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Not a derailment, the road wheel exploded during the cycle. It looks like what a car does when it has a flat tire and slouched down on one corner. Not entirely sure why the wheel exploded, because Toro never had a history of doing this.

Train saddled in the usual spot it does if it doesn't have enough momentum on a cold morning. Maintenance responded and had everyone off the train in under 15 minutes.
 
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I have a trip planned there next weekend.
If El Toro is down that will suck. It's amazing. Hopefully, if this is just a case of them not doing adequate maintenance (not replacing the wheels often enough), they can do that maintenance now and more frequently from now on, and it will be running better than ever.
 
If El Toro is down that will suck. It's amazing. Hopefully, if this is just a case of them not doing adequate maintenance (not replacing the wheels often enough), they can do that maintenance now and more frequently from now on, and it will be running better than ever.

Thing with polyurethane wheels is that they can develop air bubbles over time that can be missed in morning inspections and only detectable while riding the ride. They inspect the ride every morning, every inch of the track and trains prior to opening. Toro isn't a neglected ride like people think it is, this is just one of those freak things that wasn't a problem during morning inspections and steadily worsened throughout the day in the 95+ degree heat.

i305 and Millennium Force have also both done it, would it be a case of inadequate maintenance for them as well?
 
Allegedly, though, eyewitnesses are saying that this happend on the first drop and the car was dragged throughout the layout, with smoke coming from behind the train, until it came to a stop. I don't have a reference for this, though, so take with a grain of salt. But if so, could this cause track damage throughout?
 
Allegedly, though, eyewitnesses are saying that this happend on the first drop and the car was dragged throughout the layout, with smoke coming from behind the train, until it came to a stop. I don't have a reference for this, though, so take with a grain of salt. But if so, could this cause track damage throughout?

If there is any track damage it would be to the top running rail / boards of the track instead of the guide rail and upstop. El Toro is not a normal wooden coaster in that it has multiple layers of boards creating the running rails, it's segments of pressure treated wood that's basically more like a whole track segment. It would all be dependent on how much that 6th car dug down on the track but at the same time the train legitimately almost made it all the way around the course.

I'd be more inclined to believe the smoke and dust everyone was talking about was actually the fiberglass of the train getting worn down on the track and not the running board getting torn apart like the more pessimistic types are saying. This is also why I say it was a blown wheel instead of a full on derailment, because a derailment would not have permitted the train to nearly complete the entire course with the problem occurring so early on. None of the pictures I have seen explicitly point out to me that the train had derailed, in fact the wheel assemblies have a lot more travel in them than people tend to believe when you see the one rear wheel fully exposed, that is norrmal as the train is going through the final twists before the brake run. It's only visible in the photo because the car has all its weight resting on one point like in this picture below:

1625071318538.png

The other reason why I don't think the damage is as bad as people are saying is because the car in question more than likely was attempting to tricycle throughout the layout, which is where the "fishtailing" comments have been coming from. The car attempting to balance itself during the ride could give the illusion that the car is moving left to right because the car is just twisting between resting on the corner of the missing wheel and tricycling like in this picture below:

1625071531172.png
 

The Department of Community Affairs spokesperson is reporting that the up-stop wheel came up on top of the track. Six Flags spokesperson is still saying that the train never came off of the track. As b.mac said above, the articles linked says the "El Toro will not reopen until the DCA is provided with a report by the ride manufacturer indicating what caused the derailment as well as how to mitigate the issue,""
 
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The DCA getting involved isn't an abnormal thing anyways, any time a ride at Great Adventure has an unload from an unusual position or due to an unusual circumstance they want to know why. They're all speaking officially in that article and the situation definitely isn't as serious as the article's tone makes it out to be.
 
That article says nothing about a wheel exploding, so that info seems to be false. It says that somehow the upstop wheel got up on top of the track.
 
Warping vs exploding but based on the same idea of maintenance not being able to see it on a morning inspection.
 
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