• FunkyStuff [he/him]
    ·
    1 year ago

    yea that does make me wonder exactly how this could happen in the first place, I've never heard of this happening before. Structural failures in steel coasters are so rare.

    • invalidusernamelol [he/him]
      hexagon
      ·
      1 year ago

      This one is a newer design by the company that makes these. They have a really good track record and this is one of the first big issues they've had in like 40 years or something.

      They also made the Intimidator and 4 other coasters at the park, but this one was designed to use less support members I think. The Intimidator has about 1.5 times as many support columns for an almost identical ride design, just like 25% smaller.

      The crack showed up on the first big banking turn right after the 325' drop that puts you at like 100mph, so what probably happened was the column they used at the apex of that bank had a combination of welding issues and possibly a steel grade issue.

      Luckily that section of the coaster is one of the most reenforced, there's 3 more columns holding up the turn, meaning this section was only unsupported for about 30'. So I don't think anyone was ever in serious danger during the likely 2-3 hours of operation between the crack forming and the ride being shut down.

      Carowinds also has an issue where they have wooden coasters that need insane maintenance budgets to keep running. They also have a standing coaster by the same company that is frequently shut down (not for track issues, but other stuff) and they spend a large portion of their maintenance budget on those.

      Hopefully this gets the Charlotte City Council and the regulators attention and they can investigate how the maintenance budget of the park is being allocated.

      • FunkyStuff [he/him]
        ·
        1 year ago

        I do wonder if their B&M standup will get the Mantis treatment. It was a very rough ride when I went to Carowinds, which was ~2018 IIRC.

        • invalidusernamelol [he/him]
          hexagon
          ·
          1 year ago

          It's awful, a fun weird experience the first time, but not something you want to ride a bunch.

    • Awoo [she/her]
      ·
      1 year ago

      Has to be designed wrong. Too much force being applied repetitively to the exact same point?

      That or it's bad steel I guess but I'd think that unlikely.

      • invalidusernamelol [he/him]
        hexagon
        ·
        1 year ago

        Show

        That's the one that broke, right after the drop. That's where the max speed is reached.

        • Awoo [she/her]
          ·
          edit-2
          1 year ago

          Right, so it's putting literally all force on that top corner every time. It has too few supports. It's too minimalist in its design. Even just one more column would redistribute enough force to prevent this happening in future, it's very lucky nobody was hurt.

          • invalidusernamelol [he/him]
            hexagon
            ·
            1 year ago

            The gap between the supports at that point is smaller than the width of a train, so I guess they figured the minimal supports would be okay given that at those points the weight is distributed across 3 supports, but maybe the angle the front of the train hit that bank put like a fraction of a second more strain on the center support before it got re-distrubuted.

            They need to add strain gages to all the supports on all the rollercoasters and check for other areas on this and other coasters that are experiencing more strain than expected.