61 replies to this topic

[floridaskier]

Personally, I don't try to avoid any type of lift because of safety concerns. I have no idea how many people ride lifts compared to the number of deaths, but it has to be better than, say, airplanes

[Allan]

You're right - riding a ski lift is safer than flying in a plane. I heard that somewhere else too. I haven't a single worry about riding our YANs, we pay as much attention to them as we do the other lifts.

[floridaskier]

Just as we're talking about the good lift safety record, a 17 year old girl from Norway dies in an accident

[liftmech]

I saw that. If I could read Norwegian, I'd read the article and see if it was a freak accident or bad maintenance. Guess we'll have to wait until Tom has more info.

[Powdr]

I don't think lift safety as whole is the issue. I also believe that ski lifts are typically well engineered and routinely provide excellent safety records. It was just the Yan company (and later incarnations) that had me concerned. Let's face it, Yan has always tried to increase his profit margins by producing his products as cheaply as possible. In my opinion, some of his designs (not all) seem to have come too close to the edge of safety margins. His fleeing to Mexico doesn't promote a sense of high integrity.

Powdr

[poloxskier]

Did the gondola at Squaw have similar design both technical and the cabins?

Some of the cabins from the original keystone gondola can still be found arround summit county as some people purchaced them when it was removed.

[poloxskier]

I have been trying to get ahold of one of those cabins for a long time to have up in breck since I really like them as well but they have been extremely elusive. The bus stop idea is a great one. I think that Keystone's used Von Roll Grips as well but I'm not sure about the rest of the terminal equipment.

This post has been edited by poloxskier: 22 March 2005 - 04:59 PM

[caroth]

Nice write-up Brad! I remember that day well. On that day, our Boy Scout troop was at Keystone for a day of skiing. We skied North Peak in the morning, but the snow was pretty poor so we headed back over to the front side. The lift fell a few hours later.

Kinda scary! I also remember that when I worked at the local Boy Scout ranch in the summer, one of my co-workers was the top liftie when it fell. He was pretty upset when it happened and would not talk about it even years later. Now if I could only remember his name.

This post has been edited by caroth: 22 March 2005 - 05:20 PM

[SkiBachelor]

Hey Bud, did Keystone pay for its YAN gondola too? I'm just curious since Brad has something on his site about how the gondola was free since it was a prototype.

Do you happen to know why Keystone's YAN gondola was removed also. I talked with one of the lift mechanics there and he believed that they removed it since they didn't like how the grips started to appear after a certain amount of time. However, if they were Von Roll grips along with the terminals, I don't see how that would be YAN's fault. That's why I'm curious.

If Alex Cushing and Keystone didn't like the cabins, why didn't they just go out and purchase CWA cabins instead, because I could see how it would get kind of annoying having to manually opne those cabin doors all the time.

It's also kind of interesting that the YAN gondola towers were also removed when they could have easily been reused.

[poloxskier]

I thought the gondola at keystone had automatic doors, unless they weren't working correctly, at least thats what I remember from the few times that I rode on it.

This post has been edited by poloxskier: 22 March 2005 - 06:21 PM

[SkiBachelor]

The gondola that's at the base of Keystone looked like it had handles on it to open up the doors.

[poloxskier]

Its been a while so I cant be absolutely sure but I remember only having someone let you out of the old Vail Gondola and maybe the Monarch Crest in Colorado. If you look at the pictures like this one from brad's site you see that the Bumper on the bottom of the cabin looks like it slides back and forth so I think that may be the way it opened. Ill try to track down one that may still be complete and see what I can find. BTW where did you see one of the yan cabins?

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[SkiBachelor]

Here is the link to that page. The picture of the gondola that you posted Bryan was just a conept or protype cabin. It's not the kind that was used on the YAN gondola at Keystone. Maybe Squaw's looked like that though?

http://www.skilifts.org/nwsforum/index.php...c=1288&hl=cabin

This gondola cabin is located right next to the Summit Express at keystone at the small cabin that you can see next to the lift. If you go to Keystone in the summer, you can easily spot it.

[poloxskier]

Oh down that path were there is a private residence sign. I also just posted on that other topic that there was one at Fatty's Pizzaria but it has disapeared.

Its been a while ago that I rode that for obvious reasons but I remember it being a really nice and comfortable gondola from a skier standpoint. But like the River Run before they either removed some of the cabins or worked out the bugs the cabins did colide in the terminal.

This post has been edited by poloxskier: 22 March 2005 - 06:52 PM

[poloxskier]

SkiBachelor, on Mar 22 2005, 08:06 PM, said:

Do you happen to know why Keystone's YAN gondola was removed also. I talked with one of the lift mechanics there and he believed that they removed it since they didn't like how the grips started to appear after a certain amount of time. However, if they were Von Roll grips along with the terminals, I don't see how that would be YAN's fault. That's why I'm curious.

It's also kind of interesting that the YAN gondola towers were also removed when they could have easily been reused.
<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

That also makes me wonder why, if it was the Von Roll grips that they didnt like about the Yan gondola, that they then bought a gondola from Von Roll. Also It does suprise me that there were no towers reused, although the first depression does look different from most Von Roll's that I have seen.

[Duck]

budfischer, on Mar 22 2005, 08:31 PM, said:

The gondola at Squaw used Yan's towers and cabins (they're the same type as at Keystone) - but Von Roll built the terminals.  Their accelerator / decelerator design used a "hard-wired PLC" to control the speed of a single motor per side that in turn drove a conveyor-like chain that engaged the cabin grips and accelerated them according to a programmed curve to an exact line speed match.  Pretty sophisticated - WAY complicated.

Sounds a lot easier to me than the current method of using a lot of tires and belts with tons of moving parts. :) Were the drive motors driven off a VFD? If so, that's pretty simple to do (just set the ramp in the drive, give it a start/stop signal, etc). I'm interested to learn what the exact mechanical design of the chain/sled/conveyor was, and how it'd smoothly engage the carrier on arrival at the terminal.

What do you mean by "hard wired PLC"? Do you just mean it was relay-logic driven with a whole bunch of proximity or limit switches?

-Iain

[poloxskier]

budfischer, on Mar 23 2005, 10:22 AM, said:

Keystone's gondola was removed due to concerns over safety and mechanical failures.  They did pay for it... mostly.  Further, the one at Keystone used Yan's grips, not Von Roll's.  Squaw was the only Yan / Von Roll collaboration.

So was the grip that was used similar to the type 7 or was it a specific gondola design?

[poloxskier]

Ok thanks for the info.

[Duck]

budfischer, on Mar 23 2005, 01:55 PM, said:

Yes, it was a pretty slick system.  No, the motor was DC.  NOT so simple, Margaret - the peak carrier speed had to match the rope speed exactly at the moment of gripping.

Sure, that makes sense. To reduce the wear on the grip, right? (learned about that here!)

So I'm visualising this, based on your description, as a loop of rope, with a sled/skate on it which couples somehow to the carrier as it enters the terminal? That must have sounded pretty neat, with it ramping up/down every time a cabin came in or left!

budfischer said:

The rope speed varies constantly, and their grip needed to miss the tucks in the rope.  A radio-active isotope implanted in the core of the rope alerted the system as to the location of all "no grip" areas and corrections in the accel curve were made to achieve a "miss.".

Now that sounds very difficult! I wonder why on that particular system, it was unsafe to grip where the main rope was attached together. How would you get around that on a conventional tire-driven detachable?

-Iain

[Kelly]

Cabin question from page 2
The two rollers parallel with the haulrope guided the cabin in its detached state. Third arm was for door activation. Slots in the floor guided both. Clean simple design with only slight problems with slot icing in heavy snow. Hell to get open in an evacuation if you didn’t have the right tool.
Slots in floor were difficult to place prior to the pouring of concrete, repairs and changes often looked like a Los Angeles freeway interchange.

Ryan B