Monorail line repairs at EPCOT today

[lazyboy97o]

Due to poor planning the buses are going to remain the best means. But since they are now so pervasive they should be more than marginally adequate.

 

[GhostHost1000]

Due to poor planning the buses are going to remain the best means. But since they are now so pervasive they should be more than marginally adequate.

I've stayed on property for more than a week now (on the bus leaving Disney Springs as I type this) and saying the bus system is marginally adequate is stretching it ...it works but...ugh

 

[COProgressFan]

I've stayed on property for more than a week now (on the bus leaving Disney Springs as I type this) and saying the bus system is marginally adequate is stretching it ...it works but...ugh

Yeah we've been hit or miss with busses this week.

Anyone know how long they've been routing all guests to/from typhoon lagoon through Epcot first? Typhoon closed at 5, with hundreds of resort guests waiting for busses to resorts. But they no longer run direct, the Only bus that leaves Typhoon after 2pm goes to Epcot for a transfer.

Lots of frustrated, aggravated guests today, and I assume every day since they've done this. (Not to mention wet and tired and really not in the mood to commingle with dressed up Epcot Food & Wine guests at the bus stop.)

 

[GhostHost1000]

and why the resorts don't run MORE busses in the afternoon/evening for Disney Springs has been beyond me

 

[Nubs70]

How would you be proactive to a bent buss bar?

By monitoring the resistance of the circuit. A step wise increase in resistance would indicate an issue with the buss bar that should initiate a visual inspection.

 

[MonorailLover]

By monitoring the resistance of the circuit. A step wise increase in resistance would indicate an issue with the buss bar that should initiate a visual inspection.

Agreed, but what I atleast think @Figment2005 thinks happened is if a buss bar were to just break instead of slowly degrading, which the latter is what I believe would affect the resistance.

 

[unkadug]

^He said it first! He said it first!^

It wasn't me for once...

It just proves that you are both the same person.

 

[MonorailLover]

It just proves that you are both the same person.

Hahahahaha.... Nope

 

[Nubs70]

Agreed, but what I atleast think @Figment2005 thinks happened is if a buss bar were to just break instead of slowly degrading, which the latter is what I believe would affect the resistance.

As metal fatigues resistance increases. If the bar were to fatigue to breakage, electrical flow will cease. Hence a break in the circuit. II amnot sure if the Epcot loop is an entire single circuit, multiple single circuits, or multiple parallel circuits. In every configuration, resistance monitoring would indicate impending failure. Even nightly thermographic inspection would reveal impending failure. How difficult would it be to get a thermographic drone and program it to fly each monorail loop as a nightly pm program?

 

[MonorailLover]

As metal fatigues resistance increases. If the bar were to fatigue to breakage, electrical flow will cease. Hence a break in the circuit. II amnot sure if the Epcot loop is an entire single circuit, multiple single circuits, or multiple parallel circuits. In every configuration, resistance monitoring would indicate impending failure. Even nightly thermographic inspection would reveal impending failure. How difficult would it be to get a thermographic drone and program it to fly each monorail loop as a nightly pm program?

It wouldn't be, but you know, it is Disney...

 

[ford91exploder]

That's what I'm saying, if they actually monitored the system more proactively, with manual labour or ultrasonic systems that @ford91exploder talked about, it might actually save them from issues like this.....

We are definitely in an age right now where we're spending imense amounts of money for just information. My dad works in automobile with laser/robotic systems and says that all of his customers are investing in sensors for EVERYTHING, so they can store information for use on a later date.

It atleast seems that Disney actually knows somewhat how to use the information that they invested in getting, although it doesn't seem like they're using it efficiently enough. Atleast upgrade or introduce more busses to the fleet, if you think that more are needed....

Unless the data is related to guest SPENDING Disney does not care, Although enough incidents like this one will certainly affect spending i.e. people will spend their vacation dollars elsewhere.

 

[ford91exploder]

As metal fatigues resistance increases. If the bar were to fatigue to breakage, electrical flow will cease. Hence a break in the circuit. II amnot sure if the Epcot loop is an entire single circuit, multiple single circuits, or multiple parallel circuits. In every configuration, resistance monitoring would indicate impending failure. Even nightly thermographic inspection would reveal impending failure. How difficult would it be to get a thermographic drone and program it to fly each monorail loop as a nightly pm program?

Or even mount it on one of the monorails themselves or the tractor. As to the electrical stuff being an EE it would be easy enough to place shunts in the feedpoints and monitor the current while running once you have a baseline its easy enough to automate the system to send a warning when current is outside of normal limits.

The only issue with monitoring resistance is that a conventional resistance measurement is done with the circuit powered off, I mention current because resistance is usually measured indirectly either by measuring voltage drop across two points on a conductor or by measuring current in a shunt circuit with a known voltage applied. The last method is useful as it can be used while the train is operating normally.

 

[ford91exploder]

Agreed, but what I atleast think @Figment2005 thinks happened is if a buss bar were to just break instead of slowly degrading, which the latter is what I believe would affect the resistance.

Metal just does not spontaneously fracture if a metal part breaks it's a result of stress (thermal, mechanical, electrical etc) because of that a failing part can be detected long before it actually has a hard failure with modern inspection tools.

For example firemens ladders are periodically magnefluxed and/or ultrasonicallly inspected for stress cracks because the ladders NEED to work.

 

[ford91exploder]

It wouldn't be, but you know, it is Disney...

And 'Diznee is a Bizness' don't you know they can't waste time and money on inspections outside of the legally mandated ones

 

[zulemara]

They actually replaced bus bars on the MK lines a couple years ago I believe after there was a big outage on a holiday weekend. I am not sure if the EPCOT line was done, but the challenge is they can only do the replacement when rails are shut down which isn't a lot of time each day. Even with the reduced operating hours we have seen, the amount of time the monorail system is entirely offline overnight is not much, only a few hours.

 

[MarkTwain]

Yeah we've been hit or miss with busses this week.

Anyone know how long they've been routing all guests to/from typhoon lagoon through Epcot first? Typhoon closed at 5, with hundreds of resort guests waiting for busses to resorts. But they no longer run direct, the Only bus that leaves Typhoon after 2pm goes to Epcot for a transfer.

Lots of frustrated, aggravated guests today, and I assume every day since they've done this. (Not to mention wet and tired and really not in the mood to commingle with dressed up Epcot Food & Wine guests at the bus stop.)

That's awful.

 

[tigger1968]

It seems like there are more and more days with these "overflow" busses being put in service over the past few years. I'd much rather see an investment in more Disney transportation (we'll just leave my monorail centric wish list out of this ) but I'm assuming that from a cost standpoint it must be advantageous to rent or lease capacity versus investing in your own equipment. But given the increasing frequency of it having to be used, wouldn't there be a point where adding your own capacity makes more sense? There are costs of course, but I also wonder about the branding and image issues that this creates on a daily basis. As image conscious as The Mouse tends to be, seeing hordes of generic busses on site hauling guests around has got to be less than ideal.

 

[MonorailLover]

Metal just does not spontaneously fracture if a metal part breaks it's a result of stress (thermal, mechanical, electrical etc) because of that a failing part can be detected long before it actually has a hard failure with modern inspection tools.

For example firemens ladders are periodically magnefluxed and/or ultrasonicallly inspected for stress cracks because the ladders NEED to work.

I agree with you completely, i believe it was slowly degrading, as all of the welds are doing. I was just commenting on how I believed @Figment2005 thought it fractured.

And 'Diznee is a Bizness' don't you know they can't waste time and money on inspections outside of the legally mandated ones

Haha, you KNOW extra inspections won't happen unless they were to directly profit AND 100% depend on the monorail system. They will just continue to "rent" busses from 3rd party companies.

Even though people would lose it, they could replicate Tokyo's program, where they charge for use, but they would have to expand their services...... If yah know what I mean....

 

[Nubs70]

They actually replaced bus bars on the MK lines a couple years ago I believe after there was a big outage on a holiday weekend. I am not sure if the EPCOT line was done, but the challenge is they can only do the replacement when rails are shut down which isn't a lot of time each day. Even with the reduced operating hours we have seen, the amount of time the monorail system is entirely offline overnight is not much, only a few hours.

Even if the lines are down for only a few hours a night and a single section can be replaced within that downtime, if parts, equipment, and personell are prestaged, suspect sections can be replaced on a routine basis.

 

[skyphotographer]

As metal fatigues resistance increases. If the bar were to fatigue to breakage, electrical flow will cease. Hence a break in the circuit. II amnot sure if the Epcot loop is an entire single circuit, multiple single circuits, or multiple parallel circuits. In every configuration, resistance monitoring would indicate impending failure. Even nightly thermographic inspection would reveal impending failure. How difficult would it be to get a thermographic drone and program it to fly each monorail loop as a nightly pm program?

Considering Disney is a no-fly zone, it would be very difficult.