Tuesday, October 24
THE HORROR!
This is the afternoon of our third "Fairground: Thrill Laboratory" event. Tonight and tomorrow, we'll be featuring this beautiful ghost train. I just met the family of showpeople who own it -- William Belson and his mum. William and his late dad (also a William) built it themselves, and it's pretty special. Apparently, it's the largest single trailer ghost train in England, with three levels.
"Four," says William's mum, "There's a hidden one."
I got a nice shot of William...
...but he insisted that I should take another shot of him without his grubby safety coat on. I like his look of pride in the first photo better, but here he is looking a bit more respectable.
Brendan watched William and his workers setting the ride up, and he says it has very clever cranes and hoists that flip in and out for ease of assembly.
Here's Brendan's diagram of the ride's path (as with all pictures on the blog, click to enlarge):
The spiral on the left is the lift hill. For most of the ride, the cars operate on gravity, but on the spiral, they are electrically powered. There are a couple of lovely drops as you come out of the crash doors.
Complicating matters a bit is the Queen's visit to the Science Museum today. She's not coming to the Dana Centre, as far as I've heard. I seriously doubt I'll be giving a Royal Performance tonight, but you never know. I wonder what would happen if she wanted to ride the ride in the telemetry equipment? I don't suppose there is a proper way for reaching under the Queen's blouse to attach the heart monitor electrodes. "'Scuse me, Mum; won't be a minute..."
In about an hour, Discovery Channel Canada will be here to film Brendan. They say that footage filters through all the Discovery Channel aquifirs, so maybe it will reach the USA.
I like the Frankenstein monster on the operator's booth.
Right now, the geeks are outside setting up the telemetry equipment. William mentioned all the geeks, and Brendan waved a finger at him. "Ah ha, not 'geeks'," he said, with a touch of pride, "'thrill boffins'.!"
Today's surprising technical finding; the accelerometer readings reveal that at some moments on the ride, the pull is 1.8 Gs. "Well," said William, "We'll have to put that on a sign, won't we?"
This is the afternoon of our third "Fairground: Thrill Laboratory" event. Tonight and tomorrow, we'll be featuring this beautiful ghost train. I just met the family of showpeople who own it -- William Belson and his mum. William and his late dad (also a William) built it themselves, and it's pretty special. Apparently, it's the largest single trailer ghost train in England, with three levels.
"Four," says William's mum, "There's a hidden one."
I got a nice shot of William...
...but he insisted that I should take another shot of him without his grubby safety coat on. I like his look of pride in the first photo better, but here he is looking a bit more respectable.
Brendan watched William and his workers setting the ride up, and he says it has very clever cranes and hoists that flip in and out for ease of assembly.
Here's Brendan's diagram of the ride's path (as with all pictures on the blog, click to enlarge):
The spiral on the left is the lift hill. For most of the ride, the cars operate on gravity, but on the spiral, they are electrically powered. There are a couple of lovely drops as you come out of the crash doors.
Complicating matters a bit is the Queen's visit to the Science Museum today. She's not coming to the Dana Centre, as far as I've heard. I seriously doubt I'll be giving a Royal Performance tonight, but you never know. I wonder what would happen if she wanted to ride the ride in the telemetry equipment? I don't suppose there is a proper way for reaching under the Queen's blouse to attach the heart monitor electrodes. "'Scuse me, Mum; won't be a minute..."
In about an hour, Discovery Channel Canada will be here to film Brendan. They say that footage filters through all the Discovery Channel aquifirs, so maybe it will reach the USA.
I like the Frankenstein monster on the operator's booth.
Right now, the geeks are outside setting up the telemetry equipment. William mentioned all the geeks, and Brendan waved a finger at him. "Ah ha, not 'geeks'," he said, with a touch of pride, "'thrill boffins'.!"
Today's surprising technical finding; the accelerometer readings reveal that at some moments on the ride, the pull is 1.8 Gs. "Well," said William, "We'll have to put that on a sign, won't we?"
