Incident with Monorail Silver tonight

[BirdsOfPreyDave]

As we were walking back to Bay Lake Tower from the fireworks, tonight, we were just about to turn to walk past the Contemporary theme park bus stop as Monorail Silver came out of the Contemporary on the express beam. As the train cleared the building, there was a loud bang and a large shower of sparks shot out from the underside, about halfway along the train. It looked exactly like the fireworks that shoot from the castle. The train came to a sudden stop, but still had headlights and lighting inside the cabin. My first thought was that a transformer had blown. Afterward, there was a heavy smell of ozone in the air.

We stood there for about 15 minutes, thinking we might see an evacuation. The train was fully out of the building. Some maintenance men showed up, shined flashlights up on it from the ground, talked on their radios, there was some clicking, and the train motors whirled back on, and it started moving again.

I'm still thinking transformer. Do the trains themselves have them? I guess it could have also been some unlucky squirl or something finding the "third rail."

 

[robsmith1098]

Have you heard any updates yet on what happened?

Rob

 

[ancestry]

This exact same thing happened to us when we were on the monorail in May-except we were actually riding the monorail. Sparks flew at the entry point to the contemporary when our section was pulling in. It took about 15 minutes and required a full reboot --power down of the monorail and then we were own our way again.

 

[MommyGina]

When we were there last month, there were a few monorail problems. We were stuck on the monorail for about 15 minutes between the MK and the CR. It was the Orange monorail in front of us with problems.

While waiting to leave the GF one day, we couldn't because the monorail at the MK was stuck because the doors kept opening and closing. Crews were on their way to fix it. Must have waited about 20 minutes for that.

We heard other people talking about their monorail problems too.

 

[tiggerrr]

As we were walking back to Bay Lake Tower from the fireworks, tonight, we were just about to turn to walk past the Contemporary theme park bus stop as Monorail Silver came out of the Contemporary on the express beam. As the train cleared the building, there was a loud bang and a large shower of sparks shot out from the underside, about halfway along the train. It looked exactly like the fireworks that shoot from the castle. The train came to a sudden stop, but still had headlights and lighting inside the cabin. My first thought was that a transformer had blown. Afterward, there was a heavy smell of ozone in the air.

We stood there for about 15 minutes, thinking we might see an evacuation. The train was fully out of the building. Some maintenance men showed up, shined flashlights up on it from the ground, talked on their radios, there was some clicking, and the train motors whirled back on, and it started moving again.

I'm still thinking transformer. Do the trains themselves have them? I guess it could have also been some unlucky squirl or something finding the "third rail."

I don't believe the trains themselves have transformers. They use the 600 Volt DC power that runs through the lines to power their motion. They do have inverters on board to convert the line power to 240V AC power for the air conditioning.

It could be short for some reason, that sparked (dramatically) and tripped a break/fuse somewhere in the system. Maintenance would check it out and someone would close the circuit again and everything would start moving.

 

[seashoreCM]

Large (amperage) fuses can make a bang and shoot off sparks when they blow.

So can motors.

If you were able to wait around for awhile you might have seen whether that train came back around, suggesting it was still roadworthy.

Here and there, high up on utility poles there are little cylinders that look like paper towel cardboard cores or relay race batons (actually a tad thinner). These are fuses. They will make a loud "pow" that can be heard for blocks when they blow.

 

[warpdarkmatter]

as someone who loves riding the monorail i have taken a notice in all the problems in the past years the system is in need of a severe upgrade! this past march i witnessed monorailes having to be shutdown and rebooted 3 times during my stay