Recreation content from Machine Design: Worried about the U. S. trade deficit with China? There is one U. S. product the Chinese can’t get enough of: wooden roller coasters. At least that is the impression one gets from The Gravity Group LLC, an engineering firm in Cincinnati specializing in the design of wooden roller coasters. “Wooden coasters are a fascination of the Chinese, perhaps because they don’t use timber for construction much in China,” says Gravity Group co-owner and P. E. Korey Kiepert. “Concrete and steel form the backbone of most construction in China, so the Chinese look at wooden coasters as being more thrilling than those made with steel.”
4 comments:
I have known about the appeal of wooden coasters for a while now. I am not a huge roller coaster fan, but the few I have liked have been wooden coasters. Pennsylvania has some of the best wooden coasters in the world, and my dad is a huge roller coaster fanatic, so I have been exposed to many neat wooden coaters. What I didn't know is that new wooden coasters were being built anywhere in the world. I had assumed that the days of the wooden coaster were gone, and they existed only in the places that managed to keep their old coasters running. It is cool that these new coasters are being built, and it is cool that they are continuing to engineer wooden coasters to allow them to compete with steel coasters, but I'm not sure I am in favor of this. I say, let the steel coasters do what they do best: smooth speed and ridiculous numbers of inversions, loops, and twists. For the wooden coasters, stick to the classics. Steep, curving drops. Dips, double dips, and bump tracks. These are the hallmarks of the wooden coaster, and these are what separate the wooden coaster from it's steal descendent.
All my life I have been riding wooden roller coaster at Kennywood. I find them to be both soooo much fun, and solo much scarier. The noise they make as they roll for the wind is truly breath taking. There is just a quality that wooden ones have over the new modern steel one that I enjoy.
When I was younger, my father and I would go to an amusement park up in New Hampshire (Canobie Lake Park). There was one wooden roller coaster there called the Yankee Canonball. My father made me go on it, and all I remember is the sensation that our car was about to dislocate from the rest of the cars and go flying out into the parking lot. I hated it. Then again, I don't like roller coasters at all. I find this article fascinating, however, because of the Chinese's obsession with wooden roller coasters. Since steel and the like is the norm to them, they like that feel of the less sturdy wood. I think that thrill is the thrill of the exotic and dangerous. I personally think we can give all the wooden roller coasters to the Chinese because I still believe they are too bumpy for our own good.
Wooden roller coasters are so much fun, and a huge part of the fun is how rickety the structures look. When I went to six flags this summer, my siblings and I just kept going on the wooden roller coasters because they were so much fun and there were no lines for them. I find it so cool what Gravity Group is doing with this old style of roller coasters, and how they're allowing them to do all sorts of fancy things. I also find it really interesting that they're becoming so popular in China. My high school art teacher once told me that he and his brother were in line for a wooden coaster, and as the car drove by them a 2x12 beam fell off the structure, and seeing that only made to want them to ride more.
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