Monorail Collision

Latest report from CNN

http://www.cnn.com/2009/US/07/05/u.s.disney.monorail/index.html

From what I understand, there are two methods of operation for the monorail.
1) the manual system which the driver controls
2) the computerized "safety system" which would prevent such a problem

It appears that this might be a multiple system breakdown, where the computerized system broke down and in doing so, the driver was unable to manually stop the monorail.

If the NTSB IS involved, I wouldn't be surprised if the monorail is closed for an extended period.

I do not in ANY way wish to downplay the death of the cast member, but it would sure suck to have a big time WDW vacation planned this week, and have the monorail service shut down. Especially if you were at one of the monorail resorts.

They are all down. They would have to shut them down in case the computerized program has gone nuts, since it controls all the others.

http://twitthis.com/4mwcpm

I can imagine them running that late as they shift them around, or perhaps moving cast members, but it is VERY odd that a family was on board.

It will be interesting to see the details as they come out.

---Latest from Orlando Sentinel--- (Question is, if Epcot closed at 10PM, what was a family doing on the monorail at 2AM?)

Two Walt Disney World monorail trains collided early Sunday morning, killing the operator of one of the trains.

Walt Disney World spokesman Mike Griffin said the crash happened at about 2 a.m. Sunday, on one of the monorail's last runs of the day. A cast member who was piloting one of the monorails died at the scene of the accident, while another monorail driver was taken to the hospital. The second driver's injuries were not serious, Griffin said.

The trains were transporting guests leaving Epcot Center. Six park guests were on the train during the crash, but were not injured, Griffin said.

According to park schedules, Epcot closed Saturday at 10 p.m.

The wreck is the first fatal accident in the Walt Disney World monorail system's almost 38-year history, according to CFNews13.com. There has been at least one death on the Monorail System in Walt Disney Land (MT note - this must be another park they haven't told us about), according to park historians.

Walt Disney World officials said they are working with law enforcement officials to find out what happened.

"Our heart goes out to the cast member and the family," Griffin said.

Epcot is scheduled to open on time at 9 a.m. today, but the monorail to the park will not be in service, according to a Walt Disney World spokeswoman.

Walt Disney World released the following statement from Griffin regarding the incident:

"Today, we mourn the loss of our fellow cast member. Our hearts go out to his family and to those who have lost a friend and co-worker. The safety of our guests and cast members is always our top priority. The monorail is out of service and we will continue to work closely with law enforcement to determine what happened and the approximate next steps."

July 4th or not, the park closed at 10PM and they were transporting visitors (allegedly) at 2AM.

"Warning Wil Robinson... this does not compute!!!"

Just in case you're interested, here is the listing of previous deaths inside the Disney parks. I didn't see a rather famous one of ten or so years ago when a lady drowned in a drainage ditch at the WDW parking lot. Maybe it has to be inside the parks to qualify.

http://www.snopes.com/disney/parks/deaths.asp

Interesting point in that all of these people were disobeying the rules.

I got this from a thread on Micechat. It is from a former monorail cast member. If you'd like to see the entire thread, heres the link -
http://tinyurl.com/o23wej

I'm a former Mark VI railie, and I stay in touch with a fair number of folks in the department. Here's what I've heard. I'm going to stress that it's what I've heard, and I can't represent this as absolute fact. Take that for what it's worth.

The short, short version is that Monorail Central cleared Monorail Pink in reverse into the Concourse (the Epcot side of the TTC) station without being aware that Monorail Purple was still in the station. Pink was cleared with MAPO override, meaning that the driver would have disabled the anti-collision system (there are a variety of legitimate reasons for doing this), and would have been acting on faith that Central wouldn't have cleared him into a dangerous situation because it sometimes is difficult to see everything you'd want to in the cab mirrors, particularly at night on a curve such as the one he was backing along. For whatever reason, Purple just sat in the station without attempting to avoid the accident, and was struck by Pink moving at the full 15 mph allowed during MAPO override. From what I understand, the driver of Purple was a new transfer from another department. Why Central would not have made sure the station was clear before moving any trains is a bit of a mystery, but I've heard that no one was actually in the control console (the control tower-looking place at Concourse) at the time. To my knowledge, there were no electrical or mechanical problems in play here. Again, I have to stress that I'm relating what I've heard, and I was not there. This is a second-hand account from others more familiar with the situation.

Okay, speculation time.

Why would Purple have just sat in the station and let himself get hit? Well, it was a new driver from what I understand, and when Pink got close enough to trigger Purple's MAPO system, it's quite possible that the driver of Purple freaked a little bit (any time a driver gets an unexpected red MAPO light, it gets their attention), and was so intent on looking at his console trying to figure out what was going on that he simply did not see Pink barreling down on him. I suppose it's also possible that the Concourse station didn't have power at the time, preventing Purple from leaving, but I rather doubt that was the case.

Why would Central clear a train into an occupied station? Inattention, most likely. As I said, I'd heard that Central was not at the console at the time of the accident. IMO, if this is the case, it's the root cause of the accident and whoever was Central should be strung up.

Also, here's a little primer on how the anti-collision system on the WDW trains works, since there seems to be some confusion as to how the system works:

The system at Disney is called the MAPO system, or more precisely the Moving Blocklight System (MBS). It consists of a number of transmitters along the beam every 7-10 pylons or so that place RF signals of three different frequencies onto the positive buss bar (power rail), and a corresponding receiver in each train. The trains are wired with a capacitor that shorts the MAPO signals to ground, preventing any signals generated ahead of the train from getting past it. The transmitters are arranged sequentially around the beam- if any given transmitter is putting out frequency #1, then the next one will be emitting frequency #2, and the next one after that will have frequency #3. The one after that will be transmitting frequency #1 again, and the cycle continues all the way around the beam. The upshot of this is that in normal operation, the following distance should be such that there will be three or more transmitters between a given train and the train ahead of him, thus the following train will "see" all three frequencies, and the driver will have a green MBS light on his console. As he begins to get close to the leading train, there will only be two transmitters separating the trains, and the leading train will be shorting out the third MAPO frequency being generated by the next transmitter ahead of it. The following train will then see only two frequencies, and the yellow MBS light illuminates on the driver's console. This signals the driver that he needs to stop at the next designated holdpoint until his MBS indicator turns green again (i.e., the leading train has gone far enough away that there are now again three or more transmitters between the two trains). If the driver ignores the yellow MBS light and continues on, then the following train will only have one transmitter between it and the leading train. This triggers an emergency stop on the following train, with a big ol' blinking red light (a "red MAPO") to let the driver know he screwed up, and a corresponding entry is made in the train's daily event log. It's a reasonably fail-safe system, meaning that if there are problems with the system itself, it will result in a train being stopped instead of being allowed to continue into a dangerous situation. It's not rocket science, and is similar to moving blocklight systems used on subways and other similar systems. Being so simple, the system is pretty reliable, although it rarely can get a bit flaky during thunderstorms, resulting in the occasional yellow MBS light even though there may be a mile or more between trains.

However, there are a number of situations where the MAPO system needs to be turned off, and for that, there's a "MAPO override" button on the console, which allows the driver to do just that. When MAPO override is active, the train is limited to 15 mph, and the driver has to continue to hold the button down to keep the system overridden. Some examples of when the system needs to be overridden are when trains are on any of the spurlines (since they have no MAPO transmitters), or when trains are being switched between beams.

Anyway, regardless of what actually did happen, my thoughts go out to the family of the driver that died, and also to the driver of Pink, who I'm sure is living with his own awful grief. No one should have to deal with this kind of stuff for a crappy hourly position, and I hope that this sad event brings some (IMO) much-needed change in the Transportation Department management.

The following is from 'The Disney Blog' and this is only PART of the posting.

For all of it - http://tinyurl.com/nr2bcj

This is a VERY good post. I'd urge you to read the entire posting.

____________________________

The next question is what were the EPCOT line monorails doing running at 2AM last night. The parks were running extended hours the last two nights due to the holiday. Some cast members were reportedly pulling double shifts. Itâs not clear if monorail pilots are allowed to work a second shift as a pilot, but just working after midnight when youâre used to being off before then can mean youâre working when youâre normally asleep.

The driver of monorail Purple had multiple posts on his Facebook page reporting he was working longer than normal shifts. It is fairly common knowledge that WDW Cast Members are often asked to work multiple shifts during the holidays. And the recent staffing level cut backs means there is a smaller pool of employees to draw from when more hours are needed.

I want to stress that accidents are not a regular occurrence on the monorail lines at Walt Disney World. Since the new trains were added in 1989 there have been no train to train collisions during normal operation. There have been a series of incidents where the nose cone windshield glass popped out during operation, plus many were so badly scratched you could barely see the track in front of you, but Disney had been replacing all the windsheilds on the trails.

One other thing.

'PioneerHall', as he is known on Twitter, sent out a message earlier that when all of this happened, he did a tweet search and came across some messages from one of the monorail drivers from last night that there were problems with one of the monorails.

By mid-afternoon today, those messages had disappeared.

Somebody start up the theme from The X Files.

Austin's Facebook page.

http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=681772293&hiq=austin%2Cwuennenberg

Agreed. Thats a big overreaction from people who have nothing better to do than worry.