The 1990's Yan Detachable Chair Disaster

[James]

Yan High Speed Quad Retrofits 20 Years Later
By Peter Landsman
LiftBlog.com March 15, 2016
http://liftblog.com/2016/03/15/yan-high-speed-quads-20-years-later/

Excellent article on the Yan detachable chairlift design failure. In 1995 2 deaths and 9 seriously injured at Whistler. Yan went out of business due to its rushed and incomplete design job. The main issue was the use of rubber "springs" instead of the standard coils for the chair grip. But many other problems and quality issues plagued the design.
It's a sad affair all around.

This was an enormous expense for the ski industry. According to the article there were 31 Yan detachables in US and Canadian resorts.
Schweitzer went bankrupt replacing a lift. Sun Valley had 7 of the Yan detachables. Killington 2, Pico 2, Mt Snow 1, Sunday River 1. So ASC, American Skiing Company, had 6 lifts to modify or replace.

From the article:
"The Sun Valley Company announced a retrofit program together with Doppelmayr in May 1996. Doppelmayr replaced 652 grips and hangers, line gear on 134 towers and tire banks/contours on 14 terminals on Bald Mountain at a total cost of $9 million. General manager Wally Huffman recalled the episode as an “almost devastating financial blow to the company.” "

http://liftblog.com/2016/03/15/yan-high-speed-quads-20-years-later/

Anyone remember these lifts or issues?

 

[Jeff N]

No YAN detachable lifts in Colorado. The Colorado tramway board didn't trust YAN after the Teller lift failure and YAN apparently didn't want the additional scrutiny. In retrospect, it definitely made the CO tramway board look like geniuses.

The Teller fiasco made me spend a lot of time looking at welds on YAN lifts.

 

[James]

When was the Teller fiasco? That was the bullwheel weld?

 

[Jeff N]

When was the Teller fiasco? That was the bullwheel weld?

Yes.

In 1984, Keystone expanded onto North Peak with the Teller and Santiago lifts. The same year, they installed the first River Run Gondola. Both lifts and the gondola were made by YAN.

The very next season, the teller lift failed. http://www.summitdaily.com/article/20101215/NEWS/101219899

Some of the findings that came out of the investigation noted that YAN utilized construction practices that many manufacturers would never consider- like welding the bullwheel in the ski area parking lot by untrained employees. A lot more of lift assembly happened on site- by people with varying degrees of experience.

Keystone also had problems with the YAN gondola, although I've never seen a solid report on what specific problems they had. The gondola was the first YAN installation, although a cursory search indicates Squaw Valley also had a YAN gondola installed in 1984.

After the Teller lift accident/FUBAR, Keystone replaced the Yan Gondola with a Von Roll model for the 1986 season. The YAN gondola would have had detachable grips. I don't know whether the grips were similar to the later grips.

I dug up this picture of a grip from the Keystone gondola.
https://dspace.library.colostate.ed...erator_0=equals&filter_0=Yan+Lift+Engineering.

It looks different from the "marshmallow grip" that caused issues on the quads.

But, that could be a superficial difference and they could have used a similar rubber "spring" to apply grip force. Or, even scarier, perhaps the gondola used an even worse method and YAN considered the marshmallow grip an improvement. Yikes.

Squaw also replaced their YAN gondola after the 1986 season, according to chairlift.org. While I have yet to read any specific reason, two independent ski areas chose to yank and replace nearly-new (and very expensive) YAN gondolas after two seasons.

I found this snippet on the squaw gondola http://articles.latimes.com/1990-03-25/sports/sp-280_1_valley-usa/3

Anyways, I have always been very surprised that after the Teller accident and the gondola debacle that YAN still had a business- and ski areas were still willing to buy his lifts- especially his new designs.

And then there was Angel's Flight. Right in the midst of the detachable failures, good old Janek started a new company to work on people movers. He got the contract to rebuild Angel's Flight just before the Quicksilver failure. He had never designed a funicular before. It failed and killed one person in 2001. http://www.ladowntownnews.com/news/...cle_8a5b9a53-8c94-5cc5-9ece-be80c22af613.html

I would love to know what Janek's mindset is/was. How many people do you have to kill through design and engineering failures before your conscience would drive you to do something different with your life?

 

[scott43]

I'm not sure how he was still able to practice as an engineer. He likely would have lost his creds and ability to stamp if there were proven design or oversight faults on his part. I would think he'd have to recertify to get his license back. Unless he had others stamping for him, which is illegal. There were some very questionable design decisions to say the least. I'm not even a mechanical engineer and it's rather obvious even to me. Ego maybe...

 

[James]

Well they sure sold a lot of those detachables.

 

[Jeff N]

Well they sure sold a lot of those detachables.

From what I understand, the price point was significantly less, which was also true for the fixed grip lifts.

I suspect part of the "ego" problem was that his fixed grip lifts are generally considered well-designed. They are used straightforward designs, were aesthetically pleasing, could be sold at a profitable price point and have run well for decades at a ton of ski areas.

The Teller failure was an installation error- and when repaired, the lift operated for another few decades (as the Ruby lift) and even was installed at a different ski area (Discovery in Montana, I believe) after it was replaced at Keystone.

I think part of the problem was that by all reports, he flew by the seat of his pants with his initial fixed-grip designs, was successful with the design and was rewarded for it. I can totally see how he could feel he was just smarter than the other people in the game.

His design style seems to have backfired when things got more complex in the case of the gondola and detachable markets. If reports are to be believed, he designed the detachable in under a year. I could see his prior success leading him to feel his competitive advantage was his own innate talent- and making him feel justified in rushing through the process. Perhaps he brushed off the failure of the Teller lift as not a problem with manufacturing as it was a problem with a bad employee ruining things for him- and so what should have been a wake-up call didn't give him pause.

But all of this is speculation. I am always drawn to this story because not many engineers had so many design failures directly attributed to them, yet still found a market for new failures.

 

[Kneale Brownson]

Didn't Yan also have an issue with older (maybe1950s) fixed grip chairs that came from the factory with porous welds that could corrode internally as the paint aged and cause failure?

 

[Jeff N]

Didn't Yan also have an issue with older (maybe1950s) fixed grip chairs that came from the factory with porous welds that could corrode internally as the paint aged and cause failure?

I don't think so. For one, the company isn't that old- they started in the mid 60's installing lifts at Mammoth, and really took off in the 1970's and 1980's. I haven't heard anything about bad welds on carriers, but that may just mean I haven't heard it, not that it didn't happen.

IIRC, Loveland uses newer carriers on a few of their YAN lifts, so maybe there is something to it.

 

[Willy]

Oddly, we were just talking about this over the weekend. When the Whistler lift failed, Schweitzer immediately shut down the Great Escape and magnaflux tested all the grips and found ubiquitous micro-fracturing and that was that. Over the summer, Doppelmayr did a complete retrofit of not only the chairs and grips but engine housing, terminal covers, and virtually all components other than the towers. It is now a Doppelmayr chair and (mostly) works great.

Yes, it definitely hurt Schweitzer financially but, in my opinion, it's disingenuous to state that it forced them into bankruptcy. There were plenty of other management problems that hurt them that could be pointed to as cause for failure. In fact, this is the very first time I've heard this problem as being the cause of the bankruptcy. Revisionist history and the claim of a former owner who couldn't possibly see themselves as the cause of their demise seems to prevail with that explanation. Again, just my opinion but this doesn't really ring true to me.

Add by edit: The initial decision to buy the Yan lift, again in my opinion, is indicative of some of the other decisions made by then management that led to their demise. They made the purchasing decision based solely on price without thorough due diligence into design, manufacturing, or construction practices. But when something is so lower priced when compared to the competition, it's buyer beware. They simply got blinded by the lower price and made a bad choice. Again, indicative of many other actions that led to their bankruptcy.

 

[Jeff N]

Yes, it definitely hurt Schweitzer financially but, in my opinion, it's disingenuous to state that it forced them into bankruptcy. There were plenty of other management problems that hurt them that could be pointed to as cause for failure. In fact, this is the very first time I've heard this problem as being the cause of the bankruptcy. Revisionist history and the claim of a former owner who couldn't possibly see themselves as the cause of their demise seems to prevail with that explanation. Again, just my opinion but this doesn't really ring true to me.

I don't know enough about Sweitzer's history to comment, but I can certainly see that having to come out of pocket to replace or completely rebuild a nearly-new lift, or in many cases, a series of nearly-new lifts could definitely break the back of a ski area.

Worth noting that YAN was not a fly by night company. They had installed lots of lifts. Given the gondola debacle, I would bet most buyers expected more issues and growing pains, but felt the discount reflected that- and that any issues would get sorted out in time. Obviously nobody that purchased one of those lifts expected the worse-case scenario to be what it was.

 

[scott43]

The Teller failure was an installation error- and when repaired, the lift operated for another few decades (as the Ruby lift) and even was installed at a different ski area (Discovery in Montana, I believe) after it was replaced at Keystone.

I think part of the problem was that by all reports, he flew by the seat of his pants with his initial fixed-grip designs, was successful with the design and was rewarded for it. I can totally see how he could feel he was just smarter than the other people in the game.

I see the installation error as a failure on his part to ensure proper construction. Where's the site supervision on that? It's a fairly important part and probably there should have been a better spec/inspection process before acceptance for use. I agree, contractors can botch designs, but I think that should have been a red flag, personally. I suppose it depends on what was spec'd, what type of weld and quality of weld was to be executed.

 

[Willy]

I don't know enough about Sweitzer's history to comment, but I can certainly see that having to come out of pocket to replace or completely rebuild a nearly-new lift, or in many cases, a series of nearly-new lifts could definitely break the back of a ski area.

Worth noting that YAN was not a fly by night company. They had installed lots of lifts. Given the gondola debacle, I would bet most buyers expected more issues and growing pains, but felt the discount reflected that- and that any issues would get sorted out in time. Obviously nobody that purchased one of those lifts expected the worse-case scenario to be what it was.

Schweitzer's owner at the time was spending money like she had it. She didn't. All the while that this lift debacle crept in, she built an outdoor swimming pool for the hotel (now condos) at the base village for a substantial amount of money, like enough money that she could have just about built another lift for it. When you watch the steam rising out of the heated outdoor pool in the middle of February with no one ever using it, you could almost see the dollar signs forming from the vapor. In the meantime, a number of groomers were failing and she wasn't able to get financing for new ones so grooming was, at its best, mediocre. Another great example was a clock that was placed in a side lobby of the hotel. I was told that the clock cost $15,000. This was purchased either right after the bankruptcy filing or just a few weeks prior. Another example was the hotel itself. In order to save some money on its construction, they went with a residential composition roof (against the contractors stringent warnings). The tangential load from the snow on the roofing was dragging the roofing off the sheathing and resulted in dormer window wells on the top floor becoming detached from the base roof trusses, creating physical gaps in the roof that you could see through from the rooms. Needless to say, some of those rooms were unusable with snow on the floors and frozen guests (those that actually stayed). Since the contractor had her sign off a release related to the roofing decision, she was on the hook for the repairs. These are just some examples and I don't recall all the details now but us locals mostly just shook our collective head and marveled at the mismanagement of the resort.

As for YAN not being a fly by night company, the very information you posted above would have given me pause when making a purchasing decision. I would have hired my own engineering firm to provide review and due diligence along with observation over manufacturing and construction just based on the stories above that you've cited. Generally, if the price is too good, it's probably for good reason. They had installed lots of lifts but they also had lots of failures prior to Schweitzer's purchase. It's very unfortunate all this happened but we (Schweitzer regulars) are far better off under the current ownership than we were under the former and part of that is the transformation of the YAN lift to Doppelmayr. What's really unfortunate are the accidents where people were hurt and/or killed by engineering neglect. As an engineer, I can't feel badly for Lift Engineering as they clearly cut some corners to get where they got. In some countries, that kind of neglect gets you jailed. Or worse.

 

[James]

Interesting info on Schweitzer @Willy .
What's amazing is Sun Valley buying 7 Yan detachables. Then having to convert them all. I mean one or two is one thing but seven?
Know anything about that situation?

 

[Willy]

^^ No, I don't know what happened there but, obviously, a bad choice.

 

[DanoT]

I remember the Yan lifts at Whistler. You took 3 or 4 in a row to get up the mountain and at the time I thought that they were horrible pieces of junk.

 

[James]

Here's an article at the time about the accident. I didn't realize they were downloading at the time.

How Safe Is That Chairlift?
By Ron C. Judd
Seattle Times Outdoors Reporter
Jan 4, 1996

On the afternoon of Dec. 23, the Quicksilver Express, one of the resort's [Whistler] busiest high-speed shuttles, was "downloading" skiers from the mid-mountain level to the Whistler Creekside base. Downloading (riding the chairlift downhill, rather than up) is rare at most ski resorts. Typically, it's done only during emergency evacuations or by lift employees shuttling back to the base. But it is commonplace in early winter at Whistler, whose massive vertical drop (5,280 feet) means ski conditions can be great on the upper mountain, but the ground might be bare and unskiable near the base.

Skiers on the mountain that day said the Quicksilver lift was running about half full, with skiers loaded onto nearly every chair. Many other resorts that download riders load only every other chair, to reduce downhill weight loads. But the Quicksilver lift "is designed and certified for 100 percent download capacity," said Whistler spokesman David Perry.

Winds were light that day, and temperatures well above freezing. No unusual problems were reported by lift operators. But around 3 p.m., on a lower, particularly steep section of the 1 1/4-mile-long cable, a chair with two skiers aboard broke loose from its cable grip, sliding down the cable and colliding with the chair in front of it. The first chair broke free from the cable, crashing more than 30 feet to the rocks.

Up on the cable, a chain reaction ensued. The chair hit from behind by the first failed chair also slid forward, striking another chair, which slid and struck another. The three chairs dangled aloft until they struck a lift tower, at which point all three plunged to the ground.

Each of the four chairs involved in the accident had riders aboard, Perry said. In addition to the fatality, nine people were injured, some seriously. The lift was shut down, and 155 stranded skiers were evacuated with rope slings.

http://community.seattletimes.nwsource.com/archive/?date=19960104&slug=2307306

 

[Jeff N]

I see the installation error as a failure on his part to ensure proper construction. Where's the site supervision on that? It's a fairly important part and probably there should have been a better spec/inspection process before acceptance for use. I agree, contractors can botch designs, but I think that should have been a red flag, personally. I suppose it depends on what was spec'd, what type of weld and quality of weld was to be executed.

I totally agree. He screwed up and allowed his product to be constructed in a way that made quality control difficult/impossible.

But, based on his actions plunging headfirst into the detachable quad market immediately after Teller and his gondola failures, that failure didn't seem to inject any amount of caution into his thought process. My interpretation of his actions post-Teller is that he may have held himself blameless- his design was good and Teller would have been just fine if other's had done their job. Maybe he also felt that the gondolas would have been just fine if the resorts had given him just a little more time to work out the kinks- and perhaps he also blames Teller for eroding the confidence of the ski areas and thus leading them to yank the gondolas without giving him the time to fix it. All speculation, but it is the best theory I can come up with to provide some explanation of his actions.

But yeah, if he felt the Teller accident was somebody else's fault, he was wrong. A good designer ensures that people construct things as designed.

 

[Jeff N]

As for YAN not being a fly by night company, the very information you posted above would have given me pause when making a purchasing decision. I would have hired my own engineering firm to provide review and due diligence along with observation over manufacturing and construction just based on the stories above that you've cited. Generally, if the price is too good, it's probably for good reason. They had installed lots of lifts but they also had lots of failures prior to Schweitzer's purchase. It's very unfortunate all this happened but we (Schweitzer regulars) are far better off under the current ownership than we were under the former and part of that is the transformation of the YAN lift to Doppelmayr. What's really unfortunate are the accidents where people were hurt and/or killed by engineering neglect. As an engineer, I can't feel badly for Lift Engineering as they clearly cut some corners to get where they got. In some countries, that kind of neglect gets you jailed. Or worse.

Well, at the time YAN was selling detachable quads, they had one failure, and the failure was attributable to construction, not design. Most ski lift companies had at least one critical failure and many were design related.

I think the first YAN detachable went in at Mammoth, and I think it operated relatively smoothly- at least lacking the degree of teething problems that the gondolas seemed to have. Janek almost certainly got that contract due to his very close relationship with Mammoth owners.

Once that lift was going, YAN had something to point at to show that the gondola problems didn't carry over to the quads. Lacking the faith of Mammoth, I can see that first sale being tough with YAN's gondola history, but once they had an operating lift to point at, I think that went a long way.

That's not to say that they shouldn't have hired an engineering firm, and that is not to say that the points of concern in the design were unknowable, as the Colorado Tramway Board certainly had concerns that kept them out of the state. I'm just saying things are clear in hindsight, and I think purchasers of YAN lifts had a lot of reassurance- YAN had built lots of lifts, their initial detachable quad install appeared to run well enough, they made pretty, appealing lifts, they had a good price point and a very charismatic guy standing behind his work. I can see why lot of resorts got duped.

 

[James]

Well on Skilift.org there have been some discussions in the past about these things. Concerning Jan (Kunczynski) of Lift Engineering, Yan, here's an experienced poster who may have worked for Lift Engineering:

Emax 22 Sept 2009

Jan's zeal for doing things that had never been done - in ways that had never been tried - was (and still is) without limit. A great deal of lift design that is taken for granted today is not the product of the current (or even past) manufacturers - but actually originated from him. He was as confident as he was bold - a bit heavy on the bold, most would say.

His rate of success with his experimentation was really quite stunning - something like 75%. But since much of his "testing" was conducted on the customer's turf, it is the remaining 25% that is noted by posterity.

Testing:

Emax 23 Sept 2009
To clarify this matter a bit for you, ALL Yan bale and grip designs were vibration tested for at least 5,000,000 cycles on a shaker which I helped design.

A cam-operated section of "rope" was deflected 2 inches per revolution at rates that varied from 1 cycle per second to 10 cycles per second. It was intended that this simulated real-world conditions as well as they could be in a factory environment.
I cannot speak for "cold-world" testing of the rubber springs, though.

To my knowledge, Jan was the first manufacturer to install a full-scale test lift on his premises. Virtually all new (and old) designs were tested for extended periods of time on this facility - including various "rope position detectors" made by other companies that proved to be ineffective under expectable crisis conditions. This lift could be run under several programmed scenarios for 24 hours per day.

http://www.skilifts.org/forum/index.php?showtopic=8000