The Pull-Down mk II - true vintage!

Well, after all the excitement of helping with the pull-down of Jimmy's Skid last year - twice, no less - I jumped at the opportunity to help pull down one of the oldest rides still operating in the UK.

The first fairground ride I got to operate - Brett's Ghost Train!

I have the Ians to thank for my first visit to Dingles. Not that they came along too - not their thing - but by their moving down to Devon, I was finally in the same county when I went to visit them! Dingles is the permanent museum for the Fairground Heritage Trust. As a vintage fairground enthusiast, it is the kind of place I could spend many a day. And now, as a volunteer, I do! After a couple of visits, I ended up being shown how to run the Ghost Train, and from there it all snowballed. I'll be Tweeting, Periscoping and Blogging from their forthcoming Wall of Death Weekend (13/14 June 2015), but to keep to the theme, this post is about a major change to the ride line-up!

The Rodeo Switchback

For the first time, Dingles was open in the February half-term. I went down there, of course, to help run the rides. Mostly the Ghost Train and Skid, but with occasional forays onto the Speedway and pretty much all of the juvenile rides. The conversation at the pre-opening coffee break (the day starts much earlier than the museum's actual opening time, with all the rides being thoroughly checked over by the permanent staff) revealed that there was an exciting new addition (top secret, folks!) to replace the Rodeo Switchback, which was due to receive some much-needed TLC. The schedule for the changes was tight, as there were only a few weeks after the half-term holiday before the museum started opening daily for the season. The Skid (in the centre of the main ride building) was to be taken down, as was the Rodeo Switchback. The Skid was then to be re-built in the corner currently occupied by the Switchback, and a new ride - as new as a vintage ride can be, that is - was to take centre-stage. As it turned out, the Switchback would be taken down over a weekend, so I decided to pop down and help out. Well, I was an expert after helping with Jimmy's Skid, after all!

Western movie star Tom Mix appears on two of the cars.

The Rodeo Switchback is a fine example of a Scenic Railway (the travelling fair version, not the early roller coaster) and, possibly dating back to 1880, it is one of the oldest operating rides we have. It's earliest incarnations are something of a mystery, but it is believed to have been built by Savages of King's Lynn, with numerous updates, including new carriages made by the other well-known early amusement ride manufacturers, Orton and Spooner. The full history can be read here - but for now, let's get on with the pull-down!

As I didn't get down to Dingles until the Saturday, I missed out on the first day of the pull-down, so when I entered the main ride building, the rounding boards, fences, shutters (the panels around the bottom of the ride), gratings (the wooden floor panels that you walk on) and all of the cars had been removed. The cars are huge, but the ornate

The gates packed on the truck, with
two tram sections on the floor

sculptures on the front and back of each car can be removed, leaving a relatively rectangular structure that the tractor could lift off the ride. So - job one on the Saturday was to load the trams and the gates onto the truck. The gates are the huge, sturdy wooden frames that support the trams (the track on which the cars roll) and the gratings. An interesting point to note at this stage is that there are three sets of trams, not two. It was soon discovered that rectangular cars with a flanged wheel at each corner are not well-suited to travelling on a circular, undulating track - as soon as a car went over the top of a hill, it would derail. If the two main trams are for the inner and outer wheels on the car, there is a third tram just inside the inner of the two main trams. The front and rear inner wheels could then travel on different trams, and by having different angles of descent, all four wheels could remain in contact with the trams at all times. That, of course, meant there were three sets of heavy, greasy trams to remove instead of two! The gates had to be removed in order of descending height in order to stack neatly on the truck. At least that meant that this particular job got easier as time went on...

The spider was next - and once again, the order in which they were packed on the truck was of utmost importance. One thing you didn't want to do as you were lifting them as high overhead as you could to allow the guy on the truck to grab hold and pull them up was to tilt them to one side. Over the years, a thick layer of dust, paint peelings and other assorted gunk had built up on the upper surface, all ready to cascade down onto your face! Wearing glasses was a positive boon today... With the spider packed away, we finished a good morning's work. Head honcho Roger nipped out and got us all lovely, hot pasties for lunch.

The remaining task was to dismantle the centre of the ride, which does all the hard work of pulling the cars around the track. As the centre rotates, turning the whole of the top canopy, hefty brass poles pull every other car in a manner akin to water skiing. Those brass poles were next. One vertical pole and another to create that essential structural triangle. And oh boy - everything lifted so far paled into insignificance with these poles, plus the joint at the bottom was smothered in axle grease! Heavy and messy - quite a combination. The tilt was next on the list, and involved someone climbing all over the swifts. Trying to fold a huge sheet of heavy-duty canvas which is stretched out over a conical wooden frame is quite a task: Imagine taking a marquee tent down thirty feet in the air. The organ trailer was then rolled out of the way ready for the packing truck to be reversed into position for the removal of the swifts. Our illustrious aerial artiste was needed to unhook the supporting poles from the top of the chimney (it was originally steam-powered, and the chimney doubled up as the central support pole).
The swifts fitted into very snug slots in centre of the ride, just above the cheese wheel. Very snug. A lot of shimmying and shaking was required to get them loose, so that you could pull the end out of the slot and lay the swift down in place on the packing truck. A three-person job and very hard work, so we took it in turns on the top of the packing truck.

So - just the centre truck to sort out. First, the chimney had to be folded down - interesting how the jobs get heavier and heavier as you get closer to the end. A special lever is fitted to the side of the chimney, and chains and a tractor allow the chimney to be carefully lowered onto a special A-frame. It was my job to make sure that the A-frame was lined up with the metal flanges on the chimney. I kept my fingers crossed that the chain wouldn't get detached, as there was several tons of metal on its way down...

One more job to do - get the centre truck off the gantry. There were no hydraulic rams to lift the centre truck into position back in the late 1800s, so the centre truck had to be rolled up onto a wooden framework to get it to the correct height for the rest of the ride to be built around it, the spider being built from the gantry as well.  To ensure the wheeled truck is in the correct position, there are four struts that fit into into slots on the upper surface of the gantry, connecting to the underside of the truck and sharing the load with the wheels. You can see two of them in the picture on the left.

We had to take great care as the Speedway ride was in the line of fire - we just had enough clearance to get the truck off the ramps, so the tractor was called back into action to restrain the truck as we inched it down the ramps. Chocks were placed a few inches in front of the wheels, the truck was rolled down to the chocks, bit by bit until the centre truck was finally on the floor. Final job - pack away the gantry! I have a few video clips that I'll be uploading to YouTube soon - I'll add those to this blog entry once they are online. At the time of writing, there is a special tent in the work yard behind the ride building, where the FHT's experts are carrying out the required restoration work on this incredible ride.