[Nieuws] Monorail ongeluk in WDW

[ed_anja_wesley]

Ai, gelukkig dat het niet was gebeurd volgeladen met mensen :!:

[calypso]

Als het goed is rijd de monorail vandaag vanaf 2uur weer. Wel heeft Disney extra veiligheids maatregelen genomen om uiteraard een ongeluk als dit te voorkomen.

[Njit]

Update van de Orlando Sentinel. Zoals Calypso al schreef rijd de Monorail weer. Gasten mogen niet meer voorin meerijden.

The National Transportation Safety Board said Monday it will investigate the deadly collision on Walt Disney World's famous monorail, an unprecedented move by a federal agency best known for probing commercial airline crashes.

The announcement came as others looking into Sunday's crash appeared to zero in on what may have been a botched attempt to switch a train from one track to another.

The 2 a.m. crash occurred as one of Disney's trains was supposed to be using a spur to transfer from the resort's Epcot line to a Magic Kingdom line so it could return to the system's maintenance bay for the night.

But the switch was never completed. Instead, the train apparently moved in reverse back down the Epcot line -- with an onboard collision-avoidance system likely on override -- and slammed into a second train with a handful of passengers on board.

Disney confirmed Monday that the accident happened while one train was being transferred off its Epcot line for the night and said it had already taken several precautionary steps. Among them: Ensuring that multiple employees verify track-switch positions before signaling trains to proceed.

One of the monorail pilots, 21-year-old Austin Wuennenberg of Kissimmee, was pronounced dead at the scene. The other pilot, who has not been identified, was not seriously injured. Disney said none of the guests was hurt.

In addition to the NTSB, the U.S. Occupational Safety and Health Administration dispatched to two investigators from its Tampa field office to examine the accident.

Disney reopened the monorail system to guests Monday afternoon, about 36 hours after the accident, though it stopped permitting guests to ride in the pilot cabins.

The NTSB has never before exercised jurisdiction at Disney World, which has handled virtually all of its own ride-safety oversight, including the monorail, since opening in 1971.

But after reviewing preliminary information gathered by Disney World safety investigators, the NTSB decided Monday afternoon to launch a full investigation. An investigator was expected to fly in from Los Angeles on Monday night.

"We'll be going on scene and working with Disney there. We understand that OSHA is already involved," NTSB spokesman Peter Knudson said. "We'll be looking at operating control systems, and their procedures, and the different procedures they use on the monorail to position trains."

The NTSB investigation is unprecedented. Not only has the federal agency never before sought to investigate a monorail crash at either Disney World or at Disneyland in California, Knudson said he could not recall a single investigation involving an all-private transit system operating on private land. But he said NTSB officials determined they have jurisdiction in this case.

"It is a widely used transportation system that is used by the public," he said.

Disney pledged full cooperation.

"We look forward to talking with them, as we are with the other agencies who are investigating," Disney spokesman Michael Griffin said.

Expect the NTSB, like the others, to pay particular attention to how Disney's monorail trains move from one line to another.

The resort's 38-year-old monorail system today has three main lines anchored by the Transportation and Ticket Center near the Magic Kingdom parking lot. Two of the lines encircle the Seven Seas Lagoon and link the Magic Kingdom with three hotels and the parking lot; the third loop runs from the TTC to Epcot and back. A short spur connects the Epcot line to one of the Magic Kingdom lines; a second spur connects that Magic Kingdom line with the monorail's maintenance center.

Trains moved from the main lines to the spurs and back again through a series of switches, including two just beyond the TTC that connect the Epcot line with the outer Magic Kingdom line. To make that transfer, a train on the Epcot track pulls just beyond the first switch, waits for the track to move into its new position, then reverses direction along the short spur to the Magic Kingdom line.

Several former monorail pilots interviewed by the Orlando Sentinel said it appeared that one of the trains involved in Sunday's accident was waiting to move from the Epcot track to the spur when it was mistakenly given the signal to begin backing up -- even though the track's switch didn't change. As a result, the pilot at the helm of the train thought he was moving onto the spur when he in fact he was moving back down the Epcot line.

At the same time, the former pilots said, the second train waiting on the Epcot line was probably told to begin advancing toward the Transportation and Ticket Center. That's where the two trains collided.

Such a scenario could explain how the two trains crashed despite an onboard anti-collision system that is designed to bring a train to an automatic stop when it comes too close to another train ahead of it. That's because the pilots must override the system when transferring between tracks.

A train advancing on override can move no faster than 15 mph.

"It seems like the [first] train was cleared to back onto the spur line, and onto the exterior beam, and what happened was the switch was not in that position," said Richard Neilan, who spent three years as a monorail pilot in the mid-1980s.

Mistakes could have occurred at several points in the process, the former pilots said. To move a train between tracks, for instance, an operator in the monorail system's main control center must radio to the system's maintenance shop and request that it activate the switches; once the shop alerts the control center that the track has been repositioned, the operator radios the monorail pilot to begin advancing.

"It seems like there was some miscommunication between the lead at monorail central or at the shop that moves the switches," Neilan said.

Disney has a system in place to record the conversations between the monorail pilots and the control operators, which investigators are certain to request.

http://www.orlandosentinel.com/orl-b...,1816667.story

[FloridaVerslaafde]

Gasten mogen niet meer voorin meerijden.

Ben ik even blij dat ik jaren geleden voorin heb mogen meerijden \\/

[PENPE]

Wij hebben 3 weken geleden vh eerst het ritje voorin de cabine mogen
meemaken. :-( helaas zal het bij deze ene keer blijven vrezen wij...

[calypso]

2 personen op non-actief gezet naar aanleiding van het ongeluk!

http://www.wesh.com/news/20003663/detail.html

Driver probeerde nog achteruit te rijden! http://www.wesh.com/news/19995299/detail.html

Video reconstructie van het ongeluk http://www.wesh.com/video/19983353/index.html

[cloggie68]

Wij hebben in de meivakantie ook nog voorin gereden... ben toch blij dat ik toen wist dat dat mogelijk was (en nooit heb nagedacht over een 'mogelijk' ongeluk) en dat we toch die herinnering hebben!