A roller coaster is a type of amusement ride employing a form of elevated railroad track that carries passengers on a train through tight turns, steep slopes, and other elements usually designed to produce a thrilling experience. Trains consist of open cars connected in a single line, and the rides are often found in theme parks around the world. Roller coasters first appeared in the 17th century, and LaMarcus Adna Thompson obtained one of the first known patents for a roller coaster design in 1885, based on the Switchback Railway which opened a year earlier at Coney Island.
Dreamland Margate is an amusement park and entertainment centre based on a traditional English seaside funfair located in Margate, Kent, England. The site of the park was first used for amusement rides in 1880, although the Dreamland name was not used until 1920 when the park's Grade II* listed Scenic Railway wooden rollercoaster was opened.
A brake run on a roller coaster is any section of track that utilizes some form of brakes to slow or stop a roller coaster train. There are various types of braking methods employed on roller coasters, including friction brakes, skid brakes, and magnetic brakes. The most common is a fin brake, an alternative name for a friction brake, which involves a series of hydraulic-powered clamps that close and squeeze metal fins that are attached to the underside of a coaster train. Roller coasters may incorporate multiple brake runs throughout the coaster's track layout to adjust the train's speed at any given time.
Luna Park Melbourne is a historic amusement park located on the foreshore of Port Phillip Bay in St Kilda, Melbourne, Victoria. It opened on 13 December 1912, with a formal opening a week later, and has been operating almost continuously ever since.
The Giant Dipper is a historic wooden roller coaster located at the Santa Cruz Beach Boardwalk, an amusement park in Santa Cruz, California. The Giant Dipper, which replaced the Thompson's Scenic Railway, took 47 days to build and opened on May 17, 1924, at a cost of $50,000. With a height of 70 feet (21 m) and a speed of 55 miles per hour (89 km/h), it is one of the most popular wooden roller coasters in the world. As of 2012, over 60 million people have ridden the Giant Dipper since its opening. The ride has received several awards such as being named a National Historic Landmark, a Golden Age Coaster award, and a Coaster Landmark award.
Seabreeze Amusement Park (Seabreeze) is a historic family amusement park located in Irondequoit, New York, a suburb of Rochester, where Irondequoit Bay meets Lake Ontario. According to the National Amusement Park Historical Association (NAPHA), Seabreeze is the fourth-oldest operating amusement park in the United States and the thirteenth-oldest operating amusement park in the world, having opened in 1879. The park features roller coasters, a variety of other rides, a midway, and a water park.
Big Dipper was a wooden roller coaster located at the defunct Geauga Lake amusement park in Bainbridge Township, Ohio. Originally opened in 1925 as Sky Rocket, it was renamed Clipper in the late 1940s, and eventually Big Dipper in 1969. It was the oldest operating roller coaster in Ohio and seventh-oldest in the United States when it closed in 2007. Designed by John A. Miller, the Big Dipper was also one of the last remaining roller coasters in the world from the designer. American Coaster Enthusiasts awarded the coaster its ACE Coaster Classic and ACE Coaster Landmark designations. Efforts to sell, preserve, and restore the ride were unsuccessful. The ride was demolished on October 17, 2016.
Jack Rabbit is an "out and back" wooden roller coaster located at Seabreeze Amusement Park in Irondequoit, New York. The Jack Rabbit is a terrain coaster that features seven dips, a helix, and a tunnel. It opened on May 31, 1920. Jack Rabbit is the fourth oldest operating roller coaster in the world and the second oldest in the United States. The oldest, Leap-The-Dips in Altoona, Pennsylvania, was closed from 1985 to 1999, making Jack Rabbit the oldest continuously operating coaster in the country.
Vuoristorata is a classic wooden roller coaster located at the Linnanmäki amusement park in Helsinki, Finland. It was built in the winter of 1950 by Linnanmäki's staff on the basis of drawings by Valdemar Lebech, a Danish builder specialising in fairground rides. The construction work was led by the Danish ride operator Svend Jarlström, who at the time owned most of Linnanmäki's rides. Opened on 13 July 1951, Vuoristorata was the largest roller coaster in the Nordic countries and the tallest in Europe at the time. Expected to last up to 15 years, it was originally designed as a temporary attraction for the amusement park, opened in 1950. One of the main reasons for its construction was to attract tourists from the 1952 Summer Olympics held in the city. Since then, its temporary status was renewed for extended periods, until it was eventually regarded as a permanent structure.
Big Dipper is a wooden out and back roller coaster at Pleasure Beach Resort, Blackpool, England. Originally built in 1923, it was extended in 1936 and was designated as a Grade II listed building on 19 April 2017. It operates with two trains, each containing three four-bench cars, seating two people per bench. After Scenic Railway, Big Dipper is the second-oldest in-use rollercoaster in Britain. The ride has 1 lapbar per row.
Roller coaster amusement rides have origins back to ice slides constructed in 18th-century Russia. Early technology featured sleds or wheeled carts that were sent down hills of snow reinforced by wooden supports. The technology evolved in the 19th century to feature railroad track using wheeled cars that were securely locked to the track. Newer innovations emerged in the early 20th century with side friction and underfriction technologies to allow for greater speeds and sharper turns. By the mid-to-late 20th century, these elements intensified with the introduction of steel roller coaster designs and the ability to invert riders.
The Pleasure Beach Great Yarmouth is an amusement park located in the seaside resort town of Great Yarmouth, Norfolk, on the English east coast. It opened in 1909. The largest and most popular ride at the park is the wooden Roller Coaster which opened in 1932. There are also 25 other large rides at the park, as well as children's entertainment, amusement arcades, catering facilities, sweet shops and ice cream parlours.
Roller Coaster – also known as Scenic Railway or The Scenic – is a wooden roller coaster at Great Yarmouth Pleasure Beach, Great Yarmouth, UK. The ride was built at the park in 1932 and has been operational since. It is one of only two scenic railways still in operation in the UK and one of only seven in the world. In common with most scenic railways, an operator rides the car. Traditionally referred to as a 'brakesman’, the operator applies brakes on the car to control its speed and to stop it at the end of the ride, as there are no brakes on the track. It is the second tallest and second fastest wooden roller coaster in the UK. It is also a Grade II listed building.
Montaña Suiza is a steel scenic railway roller coaster located at Monte Igueldo Amusement Park, on the coast at San Sebastián, Spain. It was designed and built by German engineer Erich Heidrich and opened at the site in 1928. It is the oldest steel roller coaster still operating in the world.
Pleasure Beach Resort, formerly known as Blackpool Pleasure Beach, is an amusement park situated on Blackpool's South Shore, in the county of Lancashire, North West England. The park was founded in 1896 by A. W. G. Bean and his partner John Outhwaite. The current managing director is Amanda Thompson.
National Amusement Devices in Dayton, Ohio was an American construction company founded in 1919 as the Dayton Fun House by Aurel Vaszin. Based on research, they built a 2-foot gauge miniature train that could be either gasoline or electric powered. This resembled a typical standard-gauge center cab electric train as early as 1922. Vaszin was an early environmental idealist and really pushed the idea of electric powered trains, as safer and less polluting.
The Battersea Park funfair disaster happened in Battersea Park, London, on 30 May 1972; five children died and thirteen others were injured when a wooden roller coaster train came off its tracks. A report on the roller coaster after the crash found 51 faults on the ride. The ride manager and engineer were subsequently tried for and acquitted of manslaughter.
The Great Scenic Railway is a heritage-listed wooden roller coaster located at Luna Park Melbourne in Melbourne, Australia. The roller coaster is the oldest continuously operating roller coaster in the world. The ride is one of only five roller coasters remaining that requires a brakeman to stand on the train.
A scenic railway is an early roller coaster design that uses only road wheels. It usually requires a brakeman to ride on the train and slow it, if needed. Their name derives from the fact that they are often adorned with elaborate façades. The power and setup requirements of the travelling version resulted in special Showman's engines being built with an additional dynamo and a crane mounted on an enlarged coal bunker. The traveling versions of the Scenic railway were built between 1910 and 1925 with the last one being scrapped 1962. The space in the middle of the travelling version was most commonly filled with a waterfall and organ.
WGH LTD - Transportation Engineering Ltd was a British company that manufactured and supplied different types of amusement rides, funicular railways, inclined lift systems, and other transport systems over a 27 year period.
