Dan Nicholas Park shuts down train ride after derailment causes minor injuries

PROVIDENCE — The train ride that has been a fixture of Dan Nicholas Park will be shut down indefinitely after a derailment earlier this week that ended in multiple minor injuries has caused county officials to consider replacing the trains and the tracks.

Officials said that they could not disclose how many people were involved in the incident that occurred at approximately noon on Monday. Parks and Recreation Director Don Bringle said that only the rear car of the train derailed with children and adults inside of it and that multiple incident reports were filed with no serious injuries reported.

“These trains are old, they are problematic, and it’s in the best interest of everyone, with their age and them being vintage, that we go ahead and close it,” said Bringle.

He said that the engines and the cars on the three trains were built in the 1940s and the 1950s. After the crash, Dan Nicholas Park maintenance staff and officials with the N.C. Department of Labor’s Division of Elevators and Amusements investigated the incident.

Officials were unable to determine the cause of the crash. County Manager Aaron Church said that the inability to put a finger on what went wrong contributed to his belief that the trains needed to be replaced.

The attraction will be closed indefinitely as county officials look into options to replace the attraction, said Bringle. County Manager Aaron Church said that because the county was keeping all of its options open that they could not say how long the ride would be closed, but he expected that it would take at least a year.

“This just can’t happen again,” said Church.

Bringle specifically pointed to the train ride at Kannapolis’ Village Park as an example of what the future attraction could look like, saying the larger track size led to increased safety and reliability.

Bringle said that both the train station and the carousel would be remaining open during the train ride closure.

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