I was lookng on a Alton Towers Memories site the other day and i came across some news paper cuttings from the 1980s where a accident on the black hole was reported and a few children were injured when a train de-railed off the track...i was just wondering if anybody else has read anything on this as this is the first time i have come across anything about it ?
I don,t know how or what happened but it happened the day after a bank holiday because we rode it that bank holiday monday prehaps a lot of use the day before.
There was a lot of info about this on one of the other threads. I don't think AT ever revealed what happened, but obviously it was deemed safe to ride after inspection.
Only a few riders from the front were injured. Nothing too serious.
Just to clear it up, it did not 'derail'. All that happened, by reading that article at least, is part of the undercarriage became loose and impacted with the track, causing the train to sharply stop and the track to be lightly damaged.
[quote=""Blaze""]Just to clear it up, it did not 'derail'. All that happened, by reading that article at least, is part of the undercarriage became loose and impacted with the track, causing the train to sharply stop and the track to be lightly damaged.[/quote]
I will try to find the other articles i've read, but it was reported that the front carriage did in fact derail.
as memery serves i did a bit of modeling of this ride in the late nineties and all i can think of is one of the wheels had burst as the cars had pnumatic tyers above below and outside of the track as the track was inside suppurts like the the beast mind you it was about 13 years ago when i did this but i think its time to get digging through the lifetime of drawings iv,e made over the years.
question is the spell cheker working as it dont seem to be working on my laptop?
hence all the bad spelling.
''holy crap lead wasps''. ''keep low and keep your eyes peeled boys were goin in guns blazing''
''ON THE FLOOR NOW''.''STAY DOWN OR ELSE''.
For a derailment to happen it would take the failure of several seperate wheels. It would not have been a full derailment, a partial one maybe, a wheel may have failed, but it wouldn't have completely left the track.
true i admit it there has got to be more eliments to make a derailment happen but what like broken weld/bolt to the undercarrage,damage to the track mind you the track would have be walked would it !!
[someone not paying attention there] also even if the track had been walked it was'ent monitored 24 7
also it was in the dark with no one around so the conclution mecanical failya
tecnical :mrgreen:
''holy crap lead wasps''. ''keep low and keep your eyes peeled boys were goin in guns blazing''
''ON THE FLOOR NOW''.''STAY DOWN OR ELSE''.
Easter 1984. The article above has it about right (according to all the other reports I remember reading at the time). They were single cars then and for some reason the car came to a sudden stop and, supposedly, the front of the car was dislodged off the track. As you can read, minor injuries all around.
I remember some years ago on this very forum, the rumours of the accident became tales of the car flying off the track, breaking through the canopy itself. Sounds like Black Hole goes Chitty Chitty Bang Bang to me
The Black Hole accident happened in 1984, not very long after opening. 6 people could fit per car and there was only one car per train. It was a Jet Star 2 (Jet Star I did not have a spiral lift hill i don't think) as far as I know, a smaller (45ft) version of Jet Star 3 (Alton Beast). The car derailed due to undercarriage failure. As far as I know, it was the first Schwarzkopf coaster to fail in this way. The second happened a year later (approx) on MindBender at West Edmonton Mall, Canada, where poor maintenance and loose bolts caused the undercarriage to fall away from the last car of the coaster, killing 3 people.
Black Hole closed and was returned to Germany for a full overhaul, including adding a second car to the train and modifying the track so it would be able to run with two cars per train (ie 14 people per train). It re-opened in 1988 as the Black Hole 2, still with the yellow and green tent. At the end of 1997, the tent changed to blue colour to fit in with the X Sector.
Last edited by towerofterror1989 on Fri Sep 14, 2012 12:19 am, edited 1 time in total.
but what like broken weld/bolt to the undercarrage,damage to the track mind you the track would have be walked would it !!
