ReplicaOfLife

According to this article: http://www.coastersandmore.de/rides/olympial/olmain.shtml, the track layout of Dreier Looping (= Montana Infinitum / Chimaira), featuring almost only right turns, rather unsurprisingly causes one-sided wear on the train chassis / axles (the passage is in the second paragraph of the 'Projekt Nr. 8509 section). This was already noticed by showman Barth in the 80ies, so he had the Olympia Looping designed to feature curves in both directions. So, this coaster indeed has a design flaw (and so does Mindbender, being its bigger mirror image). Still, it ran without problems for 35 years. It's for experts to determine whether the cause for the accident was material fatigue because of the one-sided wear, or bad maintenance, or a combination of the two. Or something else entirely.

Do we know how much or little maintenance Merlin performed on Colossos? If Colossos deteriorated in 2016 (15 years after opening), the next one that should become rough if it's inherent to the design would be Balder. Balder opened in 2003, so 2018 is the 15 year mark. But as of September of last year, Balder was perfectly smooth outside of a minor bump here and there riding in the back. It's still smoother than 90-95% of wooden coasters. Colossos was the prototype and had a different track design than the later coasters. Apparently, with the prototype track design it's not possible to exchange individual sections of the track (don't really understand why). So they have to exchange the entire track even though some sections may not warrant that yet. With the later track design, it is possible to exchange individual track sections, thus the other Intamin prefabs propably will not ever face a problem of this magnitude.

Has it been confirmed that Olympia Looping is coming back to London? They haven't started promoting it yet, but it's definitely is coming. Barth (showman that owns Olympia Looping) certainly won't say no... Winter Wonderland was the first time ever that it ran 7 car trains outside of the Oktoberfest, due to the incredible demand it got. For all other fairs in Germany, they use 5 car trains, even for the other really big ones in the Ruhr area, Hamburg and Stuttgart (though Olympia hasn't been to either of the last two in years, due to the increased transport costs. It used to be at 7-8 fairs a year, now it's down to 3-4). Btw, Robb, have you ever been to the "Cannstatter Wasen" fair in Stuttgart? I'm asking because you propably passed right by Stuttgart on your way from Munich to Europa Park while it was on (today is its last day, actually). This years line-up includes Teststrecke (Schwartzkopf Double Looping, the former Laser from Dorney Park), a classic big Schwartzkopf Wildcat called Rock'n'Roller Coaster, a huge Spinning Coaster, and lots and lots of flatrides, including the insane KMG prototype "Infinity".

Olympia Looping has been confirmed to make an appearance at the "Bremer Freimarkt" fair in Bremen (14th-30th of October), following Oktoberfest. This is very surprising: A few years back, R. Barth went on record in an interview that such long distance hauls inbetween fairs were just not feasible anymore as the transport costs pretty much ate up all the profits. He explicitly mentioned the trek from Munich to Bremen in that interview. That's why in the last few years before this one Olympia Looping only appeared at one or two big fairs in the Rhine/Ruhr area and at the Okotoberfest, instead of the 7-8 fairs throughout the country it appeared at all the years before. So the only reason they would be doing that this year is that they are headed somewhere else. And Bremen is more or less on the way to London (and a seaport on top of that...).