Safeguarding a roller coaster at Wildlands Adventure Zoo

The park is divided into three zones; Jungola, Serenga and Nortica. Today we meet Erwin van der Veen in Serenga where the roller coaster Tweestryd is located. Erwin is project manager, work planner and construction supervisor at Koenen Bouw (part of Volker Wessel). This multidisciplinary function is typical for Koenen Bouw. The lines are short and the involvement and knowledge on site is very high. Koenen Bouw played a major role in the realisation of the new roller coaster. They handled, among other things, the foundations, the fences and the paintwork. The roller coaster itself was built by Vekoma. According to Erwin van der Veen, the realisation of Tweestryd in Wildlands is a unique project;

The special thing about this project is that everything, really everything, is made in theme. This is implemented in all three themed climate zones in a unique way to create the ultimate experience for the visitors. They imagine themselves to be in another part of the world. This means that even the door locks supplied by Unique Safety Products are made in the theme.

Safety obviously plays a huge role and Unique Safety Products was asked to advise Koenen Bouw on the purchase of the machine safety components. This resulted in the purchase of an interlock system, which brought considerable cost savings. Because an interlock system uses mechanical door locks that are opened with a coded key from a safety key switch, it was not necessary to dig in conduits for the wiring to the doors. Since the doors that need to be safeguarded are located at different distances from the control cabinet, Koenen Bouw was able to carry out the order more cost-effectively than initially budgeted.

By using Interlock Systems, the chance of malfunctions is greatly reduced. Interlock or key transfer systems are a proven method for the largely mechanical protection of machines and processes. The principle of interlock systems is based on the release and locking of uniquely coded keys in a predetermined sequence. Fortress Interlocks can produce 200,000 unique key codes and registers them with end users to prevent duplicate releases. In addition, the mGard product group used by Fortress Interlocks is TüV certified and suitable for use in PLe and SIL3 applications.

The realisation of the Tweestryd project started in September 2017. The planned opening of April 2018 seemed ambitious at first, but due to a very smooth and efficient course of the project, this deadline was met. Koenenbouw benefited greatly from the clear communication and good support from Unique Safety Products. Those who dare can take on the challenge from 5 April in one of the mine carts and skim past each other at a dizzying height.