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Blackpool Pleasure Beach (BPB) Discussion Thread


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  • 6 months later...

http://www.lep.co.uk/news/20-hurt-in-Pleasure-Beach.5544560.jp

 

Twenty people have been injured in an accident involving a ride at Blackpool's Pleasure Beach.

They were treated by paramedics, with some suffering suspected broken bones and neck injuries in the incident on Tuesday evening.

 

A spokesman for Lancashire Fire and Rescue Service said they had received a call at 7.54pm reporting that two cars had crashed on the Big Dipper.

 

At 9pm, firefighters, including the urban search and rescue team and specialist rope rescue team, were still working to rescue one person trapped on the ride..

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If one car has gotten stuck and the other has run into it, does the ride not have any block brakes or anything then? I don't know much about it really.

 

If there are no computer controlled blocks, does the op normally send a train out when the other isn't back in the station etc?

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Wow, hope everyone recovers quickly.

 

There are two sets of brakes in the station, and the dual lift chain effectively makes another two brakes. But once a train leaves the lift hill, there are no brakes till it reaches the unload area. If a car binds or stops some way out on the track, there is nothing the ops can can do about it if the other train is already off the lift.

 

There is an alarm that sounds to alert the ops that a train is approaching the first set of brakes. However, they usually release the train thats in the station before the second one arrives. You then hear it go down the first drop above you as the second train moves the the loading station. Occationaly you hear the second train go off the drop just as the first one arrives at the first breaks, which I always thought was cutting it a bit close. I imagine that if they had realised the first train was stuck, they could have stopped the second train on the lift, but I dont think they would have any way of knowing it was still out there. Probably only realised the alarm didnt go off until after the second train had left the lift. If that makes sense.

 

Looks like the crash may have happened near the turning drop at the big blue, as one train is on the crest, the other at the bottom of the dip. When I was at big Blue on the 2nd and 3rd, every morning the track walkers woke me up hammering on the track right at the bottom of that curve. they seemed to spend a good while there. Maybe they were having problems with it? I didnt see if they were working on the crest as well.

 

On a rather off topic note, on the same trip, Jen caught a picture which looks like it shows something falling off the Big One train as it passed the MCBR. I think it was something on the track, but she thinks it was from the train. She says it fell and bounced on the grass, too solid to be a bird or something.

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^Thanks, basically everything I wanted to know.

 

I didn't actually realise coasters still ran like that, I just assumed H&S would have said that there would have to be a set of brakes between the trains as is the case with newer coasters (which I think they might do now).

 

Always a shame to hear of people getting injured when it's not down to their own stupidity.

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All older wooden coasters still operate without computer controlled block sections, but normally in that case they don't have 2 trains running at the same time, normally in my opinion they would not send the 2nd train off until the 1st one was in view on the final run, this has got to be part operator error and part machine error (i.e.) possibly a loose wheel which resulted in reduced speed on the hills ending up with a valleying situation on top of a hill?

 

Just speculation at the moment, but considering not a single computer control on the ride, pretty much the only scenario I can see!

 

I hope everyone who has ended up in hospital recovers quickly and that it is a problem that the solution is easily installed, would be such a shame to loose one of the worlds best classic woodies.

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when we were there last week they were dispatching the second train before the first was in the station/unload area.

 

on reflection, are the reports talking about two trains colliding or the first car in a train becoming wedge and run into by the second car in the train?

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^^Yeah thats what I thought it should be really, one train at a time if there are no blocks.

 

It is a bit silly to send out another train before the first one is past some sort of safety point, and where thankfully accidents like this are rare, they still should be able to be prevented.

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It could be just as simple as a loose peice of wood or nail causing the train to slow just enough to get stuck. Right now we just dont know. All I know is they were paying alot of attention to the track at the bottom of that dip a week ago.

 

There are two issues they need to sort out really. First one is how did the train stop out on the track in the first place. The second (and most serious) is how was the second train allowed to get onto the out and back when the other train wasnt on the way back? The second issue screams human error to me. The first could easily be a mechanical issue.

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