User Guide

coal-hauling. Eventually a restaurant and hotel were built at the top, and the
ride attracted more than 35,000 passengers a year. It continued to operate, with
an amazing safety record, until it was closed in 1933.
Upside Down Side
Way back in 1846, an Englishman apparently sold a loop-the-loop coaster ride
to the French. This Paris attraction, called the Centrifuge Railway (Chemin du
Centrifuge), featured a 43-foot high hill leading into a 13-foot wide loop. The
rider would sit in a wheeled cart, pray to the physics gods, and hang on as the
car whipped down the hill and through the loop with only centrifugal force
keeping the cart and rider on course.
Nearly 50 years later, in 1895, Lina Beecher revived the idea with the Flip-Flap
Railway, a 25-foot circular loop at Coney Island.The circular design was very
unforgiving in the g-force department, and whiplash complaints were no doubt
part of the reason why it only lasted a few seasons. In 1901 a man named
Edward Prescott built a new looping coaster, also at Coney Island.This ride,
called Loop The Loop, was oval-shaped to reduce g forces. Its low seating-
capacity, perhaps, was why it only lasted six years.
Getting Real
The first “roller coaster tycoon” was probably La Marcus Thompson, the man
who created the Gravity Pleasure Switchback Railway, which opened at Coney
Island in 1884. His ride was a 650-foot long wooden structure shaped like the
Russian ice slides. Riders would climb a platform, board cars and be pushed
down a hill and over a few bumps. At the other end, workers would hoist the
car to the top of a second station, riders would board again and coast back in
the other direction.The early ride focused more on sightseeing than excite-
ment, so the bench-like coaster cars faced sideways and the ride traveled at a
mere 6 mph. But people loved it:Thompson charged just a nickel a ride, and
made more than $600 a week.
Thompson’s success was an inspiration. In late 1884, a man named Charles
Alcoke created a U-shape version of the Switchback ride that did not require
riders to unload and reload mid-way. In 1885 Phillip Hinkle added a cable
hoisting mechanism. Soon, track-mounted brakes were developed, track designs
improved, and the rides began to look and act like modern-day roller coasters.
In 1912, coaster designer John Miller, who got his start as LaMarcus
Thompson’s chief engineer, patented a design for the under-friction roller
coaster.This revolutionary safety advancement made steeper drops and faster
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ROLLER COASTER HISTORY
It’s difficult to trace the origins of the thrill ride — for all we know, Stonehenge
is just the ruined supports for an early roller coaster. But we do know one
thing: that mind-clearing adrenaline buzz you only get from being scared out
of your wits is a timeless human endeavor.
The Ice Age
Most coaster historians consider Russian ice slides the forerunners of roller
coasters.These large wooden structures, up to 70-feet tall, were popular
throughout Russia in the 16th and 17th centuries. Riders would use a wooden
sled or block of ice to slide at up to 50 miles-per-hour (mph) down giant ice-
covered wooden hills and crash-land into a sand pile at the bottom.
Somewhere along the line, a French businessman brought the ice slide idea
back to France, perhaps forgetting that Russian-like winters might be a pre-
requisite for their success. Undeterred, he or someone else developed an all-
season solution by waxing the sled runners. Eventually, someone swapped
wheels for runners, and more ambitious and thrilling tracks were created. In
1817 someone attached the carts to the tracks and dubbed the ride the Russian
Mountains of Belleville. It had two tracks that ran next to each other, so riders
could race (and onlookers could bet on the outcome).
Runaway Train
The ultimate American thrill ride — past or present — may well have been the
Mauch Chunk Switchback Gravity Railroad, in Mauch Chunk, Penn. (now called
Jim Thorpe, Penn.). It was the second railroad ever built (1827) in the United
States, and was originally used to haul coal from mountaintop mines down to
the Lehigh River. The track was built so that miners could load mine cars with
coal, shove them over the hillside, and let gravity do the rest.
Mules, whose job was to pull the cars back up the hill, and a brave, solitary
brakeman were apparently the first participants in this nine-mile, hair-raising
tear down the mountain. Thrill-seekers soon took notice, and the track was con-
verted to a thrill ride in the afternoons. Eventually, the mules were replaced by a
steam engine that hauled the empty cars up a longer, more gradual track.
People would pay $1 to ride up the gradual incline, then the steam engine was
removed, and the cars were pushed back down the hill, with speeds apparently
reaching nearly 100 mph. Now that’s a roller coaster!
In 1872, a new tunnel was constructed, which made the track obsolete for
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