Expedition Ge-Force Accident...

[Nemesis Inferno]

Not much news in English about this, but this pic says a lot more than any article could...

Yet another notch on the Intamin incidents list... And bad times for Holiday Park having their biggest coaster suffer something like this...

 

[peep]

Expedition GeForce accident

Off the Ride-Guide website...

More or less fresh off the press yet another accident on a Intamin coaster, although they probably are blaimless on this one. First reports suggest that the 4th car actually derailed from the track and jammed the train 20m up on the rides 2nd airtime hill.

A german news report can be found here.
http://www.swr.de/swr1/rp/nachricht...533608/did=6314120/pv=video/ci7sla/index.html

Doesn't sound good, hope more news starts to trickle in through the day regarding the amount of damage etc.

 

[marc]

It will probably be found that this has nothing to do with Intamin but more probably park maintance as people have been saying the coaster is getting worse and worse each year. Sounds like a wheel problem tbh.

I hope no one was hurt and they find the problem fast.

 

[Nemesis Inferno]

^No doubt in my mind it will be to do with the park itself... But it won't stop there being another black mark on Intamin's records...

 

[Ben]

The wheels are probably fine, it was probably the trims which stopped it... Like always...

 

[Snoo]

Wow that does look quite serious. Kinda surprising to see something like this happen but not as surprising because its an Intamin.

 

[nealbie]

Why so serious?

 

[Ollie]

Wow. Hopefully noone was hurt.

 

[Tony]

Another picture from a German news site:

http://www.bild.de/BILD/news/leserrepor ... sloch.html

God would not like to be sitting in those middle two cars!! And it's quite strange to see it sitting on the ascent to an airtime hill, surely it wouldn't of been too stable while they waited for emergency services. Big shame for the park, looks like it could be out for a long time!

Edited to credit the ACTUAL news source the pictures came from - Gavin

 

[marc]

All depends what went wrong, if they find out straight away and get a fix in place the coaster wont be shut to long.

You think how many thousands of miles coasters do these things happen

They are just so lucky the trains stayed connected or it could have been a lot worse.

 

[Tim]

This defintalely looks like a wheel arrangement got flung. The cars in the train share wheels, so loosing a set would affect two of them like in those photos.

Its pretty damn serious to go loosing such a vital component. It has happened so rarely in the coaster world, but resulted in deaths or serious injuries on a lot of occasions.

Thankfully the couplings in these Intamin trains are robust enough to keep everything relatively in line, which proved an effective safety backup, as I hear in this particular accident nobody really even got hurt?

 

[andrus]

^I read at TPR and at the german news site that all the ppassengers suffered injuries from the accident. But I guess they wern't that seriuos.. The train most have stoppped rather quickly with two cars sliding/breaking on the track.

I'm not surpriced at all that this happend. I went on GeForce a couple of weeks back (first time) and it was running REALLY bad! It was a real disappointment to ride the "number three coaster in the world" and find out that it was crap.. It rode very slow and it sounded/felt rusty. I presume there was some sort of fault with the wheels even back then, because in that shape the coaster was running it couldn't possibly have been rated so high by anybody!

 

[marc]

By all accounts people just got bruises and suffered with shock.

The trains done what they were meant to, stayed attached and the lap bars stayed closed so that saved people.

 

[Tim]

^I read at TPR and at the german news site that all the ppassengers suffered injuries from the accident.

Yeah, I don't count bruises or shock pains as particulary noteworthy injuries. They are kinda expected in incidents as violent as this likely was.
Car seatbelts may stop you going through the windscreen with your legs cut off on the dashboard- but you'll get bruises for the trouble

I just think the fact that the train and its design managed to prevent anything more than minor injuries was a great job.

Considering Mindbender flattened three people on a support post when it did the same thing, and that stand-up Togo beheaded another... it was a job well done on behalf of the train to keep everyone safe in the accident

 

[spicy]

That's terrible, and just shouldn't happen in this day and age. It must be down to bad maintenance like has been said and if it is purely down to poor maintenance Holiday World should be punished, surely?

I certainly wouldn't be happy if I was on that train, I think the people were very lucky indeed and this could have been alot worst.

 

[Mark]

The wheels are probably fine, it was probably the trims which stopped it... Like always...

2nd airtime hill... no trims there...

I agree that it probably doesn't look so good for intamin because people tend to automatically jump to that conclusion or one that blames the park maintenance.

It is much more likely that a wheel assembly had gone unchecked or something...

Bad times for my number 1 coaster

 

[tks]

At least they didn't have a normal boring ride!

 

[gavin]

I agree that it probably doesn't look so good for intamin

Well, not really. On coaster forums, sure, but other than us lot I'd say that the vast majority of people would have no idea about manufacturers and will automatically, probably rightly, too, put the fault with the park.

Just off the top of my head thinking about the Hydro incident a few years ago. Apart from on here, I don't recall Intamin's name cropping up much, if at all in the regular press.

Ok, so could it have an effect on parks' views of Intamin? Again, I'd say no, as park operators, having to run and maintain coasters themselves, will be able to see more clearly than most where the fault really lies.

 

[Smithy]

People keep saying "another Intamin incident". What have I missed? When was the last?

 

[Ben]

Or the Perilous Plunge thing, the Top Thrill cable snap, the OTHER guy that fell off S:RoS


(didn't Stealth have a cable snap or am I making that up...)