accident should NEVER had happened. I was a controls engineer for many years, developing PLC control programs for all types of automated machines. The Smiler no doubt has a failsafe PLC system at the heart of the control? I've never designed a system for a fairground ride before but one of the fundamental control statements for this type of system must be "know where the carriages are at all times". This would be followed by "if a carriage is not accounted for, bring the ride to a controlled stop". It beggars belief that the carriage that was stopped was not known about by the system and similarly, the system allowed the release of the carriage that ran into it!!
Failsafe PLC's are constantly self checking in milli second periods and any fault should trigger a controlled system stop. This smacks of a system that was priced to win the contract, as is common practice these days. I bet whoever won the contract is wishing they did the job properly now.
The team or individual responsible for this control system should be a) quaking in their boots, regarding an impending court case. b) Looking for a career change..... you're a danger to innocent people.
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I appreciate you know far more about these systems that me! What we do know though is that the failsafe did do it's job, it stopped the train at the top of lift one because the train in front had not cleared the block. The train was then held there for up to 20 minutes.

I assume what you are saying is that the system then should never have allowed the train to be dispatched from this position over the top of the lift. However if the system was re-set/overidden this would be possible wouldn't it? The system would no longer know that a train had not cleared a block. Clearly you should never do something like that with people on board the ride and a stalled train though. Should/would that be possible?

:)
 
^ @srdonelan - there are a lot of assumptions in that post and some of them are ridiculous.

As a former controls engineer you will know that there are various factors that you need to take into account and that will no doubt form the basis of the HSE investigation. Not least that a PLC is only as good as the data that you input into it, basic things - like how many trains are on the track.

In the case of a stall, you have to have the flexibility in the PLC to take account of the fact that a stalled train has been craned off or winched to the next block.

srdonelan said:
It beggars belief that the carriage that was stopped was not known about by the system and similarly, the system allowed the release of the carriage that ran into it!!
Failsafe PLC's are constantly self checking in milli second periods and any fault should trigger a controlled system stop.
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From everything that we have read, it sounds like it did exactly that.
 
GaryH said:
Does anyone know when the HSE may be likely to publish their findings?
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Not any time soon! These investigations can take a long time and I believe that nothing (or very little) would be released until the conclusion of any procescution so as to not compromise the legal proceedings.

At any rate the full report will probably not be published and it will have to be retrieved via FOI.

:)
 
Though in the meantime, as long as they have met the requirements of the prohibition notice, they are free to operate the ride. Which they likely have already.
 
XXBENNXX said:
Though in the meantime, as long as they have met the requirements of the prohibition notice, they are free to operate the ride. Which they likely have already.
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Yes, but I'm sure it will not be operated again this season because it isn't worth the PR.
 
Tom said:
Yes, but I'm sure it will not be operated again this season because it isn't worth the PR.
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The pr is going to be whenever they open it and my dad thought it was already open so i would just do it as soon as it is safe so the bad or goes away quicker and doesn't effect next season
 
AndrewH said:
The pr is going to be whenever they open it and my dad thought it was already open so i would just do it as soon as it is safe so the bad or goes away quicker and doesn't effect next season
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Opening in a low-key fashion at the start of next season would have less of an affect than opening now. Even the Mirror may not notice by then.
 
No chance of it opening any time soon even if they could. For starters they only have three trains, so if one train couldn't be used for whatever reason they'd might as well shut it as running on two would be a nightmare.

:)
 
I thought about this before the crash, the time between two stop points (lift, brakes etc) should be programmed into the computer system and if the train doesn't get to the 2nd stop point in that time (allowing a few extra seconds) a warning alarm should sound in the cabin to alert the op, if this was the case an alarm would of sounded in the cabin saying that the empty train was taking a long time to get to lift 2.
 
It was the pre show to the smiler. The old way before it was updated with tech. The update is the smiler
 
James said:
If they could open it now they should wait until Scarefest or September. I'm still betting on it opening in March 2016.
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Agreed. I saw Alton Towers reply to someone asking if it'll be open for their visit in September and they responded no. I think next season is most likely.
 
Leah said:
The sanctuary is ment to be its own thing, not really related that much, but th sanctuary is hopefully going anyway, seen as though they need a new maze
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The sanctuary is the back-story for the smiler, that's why it premiered in 2012, it was pr for sw7
 
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