Homebrew Coasters

An idea occured to me, though possibly one with dire implications. Are there any hobbyists or do-it-yourselfers who have built coasters/amusement rides in their backyards? I know of at least one person who built their own dark ride (pictures and article online at http://www.dafe.org/). In the age of 300 foot coasters, there probably isn't much point in trying to build a 25 footer, but still it would be neat. Of course, one would be taking one's life into one's own hands, but that'd be part of the fun =].

There was a guy featured on a Discovery/TLC/History or some channel show that built a pretty nice one that was built for one person, and went up and over his garage and actually included a loop and a few neat curves and hills and what-not. It was really good, considering he built it all himself.

I wish I could remember more about it... try looking it up online...

You are probably talking about this...

http://www.negative-g.com/BlueFlash/February2002/Blue-Flash-2002-2-1.html

The Blue Flash...

Its quite interesting. I wonder if he did the math or just "threw it together" and modified it. I wonder if my mom would let me build one in our backyard.

There was a kid in Germany who was ordered to demolish his homebuilt wood coaster. There was an article link on Coasterbuzz. He had the station and most of the lift completed. It looked pretty sweet, especially for a 16 year old kid.

Yup - thats the one.

If I remember correctly, it was a combo of calculation and trial-and-error. I recall him mentioning some mishaps, corrections and lessons learned... and now (as it also says on his site) he's building a bigger, better one that will be modular... sweet...

Try this kid’s wooden coaster. It's awesome!!
It reaches an unbelievable height of 20 feet and goes a blinding 20mph!! :)
Small, but is still really awesome for someone to do in their own backyard.

http://jeremyreid.com/ *** Edited 8/25/2005 6:10:30 PM UTC by TTD 120mph***

The one TTD 120 posted is amazing! I wish I had one.

Sad.... This one only stood for a couple of weeks.... :(

http://photobucket.com/albums/v299/exitenglish/Elijahs%20Chariot/

Just so you know, it's [obviously] engineered. John is a really smart guy and crunched all the numbers. Even down to the fully articulated aluminum-chassis trains :)

-Josh

Thats a pretty sweet little coaster! Is there anywhere that I can find more info on it?

^ Which, Elijah's Chariot?

Well, since I don't think John posts on PB I guess I can answer your questions for you :)

-Josh

Yeah, I was just curious as to his design approach.

• What (if any) software did he use?
• What types of materials did he use for the track?
• How long did it take?
• Top speed?
• Track length/duration?
• Material cost?

Well most of the stuff was drawn up in Autocad for the trains, but I'm pretty sure the coaster was mostly on paper.

It took us about 2 1/2 weeks of building 'round the clock to get it up. Most of the time 2 out of 3 of us would be there while the other one was at work.

It's built out of 100 % pressure treated pine. The track was layers of 1X6 decking with the top 2 bigger than the bottom 4 so the upstops could catch. The train chassis was fully articulated, similar to the lost Coaster trains, where all the wheels can steer independently. It was built out of aluminum. I came up with the idea of laying down 2" wide strips of 1/4 inch plywood on top of the track in place of expensive steel, and greasing it up because it served the same purpose, only it costs us nothing but scraps, basically.

While I'm uncertain of the top speed, I'm sure it was probably about 15-17 MPH. Height was just over 12 feet, length was 350 ft.

Overall, the material cost was around $2500, I think - but some of that was either donated or extremely discounted due to it being built for a church function. - I'm not entirely sure though because I didn't arrange for the lumber purchase.

when it was all said and done, we dismantled it to bents, and loaded it on a flatbed truck. It wound up at a campground that was actually going to buy it, but they backed out of the contract at the last minute and as far as we know, it's still sitting there in peices because the cost to bring it back was way too much.

-Josh

Awesome!

You should make a little website for that thing! All the stuff you learned and applied in building it would help out a lot of people who would like to build their own someday!

Thanks for the info!

Im really thinking about building one in my backyard. Unfortunally my parents probably won't let me and I don't exactly have the money. I think I could rigg up something decent. And being at a tech highschool helps me in the planning and math and what not. Plus my friends and I are decent builders.

Now if I could only convince my mom...

Hey has anybody ever made a coaster out of K'Nex? Custom design and not those special knex coasters. Like I made one that is about 10 feet high has a bunch of hills. It is a little ball that runs on paper taped to the ride. Pretty cool though.

I have the k-nex coasters, and have modified some of them, but nothing so far as inventing it myself.

I invented a "hydraulic launch" coaster with k-nex.
It was awsome! It had a top hat and 2 overbank turns.....but the coolest thing about it is how I invented the launch system for it. I used the lift chains as well as the chain wheels and attached the foward set of chain wheels to a power drill. It worked fantastically.
I was forced to limit the size of the top hat because the drill wasn't that powerfull(battery powerd since an electric drill was WAY to powerfull). But it launched VERY fast with soo much power, like a real hydraulic launch coaster.
The funniest thing was that there are these pieces that keep the chain wheels from freely spining, and they would break after about 3 launches causing a chain snap and resulting in a rollback, so it was like a REAL hydraulic launch coaster!;) We ran out of them and decided to order more off of the K-nex website.

My friend and I made a funny music video of it. There's even a POV of the ride in the video(I don't have it right now but will get).
Oh and by the way, it was called Hot Rod. Guess which song we used.;) *** Edited 8/26/2005 8:28:21 AM UTC by TTD 120mph***

Haha, I'd love to see that video.

As for me, eh I just have that Knex Rocket one, the one that launches, goes over a tophat, then comes down. Yaaayyyy....

Building your own ride is fun! This is for my senior project in college...

http://omega.ipfw.edu/~marschand/woodcoaster.htm

Does anyone know how I would post the video on here from My documents? I've never done something like this before.
I'm so stupid.:P