Strange Monorail Behavior Tonight

[Missymoe4]

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Sorry to hear about the recent problems. Lets hope our fleet gets some love in the coming week.

Go Shop boys!

Now about that 'unnessesary' info being mumbled over the mic when you are waiting to clear.......

I love it when the Pilots do this. I want to hear them talk! I have had some interesting and equallly hilarious times riding because of these speils. Once i was riding Orange and we took part in a safety check. Most of the Guests were clueless, but i was bouncing with glee inside as i knew actually what was happening. The Pilot had this amazing speil while it was all going down...but i am sure most people were not paying attention. He was great...and it was informative and entertaining while we went through the paces. Another time there was a great deal of humour involved in the comments. All good clean fun...

So keep talkin' gents....i for one love being your captive audience.

I LOVE it too!!

Figments Friend...care to elaborate on this safety check? I'm interested in what it is.

 

[Rob562]

I LOVE it too!!

Figments Friend...care to elaborate on this safety check? I'm interested in what it is.

Whenever they bring a train onto the beam (and perhaps when they switch a train from one beam to another) they go through safety checks using the other trains on the beam. They also used to do it mid-day (when passenger load is typically lowest) but I'm not sure if they still do.

One of these checks, the MAPO check, the pilot stops the train at a normal hold point, with another train ahead of them (typically in a station). Then, with Monorail Central's permission, they slowly drive forward until their train senses the train ahead, their blocklight turns red and the train automatically kicks on the emergency brakes. (At slow speeds it's just a slightly faster stop than normal, so most Guests don't notice anything, but if it happened to happen at full-speed, the train would come to a very hard and fast stop)

There's a video on YouTube taken by a Guest from a few years back of the test being done on the Epcot beam, but for the life of me I can't find it now.

-Rob

 

[sublimesting]

My friend and his family were on Monorail ["perhaps Silver"] tonight at about 4:30pm, traveling on the Resort line from Contemporary to TTC.

About halfway between Contemporary and TTC (at the hold point), their train stopped for a good 5-6 minutes. Meanwhile, Green loaded at TTC and then drove forward to Silver's position and held.

Then, both trains traveled in parallel to the TTC (Green going "backwards"). Silver stopped to unload, while Green switched directions and headed back to the MK via the correct direction (through Contemporary).

While holding, Silver pilot came on and mumbled something about having to do a "parallel move" and actually said something along the lines of "...making sure one monorail doesn't back into another..."

First, can anyone enlighten me on this operation? I can only assume it stems from the accident, but what would this specific move accomplish?

And secondly, it seems very un-magical for the pilot to use "so trains don't collide" in his spiel. My friend (who is very technical and very into WDW monorails) said the pilot was basically rambling about technical stuff he probably shouldn't have been relaying to guests, but must have figured people needed to hear something.

On an unrelated note, later tonight, they were coming into TTC on the Epcot line and pilot overshot the platform....by about 30'. Oops. Took about 2 minutes to get all the clearances and overrides in place to back up - expectedly.

And on a possibly related note, yesterday they had a bus bar issue on the Express line. He said he overheard the words "power....something.....not resetting." Gold's tail was hanging out the north side of the Contemporary, Teal was stuck at the hold point outside MK, and green (or lime) was at the TTC.

Any insight on any of this?

Based on your thread title I thought you were going to say its eyes were red and it was eating a bag of Ruffles or something.