Alan Mann Allan Mann is a Divisional Director within the Babtie Group. He is a civil/ structural working in many fields. He has worked extensively in the nuclear industry on power stations and reprocessing plant and on conventional buildings; he has worked a lot in earthquake protection area and currently has a job in Gujurat in the aftermath of the Bhuj Earthquake. The structural section of Babtie have one sub group who specialise in Rides inspection, certification and design and Allan helps out in this group. Rides he has worked on include: the Ultimate at Lightwater Valley, the Pepsi Max at Blackpool Pleasure Beach the Vampire at Chessington; the Thundercoaster at Tusenfryd (Oslo) and the London Eye. He is now working on a wheel in Hong Kong and hopes to build a bigger wheel than the Eye in the Far East.

Rollercoater Rides

Amusement rides have a surprisingly long history. Fairs have been a feature of rural life since the Middle Ages, though many of the rides forms we now use originated in ice slides in Russia in the 17th and 18th Centuries and then developed throughout the 19th century into various forms for public amusement. Late in the 19th Century and early in the 20th Century, as working people acquired more leisure time, the demands for entertainment grew. Many wooden coasters were constructed around the world and gradually became more daring. Post war, these were supplanted by steel coasters that have allowed designers to produce ever more spectacular tracks with vertical loops, inverters and the like. The drive is continual, for to attract customers, each park needs a ride bigger, better or faster than the previous record.

But these developments produce new engineering challenges. We need new methods of launch, better methods of predicting the dynamic forces along the track, better understanding of fatigue and better engineering systems to control the rides. The structural engineer also has to understand the demands of the mechanical and control systems, since a ride is a close integration of many engineering disciplines.

Alongside this, demands for ‘safety’ mean that the skill of understanding modes of failure, of what might go wrong and how to prevent it are something an engineer has to become familiar with. Being able to argue ’safety’ is a transportable skill valued in the nuclear, chemical and transport industries.