ICE SLIDES had long been a popular pastime for Russians in winter, and by the sixteenth century slides that were lined with wood and featured slopes and drops had been developed in Russia. Passengers rode down the slides on a block of ice lined with wood and wool for comfort, or on a wooden box, steering it by means of a rope. A description of one of the slides was given in the Pall Mall Gazette on 13 January 1870:
An ice-hill is a steep slope made smooth and paved with blocks of ice down which you are precipitated in a little wooden box, placed on rails, under the guidance of an expert skater. But the pavement of ice to be perfect should be washed over with water, and it is of course desirable that this wash of water should freeze.
The Russians also developed a crude wooden ride on the same principle as the ice slides, such as the switchback-type gravity railway built in 1784 in the Gardens of Oranienbaum in St Petersburg. The Russian royal family enjoyed wooden rides placed in the royal parks, and on 24 November 1838 the Northern Star and Leeds General Advertiser reported:
A Russian Court Ball. – On returning from the ball, we found the emperor’s young children, the two grand dukes Michael and Nicholas, with their governess and preceptors, assembled in the outer room, where a large Montagne Russe (Russian Mountain) had been erected for their amusements.
French soldiers serving in Russia during the Napoleonic Wars saw the wooden rides and took the idea home. Similar structures to the Russian ones were erected in the Baujon Gardens in Paris (les Promenades Aériennes) and at Belleville (les Montagnes Russes). Both rides featured wooden cars, which could reach speeds of up to 30 mph as they sped down a pair of parallel tracks, locked into the grooves of the wooden guide rails, before curving to the left and right as they reached the bottom. On 31 October 1816 Poulson’s American Daily Advertiser reported:
A new diversion is now fashionable at Paris. – In a garden situated at the Barrière du Roule, there have been erected what are called the Russian Mountains. These are inclined planes, to imitate the ice-hills of Russia, and the amusement is to slide down this abrupt descent on a sledge. The rapidity of the motion, which takes away the breath, and a noise resembling a burst of thunder, do not deter the adventurous belles of Paris from partaking [of] this new amusement.
The Russian Mountains rides also spread to Britain, although there are few references to them. One was erected in 1823 for a performance of Harlequin’s Trip to Paris at Sadler’s Wells, on which the public were allowed to ride, and another was briefly sited at the top of Newhall Hill, Birmingham, in 1832, which was remembered in a letter to the Birmingham Daily Post on 1 March 1871:
First of all there was a stage or platform erected, in an oval shape, about six feet wide, with four ascents to an elevation of about thirty feet, also four descents to the lowest parts of the stage, which, I think, was about three feet from the ground; on this there was placed what answered for rails, but I can’t recollect whether they were wood or iron. The carriage was a kind of large perambulator, to hold two, with four small wheels and hollow tyres. The axles being made extra long, the wheels were a foot or more from each side of the carriage. This, I presume, was to give a surer balance. There were two flights of steps to the starting stages, one at the east and the other at the west end. There was no steam engine used. The grand opening day came at last; and I saw men and women start from the elevated stage, in what appeared like a gig body. Down they went; up they came; down again, and up again – all this being seen from the outside. Well, the happy day came when a companion and I entered the sacred Mountain ground. Up at the starting stage we soon arrived. We were soon in the perambulator, and strapped in, and told not to be frightened, and to hold our breath. The velocity with which we went down the descent took us nearly to the top of the ascent; but as we neared the top, to make sure we did not run back, something caught on our carriage underneath, which made a click-click sort of a noise, steadied us over the elevated bridge, then down we went and up again, and might have done so all day by paying. The Russian Mountains remained on the hill for months, then vanished, leaving nothing behind but the recollection to one who has battled with the world, and views the past use of Old Newhall Hill with great pleasure.
Les Montagnes Russes were one of the earliest wooden rollercoaster-type structures and featured wooden cars locked into the grooves of wooden guide rails. Cars could reach speeds of 30 mph. This is the ride at Belleville, France, in 1884.
A number of centrifugal railways, forerunners of the later loop-the-loop rollercoasters, are known to have been built in the United Kingdom during the 1840s and 1850s, including examples at the Belle Vue (Manchester) and Liverpool zoos. The ride at Liverpool was installed in 1843 and proved to be popular until its demolition in 1866. Another centrifugal railway, which had previously been in Edinburgh, was placed at the St Helena Gardens at Rotherhithe in London from 1851 to 1860. The ride was described in The Era on 10 August 1851:
Centrifugal Railway. – On Friday evening a somewhat surprising novelty was exhibited at St Helena Gardens, Rotherhithe, in the shape of a centrifugal railway. The machine, which covers a space of two or three hundred feet, consists of a pair of rails elevated at each end nearly forty feet above the ground, and descending towards the centre to within two or three feet of the earth. The rails, however, are not simply descending and ascending, for in the centre, and lower part of the line of the railway, an upright iron circle is placed, reaching from fifteen to twenty feet at the highest point, and in the interior of which the lines are placed, in continuation of those on the slant already mentioned. A carriage is on the lines, which being started from either extremity runs down the incline, turns a complete somersault inside the circle, and is thrown up with lightning rapidity to the further extremity of the machine. Several persons took their seats in the carriage, and however improbable it may seem without ocular proof, the travellers had a still more convincing demonstration by their vehicle running down, turning completely over (with wheels towards the sky), and safely carrying its passengers to the further extremity in considerably less than half a minute. The rapidity of this centrifugal journey leaves no time for the passengers to fall out, although, as we have said, the wheels are for an instant towards the sky, and the passenger’s heads towards the ground.
In the United States the Mauch Chunk incline railroad is often regarded as the forerunner of the rollercoaster. Built in 1827 to enable a mining company to haul coal from mines in Summit Hill down 18 miles to the Lehigh Canal in Mauch Chunk, Pennsylvania, the railroad was converted in 1872 to a pleasure ride, and within two years it was the second most popular tourist attraction in the United States (after Niagara Falls), attracting some 35,000 visitors per annum. Incline railroads were purpose-built as pleasure rides, although they were soon superseded by wooden rollercoasters based on the Russian Mountains, which were in place by 1883 at Chicago, St Louis and New Orleans.
However, it is La Marcus Adna Thompson’s Switchback Railway that is usually regarded as the precursor of the rollercoaster. Thompson was inspired to create his gravity switchback ride after visiting the Mauch Chunk railroad, and premiered it at Coney Island, New York, on 13 June 1884. The ride proved to be an immediate success, grossing more than $600 a day at 5 cents a time. The switchback consisted of a wooden structure, 600 feet long and up to 50 feet high, with two undulating tracks side by side and connected at both ends. Up to ten passengers were seated in two small cars, facing to the front in one car and to the side in the other. The cars were pushed at the start of the ride and then propelled by gravity up to the end of the first track. They were then pushed on to the second track and propelled back to the start. The cars were kept on the track by running them with the wheels in a trough with side plates to keep them on course, thus giving rise to the term ‘side-friction coasters’ to describe them. The patent for the ride described it as a ‘roller coasting structure’.
Competitors soon appeared, including Charles Alcoke’s continuous oval ride at Coney Island in the same year that the switchback was opened. This featured sideways-facing seats to give passengers a better view. In 1885 Philip Hinckle opened an oval-shaped ride in San Francisco, which was taller and faster than its predecessors, and in the following year Feltman’s Flying Boat Coaster was opened on the beach at Coney Island. The Sliding Hill and Toboggan rollercoaster, with its figure-eight loop, was opened in Massachusetts in 1887.
In response to the competition, Thompson established a company to sell and patent his rides (some thirty patents were acquired between 1884 and 1887), and the Thompson’s Patent Gravity Switchback Railway Company Ltd was then promoted in the United Kingdom to establish the switchback there. The first British switchback was erected at the American Exhibition in London in 1887, and by the end of the year the seaside resorts of Great Yarmouth, Southend-on-Sea, Skegness and Weston-super-Mare had acquired them. In September 1888 the company was expanded into United Kingdom Switchback Railways Ltd, with a capital of £60,000 in £1 shares, and switchbacks turned up at exhibitions and pleasure grounds all over the country, and at seaside resorts such as Scarborough, Blackpool and Folkestone. Three-year leases were often granted to those wishing to operate a switchback. Blackpool had four switchbacks: at the Royal Palace Gardens, Uncle Tom’s Cabin, Rigby Road, and St Chad’s Drive. In 1891 the one at St Chad’s Drive was re-erected on the South Shore sands at Blackpool, which during the Edwardian period, under the management of William George Bean and John William Outhwaite, expanded into the world-famous Blackpool Pleasure Beach, still one of the United Kingdom’s leading amusement parks. In 1900 a switchback was added to the Victoria Pleasure Gardens at Burgess Hill in West Sussex, and its position astride the lake left quite an impression on one visitor, F. Brown, who recalled:
Long before reaching the Gardens, the distant strains of the roundabout organ would be carried to our ears on the prevailing wind. It was a cheerful sound, full of the pleasant expectations of things to come, and the anticipation was sharpened by the first view of the magnificent Switchback Railway that dominated the skyline. This astonishing construction of soaring arches mounted on high stilted legs completely spanned the lake, and at one point dipped so alarmingly that the track barely skimmed the water’s surface, so that the carriage, when it passed, threw up a cloud of spray drenching anyone in the near vicinity, and caused the girls on board to clutch their hats and scream with sheer excitement.
A view along the switchback railway on the Birnbeck Pier (Old Pier) at Weston-super-Mare in c. 1910. The cars were powered by gravity along one section of the track before being pushed around the corner and propelled back along the parallel section to the start.
Developed by La Marcus Thompson in the United States, Thompson’s Gravity Switchback Railway was first placed at Coney Island in 1884, arriving in the United Kingdom three years later. This postcard shows the switchback built on the beach at Folkestone in 1888 and demolished in 1919.
Folkestone’s switchback, placed on the beach parallel to the promenade west of the Victoria Pier, was advertised as being beneficial to anyone with a liver complaint. However, the ride was not welcomed by many of the town’s wealthy visitors and residents, who claimed it detracted from Folkestone’s beauty and dignity. Many switchbacks proved to be short-lived, but those that did survive were replaced from 1910 by the more sophisticated and thrilling figure-eight and scenic railways. However, the switchback at the Hope Bank Pleasure Grounds at Honley, near Huddersfield, survived until the 1930s.
In September 1888 a switchback railway was opened on the 550-foot-long pier at Ramsgate after the pier had been leased to Thompson’s Patent Gravity Switchback Company Ltd. The ride was not a great success and was demolished in 1891.
The front cover of A Guide to New Brighton Tower, c. 1901. In addition to Britain’s tallest structure (621 feet), the tower complex had an amusement park that featured a water chute and the Himalayan Railway rollercoaster.
Although the switchback was the dominant rollercoaster in the British Isles during the late Victorian and early Edwardian period, there were other wooden rollercoasters. The ‘Russian Mountains’ returned in the form of Les Montagnes Russes, erected at the Blackpool Winter Gardens in 1902, and there was a ‘Mountain Railway’ at the Kiralphs’ Arcadia, Scarborough, between 1903 and 1909. Great Yarmouth had a short-lived ‘Sinuous Railway’, opened in 1899. The ‘Himalaya Railway’ was located at the Tower Grounds, New Brighton, Merseyside, in 1898 and was described as:
…a great attraction to young and old. It consists of a combination of the old Switchback and the modern electric railway – the rails are laid in the usual way, but in lieu of following the old-fashioned horizontal line, the track ascends and descends in the peculiar fashion hitherto adopted exclusively by the Switchbacks. The passengers travel in tiny carriages which take them twice around the course, then through the tunnel, and land them safe and sound at the point of departure.
A loop-the-loop coaster was placed in the North Tower Gardens at Crystal Palace, London, in 1902. Each car carried four passengers and started at an incline of 45 feet before being released down the 45-degree angled track and then circling the 35-foot elliptical loop. The full circuit was 350 yards, and the ride lasted just under a minute. However, customers sometimes complained that the loop gave them neck ache, and in 1909 the ride was transferred to the Eastham Pleasure Grounds, Cheshire, where it was rarely used before its demolition.
Switchback railways began to be eclipsed in the United Kingdom during the Edwardian period by figure-eight and scenic railways, which offered a continuous ride with steeper drops, and therefore more thrills. A figure-eight (also known as a ‘figure-eight toboggan’) was a compact wooden side-friction rollercoaster with single four-seat cars that descended from a lift hill and ran on an undulating track in a figure-eight shape before returning to the boarding station. A figure-eight was patented by Edward Joy Morris of Philadelphia in 1894 and put in place at the Willow Grove Park, Pennsylvania, two years later. Another figure-eight, known as the Leap-the-Dips, was erected at the Lakemont Park at Altoona, Pennsylvania, in 1902 and survives as the oldest side-friction figure-eight wooden rollercoaster in the world.
The Kiralph brothers opened the Arcadia amusement centre at Scarborough in 1903. Among the attractions were a Mountain Railway, Great American Toboggan Run (1903–5) and Fairy River (a type of River Caves ride). In 1909 the impresario Will Catlin acquired the site, and opened the Arcadia Theatre the following year.
Les Montagnes Russes rollercoaster in the grounds of the Winter Gardens at Blackpool. This postcard shows the short-lived ride in about 1904.
The first loop-the-loop rollercoaster in Britain was erected at Crystal Palace in 1902. Designed by Lina Beecher of Batavia, New York, and also known as the ‘Flip Flap’ or ‘Topsy Turvy’, the ride was transferred to Eastham Pleasure Gardens in 1909.
One of the first places in the United Kingdom to acquire a figure-eight was the short-lived Star Fairground, opened adjoining the Pleasure Beach by the Blackpool New Fairground Company in 1905. The Pleasure Beach responded by opening an L. A. Thompson scenic railway in 1907, and the Velvet Coaster two years later, and by 1909 the Star Fairground and its figure-eight had closed. Nevertheless, the Pleasure Beach’s managing director, William Bean, had noted the popularity of the figure-eight and built one at Morecambe as the centrepiece of his new West End Amusement Park, which was initially also known as the Figure Eight Park. The ride was constructed by the Federal Construction Company of Chicago to a design by William Strickler and opened on 29 July 1909, thus commencing Strickler’s twenty-year association with Bean and his amusement parks.
A postcard showing the figure-eight railway rollercoaster at Barry Island in 1912, the year it was erected to replace a switchback railway. It was demolished in 1939 to make way for a scenic railway from the 1938 Empire Exhibition in Glasgow.
The figure-eights were built by a number of different companies, although there were no great differences in design. At Skegness a Thompson figure-eight ride joined one of his switchbacks in 1908 and soon proved to be more popular, leading to the removal of the switchback in 1911. Steeper dips were introduced into the ride from the 1930s, to try to compete with the Big Dipper opened by Billy Butlin in 1931, and it survived until January 1970. The figure-eight at Onchan Head on the Isle of Man was opened by the National Figure Eight Company in 1909; it was rebuilt in metal after the Second World War and survived until the autumn of 1974. Another long-lasting figure-eight was provided as the centrepiece amusement for the opening of Spanish City Pavilion and Amusement Park, Whitley Bay, Tyne and Wear, the north-east of England’s premier seaside amusement park, on 4 May 1910. The ride lasted until 1975. The figure-eight at the Coney Beach Amusement Park in Porthcawl, South Wales, outlasted them all. This much-travelled ride had been at Mumbles from 1908 to 1915, and then at Swansea from 1915 to 1919, before being transferred to Porthcawl in 1920. Upon demolition of the ride in November 1981, one of the cars and a piece of track were donated to the Maritime and Industrial Museum in Swansea.
The figure-eight railway at the White City Amusement Park, Manchester, in c. 1910. The ride was opened as part of the establishment of the park in 1907 by John Calvin Brown, an American who had supplied amusement rides in Chicago before coming to the United Kingdom.
Like the switchbacks, figure-eights were also erected to provide amusement for visitors to exhibitions, including those held at Edinburgh in 1908, Earl’s Court in 1909, Crystal Palace in 1911, and Bristol in 1914. Away from the seaside, figure-eights graced amusement parks such as Manchester’s competing White City and Belle Vue, and a 1909 guide to the White City emphasised to the more nervous rider how safe it was:
The various safety appliances attached to this device to insure against any slip in the machinery or chance for accident are not to be found on any other in existence. It is the constant care of the WHITE CITY management to have every protection against accident made for the public on every device in the Park, and not one accident of importance has ever occurred in the White City. This record cannot be equalled by any other amusement resort in any part of the world.
Belle Vue, which had opened as a zoological garden in 1836, responded by erecting a figure-eight in 1908 as part of a small amusement area, which was expanded in the 1920s.
The first ‘scenic railway’ rollercoaster appeared in the United Kingdom in 1907, but the ride dates back to 1887, when La Marcus Thompson, in association with James Griffiths, opened one on the Boardwalk at Atlantic City, New Jersey. The ride featured a number of advances on his switchback railway, including a return track, articulated carriages, and steam-powered cables to propel the cars up inclines. In addition, it was longer, taller, and gave a more thrilling ride. It was known as a ‘scenic railway’ because passengers were conveyed through illuminated scenes and ‘enchanted grottoes’. In 1906 John Henry Iles acquired the European patent from the L. A. Thompson Scenic Railway Company to erect scenic railways after agreeing to make an upfront payment, plus 5 per cent of the gross receipts of each ride for a period of ten years. Iles, who initiated an annual brass-band contest at Crystal Palace, became interested in amusements during an afternoon at Coney Island. On returning to Britain, he built a scenic railway at Blackpool’s Pleasure Beach in 1907; it cost over £15,000 to build and ran partially through tunnels with illuminated tableaux showing ‘Dante’s Inferno’, ‘Twenty Thousand Leagues under the Sea’, ‘Off to the Derby’ and other scenes. The ride stood 40 feet high and the cars travelled at a speed of 30–35 mph; its enormous popularity was demonstrated when, on a single day in July 1908, over fifteen thousand passengers rode on it. Two years later, the Velvet Coaster was brought to the Pleasure Beach by William Strickler and the Federal Construction Company of Chicago at a cost of £8,000. The ride ran in an oval shape for three-quarters of a mile, and its maple-wood track and plush velvet seats ensured a smooth journey for a cost of 3d. In 1910 the Harton Company of Pittsburgh erected the scenic railway at the Kursaal, Southend-on-Sea, which, with its amusement park, ballroom, circus and famous dome at the entrance, was a favourite resort of day trippers from the East End of London.
A figure-eight railway was the centrepiece of the Fun City Amusement Park at Portobello, Edinburgh. The ride was opened in 1910 and had a life of forty-seven years before its demolition in 1957.
The scenic railway at Great Yarmouth was opened in 1909, and the plaster mountains were added three years later. Rebuilt after a fire in 1919, it remained at the resort until 1929, when it was transferred to Aberdeen. A fare of 3d was charged for a ‘mile of mirth and merriment’.
The Franco-British Exhibition of 1908 at White City, London, featured two scenic railway rollercoasters, including the Mountain Railway seen here. Note the fake mountain scenery that gave it its name.
An unusual type of rollercoaster was this Spiral Railway erected at the Franco-British Exhibition at White City, London, in 1908, described in the guide to the exhibition as ‘a novel form of toboggan’.
A list of the amusements at the White City Amusement Park, Manchester, in 1909. They include a scenic railway, figure-eight railway, water chute and a selection of fun houses.
Scenic railways became a feature of exhibitions from 1908; they were usually encased in fake mountain-like scenery and were dubbed ‘mountain scenic railways’. One appeared at the Franco-British Exhibition at White City in London in 1908, alongside another dubbed the ‘Canadian Scenic Railway’. In the following year, John Iles built one for the Golden West Exhibition at Earl’s Court, and others appeared at the Japan-British Exhibition at White City in 1910 and the Festival of Empire Exhibition at Crystal Palace in 1911. The provision of a scenic railway or figure-eight would often guarantee that an exhibition would be a success. Plaster mountains were a feature of the scenic railway at Great Yarmouth, operated by Iles’s Great Yarmouth Beach Amusements and opened on 24 July 1909. The ride was largely destroyed by fire in April 1919 but was rebuilt and reopened within four months.
Scenic railways became the principal attraction of any amusement park which possessed one, and in the 1920s they developed into the giant scenic railways and big dippers, which were to thrill, delight and scare their paying public in equal measure.
The Whitley Bay Pleasure Gardens at the Spanish City were opened in 1909. Two of its featured rides were the figure-eight railway and the water chute, the former seen here on a postcard from c. 1910. The water chute cost 3d to ride and the car can be seen bumping along in the water after its descent.