NTSB report on Monorail Crash

[jlima]

So Austin was driving the purple monorail, right? And the pink monorail was moving backwards, towards the purple one., which is what made Austin try to slam his monorail into reverse. So who was driving the pink one? And why was it moving backwards? Am I missing something, or am I misunderstanding this?

Look at the TTC on Google Earth . . . for an Epcot Monorail to move into the "roundhouse" at the end of the day is a complex procedure. On Google Earth, you can see the spur line that the Epcot monorail sort of makes a U-Turn on, to move to the MK line. It made sense, when I could look at the monorail lines, and figure out how they moved around.

 

[P.I. Squirrel]

The monorail cabs have an air horn similar to a boat's fog horn. It is loud, but I don't know if it would have been useful.

Pink's pilot was in the lead cab as it drove forward to pylon 30. the track was to switch. Then, he would have been on the pusher end until he reaches the switch for the maintenance barn. This means that he has only mirror view through TTC, Poly, GF, and MK. The mirrors are not that big, and would have had no view of the TTC from the curve of the Epcot or transfer beam.

While multiple humans were involved, this can't be blamed on a single person, but rather a series of failures. Any one of which, had it been changed, would have prevented this.

The current revision of the monorail system is technologically dated. I agree that multiple cameras will likely be added, as well as a second pilot for all instances of a monorail reversal of direction. Also, there will most certainly be a human at each track switch to verify the position.

I can guarantee though, that, as a corporation, Disney is already working on the solution, and will not wait for NTSB's final report.

 

[Geoff_M]

This means that he has only mirror view through TTC, Poly, GF, and MK. The mirrors are not that big, and would have had no view of the TTC from the curve of the Epcot or transfer beam.

Let me preface this by saying that I'm not assigning any blame, but I do have another curiosity about another possibly missed opportunity to prevent this accident. I realize that rear view mirrors would have been no help, but is the length of the monorail and the Mk-to-Epcot spur such that the Pink monorail pilot would have been able to see empty track on the wrong side of his train before the collision and realize that something was wrong? During the transfer they were attempting the Epcot line should have appeared to the cab's right side, but based on what really was happening the transfer spur would have appeared on the cab's left side instead as the monorail continued backwards on the Epcot line. However, I realize that if the spur is too short, relative to the monorail's length, the Pink pilot's cab may have not reached the switch (that appears not to have been actually thrown) when the impact occurred behind him.