Old side-friction Gropengießer double-loop coaster video

[Kooky]

Found this link in german coaster forums but not in here, hope you like.

It`s an Video from the year 1952 and for this time in a really high quality...

hope you enjoy it like i did:

 

http://www.britishpathe.com/record.php?id=81877

[CorkscrewFoley]

Kooky, what a find! I love the cars with the screen tops...I bet H&S wouldn't approve of this today. lol

[themeparkman25]

i305 has OTSRs and that has a cage. Epic!

 

Great find! I am going to sound stupid here, but do side friction coasters have upstops? The coaster seems to slow a lot at the peak of the loop, but it still doesn't fall.

[CorkscrewFoley]

Nope, side frictions don't have upstops. That's what makes this coaster so amazing.

[RedSpecial]

Thanks for posting - question - is this the first record of a looping coaster? If so who built it and what happened to it? Very interesting link.

[Kooky]

Sadly i didn`t have more information about it, just that its operated by Gropengießer next to "Detmold" in Germany. But about the upstop: i think there is an form of upstop, if you look closely it seems that the loops were build with metalbeams. So maybe the sidefriction wheels worked as an upstop between the beam... can`t explain it better in english, in symbols it will look like this (the lines were the wheels and the brackets were the endwalls): [- -] <- hope you understand what i mean, but it is just a speculation

 

 

Edit: Found a photo in this history report:

source: http://www.hamburger-dom.de/englisch/rollercoaster.html

[ebl]

My guess is that this ride relied solely on gravity and centrifugal force to keep the cars in the loops. If the car did fall, the cage would prevent the riders from being thrown out, though not necessarily unhurt.

 

I've known of some turn of the century looping coasters (that's between the 19th and 20th Centuries), but this is the first double looping one I've seen. Thanks for finding it and sending it our way!

 

Eric

[mattnz]

That is quite stunning - I've never heard of this one before. There were some daring thrillseekers back then!

[odene497]

That's really neat! And I think you're right about how the guide wheels are sort of held in. There looked to be a tiny metal piece present in the loops that then ended when it went up the hill. I like the structure of the loops. Thanks for posting.

[jjune4991]

epic find! great video, and what an interesting coaster.

[Cyber.Fiber]

Amazingly great find! I love this sort of historical stuff and this just made my day!

[buttonman700]

What a classic, great find. thank you for posting this!

[coastercrzyjames]

Wow, awesome video!! Thanks for sharing that, its interesting to see an old side-friction wooden coaster with two loops. They looked like they'd pack a punch too. I'd like to know when this coaster actually opened.

[Moose]

THanks for sharing this great find.

 

Watch the heads of the riders. It looks like they are experiencing some incredible forces at the bottoms of the loops. All of their heads move forward and down. I guess we should all be glad that the clothoid loop is now used on coasters.

 

According to a Wikepedia Article, the first vertical loop on a coaster was in 1850, which predates this ride by quite a bit. As with all wikipedia articles, there usually some question on the validity since it seems that the coaster in this video does not seem to be mentioned.

[Matt6885]

The earliest known looping coaster was in 1846 according to this...

 

It wasn't a circuit... just an inclined track and a loop.

 

www.ultimaterollercoaster.com/coasters/history/start/history_early.shtml

[dandaman]

Well, to continue the echo: Wow.

[SeaWhippet]

That British Pathe site is great for exploring old park/ride footage. Sometimes you have to dig through some of the more obscure titles to find the rich, gooey center. Here's an example:

 

"Dizzy-Dive Land" is labeled as "Coney Island Giant Switchback"

 

The link actually takes you to one of my fav old not-ridden woodies: Rye Playland Airplane coaster in action

 

http://www.britishpathe.com/record.php?id=28885

[dandaman]

^ Looks like potential TPR members existed back then; the station shots look uncannily like an ERT session.

[DenDen]

So Sweet!!!! Thanks for sharing!!!!!

[ebl]

"I guess we should all be glad that the clothoid loop is now used on coasters." (moose)

 

That's exactly why the clothoid shape was used by Schwarzkopf in the '70s when he was developing the first modern looping coaster (we know it as Revolution at SFMM).

 

Eric

[Swiminn6]

Wow, awesome! Must have been a rough one

[deathbydinn]

Does this mean Son of Beast wasn't the first wooden looping coaster.

[cal1br3tto]

Thanks for introducing me to that site!

Personally, I enjoyed this video: www.britishpathe.com/record.php?id=81144

I wonder why we don't have bumper cars like that nowadays?

[DiSab]

^ Looks like potential TPR members existed back then; the station shots look uncannily like an ERT session.

 

I wonder if Jeff Johnson is in that video...?

[ebl]

"Does this mean Son of Beast wasn't the first wooden looping coaster." (deathbydinn)

 

That's what it means.

 

I never knew there were looping coasters in the early 1900s. When I was in high school, we watched some films where they showed them, and I thought, "Hey, they say that the Revolution at Magic Mountain is the very first looping coaster, but look at this..." Revolution was the first STEEL looping coaster ever, and the first in the modern age.

 

In many instances, rides we thought were novel and feats of engineering in our lifetime were actually first done back when our grandparents and great-grandparents were kids.

 

Eric