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Coaster Police

Knotts Berry Farm - Xcelerator Cable Explodes

An extremely shocking video has been leaked onto Youtube - seems to be the launch cable on Xcelerator exploding into a cloud of shrapnel!!!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cn5yCeplHc4&

That gets bloomin hot when it launches, looks like the people flapping a bit. That said, Xcelerator is not throttled back and absolutely flies over the top with MASSIVE airtime... so they got an incredibly RARE rollback!
reg

That looks really harsh! I know when it happened on Dragster once the people in the front row were treated for burns from red hot shards of cable. Not nice at all!
USfriends

Hey , video removed already!
Knotts spin doctors were on top of that!
Death

USfriends wrote:
Hey , video removed already!
Knotts spin doctors were on top of that!
Spoiler:

A quick favour of someone (US Friends?) if I may ask, as I'm VERY interested in seeing this video as part of my engineering curiosity if nothing else... Smile

If ye saw the video, would ye mind having a look in thy browser cache and seeing if ye can obtain the video file from there? It shouldn't be too difficult to find if it's there, and I'll provide brief instructions below:
  • Internet Explorer users:
    Open the "My documents" folder, show the address bar if it's hidden, then enter (Or cut/paste) %homepath%\Locals~1\Tempor~1 [Return] into the address bar to open thy Internet Explorer cache folder, and arrange files by date or type...Whichever is easier for ye to use to find the file. Once ye've found the file, copy that into a more convenient folder somewhere in thy documents (Explorer may warn about this, but accept the copy and run an AV scan over the file once it's copied) for uploading. Smile
    .
  • Mozilla Firefox users:
    Ye can use a similar procedure to that for IE users above, but in thy case the file system address to use is %homepath%\Locals~1\Applic~1\Mozilla\Firefox\Profiles. Once there, continue navigating into thy profile folder (It'll be [Random code].default, then Cache) and arrange files by size, as Firefox just saves random file names with no extensions.
In either case, the right file should have an .FLV extension for IE users, which will come up as an "Unknown" file type in most Windows installations. Firefox users will see a list of files with random names, but - At a very rough guess - The file size should work out to about 2-4Mb a minute...So a three minute video would be about 6-12Mb in size, although this may vary. Smile
For more advanced users with a hex editor to hand: Valid FLV files should have "FLV" (0x46 4C 56) as the first three bytes. Smile

Anyhow...Once ye've found any files that might be the right one, please copy them somewhere into thy "My documents" or any other convenient folder to make sure they don't get lost when thy browser next has a cache cleanup. Smile

Once ye have those file(s) to hand (Or any files that might be the one I'm looking for) please upload them to some form of file sending service - Windows Live SkyDrive would be ideal for this, or failing that YouSendIt should be fine. Once ye've done that, please PM me the URL(s) so that I can download and check them out! Very Happy

If anyone can dig those video files out, then I'd be most greatful. It'd be a good case study of metal fatigue in steel cables, and show just how much strain the parts on Intamin lunched coasters are subjected to during routine operation! Cool

Later edit 01: I think I managed to find the video in question on another site...Is This that video? Question
(Taken from a YourDay-esque camera mounted on board the train...Scroll down and click "Watch" to get it in a pop-up.)

Later edit 02: I've poked, prodded and HD'd the video that I found, and uploaded it to YouTube as a real-life scientific example of the effects of metal fatigue. It's now viewable via http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0-8_I3RxPBI. Smile

Farewell for now... Twisted Evil
>> Death <<
Coaster Police

Yes, this is it !
stealth fan

Thats nasty. Hope the passengers were ok
Death

stealth fan wrote:
Thats nasty. Hope the passengers were ok
From what little I've been able to find out, both passengers at the front suffered minor injuries and received hospital treatment for the "shrapnel" thrown up when the cable broke. No other passengers were physically harmed in the incident, from what I know.

One thing that this does throw into the spotlight though is whether or not cable hauled launches should run as forcefully as they do. Thunderlooper never suffered from incidents like that AFAIK because the system was gravity operated, as opposed to being forced along via high-pressure hydraulics...But it seems that even with modern cable technology, they might have to reduce the speed of the launches on those Intamin coasters to ensure that such a "rope break" incident never happens again. Confused

On the bright side though, that would mean there'd be a much higher incidence of rollbacks... Twisted Evil
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