 Disney World Florida, said to be the happiest place on earth, as long as you ignore the more unpalatable aspects of the company. You know, the sweatshops they use in China and Bangladesh, they're less than nice working conditions for cast members in the theme parks and the fact they laid off thousands of staff during the recent pandemic, i.e. the worst time to be made unemployed in recent history, especially for service industry workers. But kids love their TV shows and films. Hell, even my own offspring love Disney products. It's like eating doughnuts. We all know that they're bad, but damn they taste so good. I think I've gotten a little sidetracked here. Excuse the pun. Well personally, one of my favourite parts of Disney World when I went near in the early 2000s was the monorail. Such a futuristic mode of transport. And to a very young plainly John, I thought this must be the future of passenger travel. But I was a child, and thus an idiot. There are massive inherent downsides to such a method of transport, and they didn't even throw an elephant off of one of their new age trains. There are much better videos on YouTube explaining this, but you might ask why am I going on a tirade about Disney and monorails. This is a channel devoted to the folly of mankind in the form of its bugger ups after all. Well, my captive slice of YouTube audience, the happiest place on earth hasn't escaped its fair share of disasters. And one such happened in 2009 on the same thing that a young plainly John admired so much. When I went to Disney World, I wanted so much to ride in the front cab. But sadly every time I got there, someone else had beat me to it. But in hindsight, maybe this was a good thing. Well, that's my introduction done, let's get started. I'm John and you're watching Plainly Difficult. It is the 1960s, and a new Disney theme park is being planned. The project had started in 1959, initially as an extension to the already established Anaheim Resort in California. Eventually it became apparent that maybe a complete blank slate would offer a unique opportunity to have full control over the area surrounding the park. The original Disneyland had become a bit hemmed in by local businesses, which were trading off the popularity of the resort. Market research had shown somewhere closer to the east coast would serve the company well, and after searching, a site in Florida was settled upon. Now I'm going to speed past the land acquisition part of Disney World. But it is very interesting and worth looking up, as Disney was very sneaky in how they brought up all the required space. Walt Disney was a bit of a transport fan to put it lightly, and as such, when the Anaheim park was built, he managed to incorporate several methods of transport, one of which was the monorail, and was a pet project of Disney's. As such, the new Florida park would get a similar treatment. Originally, the Florida site was intended to showcase a future city concept with futuristic rapid transit at the forefront. This was called the Experimental Prototype Community of Tomorrow, or EPCOT. This would change after Walt Disney's death in 1966, but EPCOT would open, but to a more watered-down version to the actual living working city envisioned in the park's early concept stages. But even though, not a futuristic experiment, the park still needed transportation to connect up hotels, car parks, and the park itself. This was done by an intricate fleet of trackless trams, buses, and the monorail system. When Disney World opened in October 1971, the monorail system had four stops. This was expanded in October 1982 when EPCOT was opened. The network's final addition was in 1988 with the Grand Floridian Station. The system was electrified via the beam, which provided 600 volts via a bus bar. The monorail has a track length of 14.7 miles, consisting of two routes in which three services operate. To connect the routes, switching beams are used at a spur line is employed for access between the main line and the EPCOT line. The trains used on the network were called Mark 6 and measured in 62 meters, or 203 feet and 6 inches, in length, and were 42 metric tons each. Each train could carry up to 360 passengers. Now with a fairly complex network that encompasses stopping and various express services, effective train control is required, and this is my favorite part of one of these videos. The monorail has actually quite a sophisticated form of proprietary kind of a moving block signaling system called MAPO. The design of the system was paid for from royalties from Mary Poppins, hence MAPO. Even though the dumb name, it's no Mickey Mouse signaling system. The track or beam is split up into multiple sections, which is around 500 feet. These form a block section and transmitters on the beam transmit frequencies to the train. This will tell it the state of the track ahead. This is displayed to the driver or pilot, as Disney calls them, on a display, as either a green signal, which means at least three blocks are clear, a yellow, two blocks are clear, and red, the next block is occupied. If the train goes past a red, then the emergency brakes are applied, requiring the driver to use an override button. The system, when used like this, works pretty well. If a driver gets a red more than twice in two years, then they're taken off driver duties and is thus fairly well managed. But the system does need to be overridden during operation sometimes, for example to go onto the spur line, into the maintenance building during a signal failure, or for reversing movements. The latter of these operations was a common form of working at the start and end of the working day. This is to work the trains to and from the maintenance facility, which is accessed via the express beam. This is fairly straightforward for the trains already on this beam. But what about the trains on the separate Epcot beam? Well, there is a switching beam provided, requiring trains to proceed past the ticket and transport centre station and continue, so that the rear of the train is clear of switch nine. The move is given under the authority of the monorail central coordinator via radio, stating the following, normal visual to pylon 30, hold and notify. Because each pylon is numbered and identifiable, trains can be moved under degraded working by passing mapo. Although the initial movement to the pylon, clear of the switch was done under the full protection of the signalling system, any following train would have to override the mapo system as the train standing at pylon 30 would still occupy the block section, which to me seems like a very dangerous situation. And this was the exact scenario that was about to unfold in the early hours of the fifth of July 2009. It is the end of a long day of operation for the Disney World monorail system. The parks stay open till roughly around 11pm as restaurants and evening events provide entertainment for the park's guests. Like with any other transit system in the world, operation continues well into the evening and early morning as guests make their way back to their cars, hotels or onto other public transport. As such, monorails pink, purple, silver, red and coral were working on the system. As the numbers of passengers dwindled, the system gradually began to shut down for the night. The express beam runs roughly an hour after park closure, but the Epcot beam continues for around two. This allows the express and resort monorails to be worked to stabling points before the Epcot trains need to undertake their reversing moves. At around 1.53am, the central coordinator gave the authority for pink monorail to manoeuvre itself to pylon 30 for its reversing move. Usually the coordinator worked from a building on the Epcot line side of the ticket centre. There they had switch position indicators and a CCTV feed, but due to staffing issues, the role was being filled by a manager, who had set up in a nearby restaurant using his phone for communication and thus had no access to the control room equipment. Behind it were purple and coral monorails still running on the Epcot beam. Purple had approximately six passengers on board and was making its way to the ticket and transport centre. Because pink was in the block section ahead, purple was instructed to override the MAPO system to enter the station. Once pink had cleared the switch beam, the driver informed the central controller that he was clear and awaiting further instructions. The controller then contacted the shop panel operator. This person was responsible for power distribution and switch operation. The actions in order the operator needs to take consist of select the switch beam on the control panel, cut power to the beam, order the change of alignment and confirm, command and re-establish power once the track is in the correct position. If these actions aren't undertaken in quick succession, the system times out, meaning the operator would have to restart the process. But this timeout would also cause the panel screen to change windows and revert back to its normal window. The operator was in the process of setting up the switch for monorail pink when he received a radio call from monorail silver. The driver was reporting an issue with his train as it entered the workshop. This led the operator to move away from the control panel to make a note of this in his log. Again, another radio call distracted the operator, this time from monorail red, as it was approaching the maintenance facility and was requesting further instructions. The operator replied, hold outside the facility. This was at roughly 1.56am. The operator returned to the panel, which had now timed out, thus returning the screen window to the main display. The operator assumed that he had completed the switch alignment, restored traction current and radioed to the central control, but he had set up the route for monorail pink. He was provided a CCTV feed to seal the switch, but he failed to check. The switch had not actually been moved, and any reversing move of monorail pink would send it back the way it came, the station concourse, the same that purple was pulling onto. Sometimes reversing moves undertaken on the monorail weren't requested by the central coordinator for the driver to change ends, or have a member of staff in the rear cab. As such, when monorail pink was given the authority to reverse, the driver wouldn't have had a visual on the state of the switch. Pink moved backwards as purple entered the station. Seeing the imminent collision, the driver of purple attempted to reverse, but pink's rear cab slammed into the purple's leading end, crushing the two together. The impact pushed, both trains now crushed together down the platform. The driver of the pink monorail felt and heard the collision. He stopped moving, and upon realizing that he was not on the spur line, knew it was another train that was the source of the bump and noise. Staff on the station evacuated the passengers off the purple monorail and attempted to rescue the driver, but no sign of life could be seen. Not long after, the first emergency responders were on the scene, and the driver of purple was found to be dead. The passengers and the driver of pink monorail were uninjured. The cost was thought to be upwards of $24 million in damages. Even though the system resides on privately owned Disney property, investigators of any accident on the monorail came under the purview of the NTSB. As such, an investigation was launched, and they would find some worrying operational norms for the Disney monorail. In a subsequent report into the accident, the NTSB discovered that Walt Disney World Resort's procedures for the central coordinator did not specify that the central coordinator should observe the display at the concourse tower when directing monorail movements. Procedures also did not require that the central coordinator be in the concourse tower when directing monorail movements. It was also found that it was down to the coordinator's discretion if the train driver needed to change ends before a reversing movement. Which wasn't often requested because it was quicker to just back the train up. Observing the switch movement on the CCTV was not compulsory for the panel operator, apart from making sure it was clear of the train before moving the switch. The operator even said in an interview, they said just make sure that there's no train on that switch before you move it. The blame for the accident was due to three factors. One, the coordinator not observing the movement and authorizing the driver of pink to back up the train without changing ends. Two, the panel operator not actually moving the switch and not checking on the CCTV. And finally, Walt Disney World itself for its terrible safety practices that allowed all of these awful operating decisions to become the standard way of working. The operator of the pink monorail was absolved of all blame due to the movement of the train into the station concourse and the spur was virtually identical. And that he was concentrating on not going above 15mph, which would be a safety violation when overriding the May post system. Disney World enacted post accident multiple changes to ensure that everyone is where they should be in the case of switching beams. The driver in the correct cab, the coordinator in the control room and the panel operator to confirm the switch movement. This accident is the reason why you can't go into the driver's cab anymore. The system was made fully automatic in 2014. Drivers still remain in the cab, but the train start control is now handled by platform staff, which I think is kind of sad. Now where would you rate this disaster on my disaster and legacy scales? I'm going to say four and five, but maybe a four if you're not bothered about the riding in the driver's cab thing. All videos on the channel are Creative Commons attribution share alike licensed. Plain difficult videos are produced by me, John, in a current sunny corner of suburban southern London, UK. This channel is made possible by my patrons and YouTube members who all get early access to videos. I'd also like to thank my PayPal donors. Help channel grow by liking, commenting and subscribing. Check out my Twitter for all sorts of photos, nods and sods, as well as hints on future videos. And all that's left to say is thank you for watching.