The Pull-Down mk III: Skid Bits

I couldn't leave this topic without a quick look at The Skid that was pulled-down to be moved into the corner vacated by the Rodeo Switchback at Dingles. This marvellous machine, built in 1937 by Lakins of Streatham, has seen  number of changes over the years, with new rounding boards, trellis and flights all featuring wonderful artwork by Hall and Fowle. I missed most of the pull-down but there was still the centre of the Skid to be dissembled on the Sunday of Operation Rodeo Switchback weekend. This made for a good comparison with Jimmy's trailer-mounted Skid centre.

The skid centre is shown here with the paybox removed. There are fourteen sections, each with a pair of wheels to support the cog; one vertical wheel that supports the cog from below and one horizontal wheel that runs on the inner surface of the cog. The raised platform section covers the drive mechanism, and the huge, red motor can just be seen to the right, with the top of the pulley wheel that is driven directly by the motor poking up behind the raised platform section. The curved green structure to the left of the raised platform is normally fitted over the top of the pulley so that all moving parts are covered.

From another angle, the control system can be seen. The motor and main pulley wheel are on the right, while the red box with the perspex front is the bit that the ride operator uses to control the ride.

Control system - left; drive mechanism - right

The red handle is attached to the knife - when the handle is pushed inwards, the knife engages with the contacts, the ride is powered up and the motor gets to work. The wheel to the right of the knife is used to adjust the regulator. This is basically a large-scale rheostat with ten settings, each setting delivering more power to the motor. The ride is always started with the regulator set to "one" as the power drawn from the generators by this ride is quite something! Top speed for us is setting five, although if the ride is full, then a bit more power may be needed. The pole in the middle supports the roof structure, of course, but the green panel with the ammeter and various knife switches is just for decoration these days.

Now at this stage of the pull-down, Jimmy's skid has the motor, drive mechanism and control mechanism all arranged so that they stay in place. The sides of the centre platform fold upwards and the framework for the cog's support wheels folds underneath to create a towable trailer. The Skid at Dingles has to be completely taken apart. You can certainly see why Jimmy took the time to trailer-mount his ride - the control box is a heavy piece of kit, and the drive motor and mechanism are immense! Time to get the tractor back...

There are three attachment rings on the motor/mechanism sections of the centre frame, and a purpose-built set of chains to lift the machinery up while keeping it more or less horizontal. In this case, all we had to do was move the structure into the corner where the Skid was due to be rebuilt. That was hard enough - I tried to imagine this as being the last stage of the pull-down at night, in the pouring rain on a grass surface. Good call, Jimmy! The rest of the centre framework was then removed, and all we were left with was the bobbin. This is the centrepiece of the Skid from which the whole ride is built. You'll note the piece of carpet on which the bobbin rests.

All the supports that are in contact with the floor are resting on pieces of carpet in a bid to reduce the noise levels that The Skid generates - especially important seeing as the ride is in an enclosed space. With the ride now operating in the corner of the building instead of the middle, the noise intrusion is now a little less than it was before, but with steel wheels clattering around the steel plates, this is always going to be a noisy blighter of a ride, and we wouldn't have it any other way...

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.

The Pull-Down: an outsider's experience

I've always been a fan of vintage fairs. Well, that's not strictly true: I loved the modern fairs I visited as a child and still do. Like me, they've become vintage over the decades. The classic rides like the Octopus, Speedway, Waltzer and so on are rides of which I'll never tire, but one of my favourites will always be the Skid.

Harry Parrish's Skid at St Ives Michaelmas Fair
many moons ago, when I only took three pictures...

Growing up in St Ives, Cambridgeshire, we had one of the best street fairs going - St Ives Michaelmas Fair. Taking place on Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday in October, starting on the nearest Monday to 11th (such was the nature of the Charters under which these fairs were permitted). This always meant that the preceding weekend, from noon on the Saturday onwards, I got to watch everyone hard at work putting these rides together. No hydraulics to unfold floors; no chequerplate to make the job any lighter. The solid wood and steel components were mostly hoicked by hand or unloaded using a jib on the packing truck. The Skid belonged to one Harry Parrish, and was a wonderful sight to behold - classic Fred Fowle artwork, clever lighting and the wonderful air siren that started wailing as the ride reached top speed. It was amusing watching the cars full of "the lads" all standing up and leaning from side-to-side to try and show off their huge swing. You never needed to do that - as long as the brake pedal on your car was working, you could get the car swinging madly with very little effort. I'll be returning to the traditional fairground artwork in a later blog, but it was this ride that first made me interested in the science behind colour perception and relative chromaticity. When the lighting switched from the main yellow/red lamps to the green and blue fluorescent tubes, the cars appeared to change colour too...

These days, the Skid is far too labour-intensive and just plain heavy to tour in competition with the modern rides, but there are a few hardy showmen who keep their rides on the road, usually appearing at vintage steam events. As I first drafted this blog, the Rushden Cavalcade was about to begin for the May Day Bank Holiday weekend, and this prompted me to write about my experience there last year, when I finally got to help pull down a Skid. Probably the best Skid on tour these days, it belongs to Jimmy Bowry whose passion for the ride knows no bounds - the video added here shows Jimmy giving his usual on-ride tutorials to make sure everyone gets a great ride. You might spot me in the video as well... It gives the fastest ride and most vigorous swinging action - you can easily build up enough momentum to bounce off the wire between the fishtrays and lift the wheels off the floor. Strictly an amateur, I am usually in charge of the chain that keeps people off the ride platform when in motion - a simple way to please the health and safety people - and getting the cars loaded. I usually nipped off home mid-afternoon, but this time I stayed until closing and ended up getting roped in with the pull-down.

It was a fairly innocuous start - removing all the filament lamps from the trellis while Ralph (a true restoration hero who started the work on getting Harry Parrish's machine back to it's original glory) was unhooking the cars from the fishtrays. Then off come the two steel ropes that provide the tension that keeps everything in place - and stops the cars from swinging too far!

Trellis sections positioned on the packing truck

Next step - up onto the top of the packing truck as the rounding boards, trellis and then the fibreglass roof panels are taken down - in the correct order, of course! You can't lay all the pieces out on the ground like when you're setting up a tent ("insert locking bracket A..."). This stage involves a good head for heights, as it is all done walking along the rafters, and as more sections get packed away, there is less and less to walk on! The fences, being at ground level, have to be hoicked up onto the upper level of the truck. There is a clever pulley wheel on the lower edge of the upper floor, so once the fence section has been positioned against this wheel, the fence can be pulled up by those on the top of the truck without scraping all the paint off! Doesn't stop them being heavy though...

With the upper level of the packing truck now full, it's time to put the cars onto the lower level. There's a tail-lift to raise the cars from the floor of the ride to the lower level, but it still takes three people to roll the cars onto the lift and into the truck. Next stage is the rafters and the wooden beams between the uprights, before the uprights themselves are removed and packed into the belly boxes either side of the bottom of the truck.

Right - that was the easy part! Now for the fishtrays! These are the not-so-little blighters that connect the cars to the central drive mechanism and house the shock-absorber system. They weigh a blooming ton and have to be removed in the reverse order to which they are put on. There is no power to turn the ride so - you guessed it - we have to push the whole thing round by hand to line up each fishtray with the second truck where, one by one, they are lifted up by crane. By this time, of course, it was raining, making the metal plates very slippery. Shoving several tons of machinery around is hard work at the best of times!

Fishtrays attached to the cog, with slippery sheet metal on
the floor panels. All very heavy!

Next up - and heavier still - the floor. Jimmy spared no expense in his restoration of this ride, and so each floor panel is very solid, very thick wood with a nice, thick metal plate attached to the upper surface. They each need three people to lift them up onto the trolley (think garden centre but much more heavy-duty) and there are forty two of them! Starting at the opposite side of the ride to the truck, for reasons which are, hopefully, quite obvious, they are piled four or five high onto the trolley, then wheeled around to the crane. It's now getting on for 9pm as we start dismantling the spider - the heavy-duty wooden framework that supports the floor panels. These are in turn supported by wooden blocks of various sizes, with thinner and thinner pieces of wood that were inserted to make sure that all those supporting beams were perfectly horizontal. All these wooden beams have to be hoicked up onto the floor plate truck and the blocks have to be stacked in the space between the piles of floor plates.

Just the centre of the ride to go now - but we've saved the heaviest for last - the cog! This is the circular metal behemoth to which the fishtrays are attached. The upper surface has the cog teeth that engage with the drive motor cog, and it rests on solid metal wheels around the outside edge of the raised central platform that supports the paybox and control system. It's dark now, and heading for 11pm as the eight massive sections of the cog are winched up one by one onto the top of the pile of floor panels. The support structure for the cog is then unbolted and folded - Jimmy spent one winter season trailer-mounting the centre of the ride to speed things up a little, so once the paybox is dismantled, there is no more lifting to do - just folding things up and using the hydraulic rams to lift the centre of the ride up to allow the lorry wheels to be fitted ready to take the whole ride away to the next event.

Nothing to it, really!

The Hills Are Alive...

...with the sound of me yelling at the dogs! Here I am, on the Edge of Exmoor, house-sitting for the farmer Ians while they recuperate from a hectic lambing season by walking long distances in the baking heat of Turkey! Yes, I used to share a house with three of the pups, but proper close control of any dog comes with familiarity on a daily basis. Taking over after being an "absent father" for a few months, therefore, can be quite a task. At least the new hound on the block, the wondrous Sonny, is familiar with the territory, being the resident sheep-herding hound...

Sunday morning. The morning after the night before, which featured an abortive attempt to see the rather brilliant Tankus the Henge performing in Barnstaple. Pub gigs are great, and usually end around closing time. This pub, however, had its own "club" attached, and the gig didn't even start until getting on for closing time. No notification anywhere, and the 9:00pm "doors open" time merely meant you were sitting around in their chilly "club room" for another hour and three quarters. When the group Tweeted that they'd be on stage at 10:45pm, I realised that I'd have to miss out this time as the hairy kids were still stuck in the kitchen, bless 'em. Ah! The trials of hound-sitters! Here's one of my favourite Tankus tracks from their first album, "Recurring Dream". There's a new album in the pipeline, I hear! Follow them on Twitter @tankusthehenge if you want to find out more. Go and see them performing live if you can - they are one of the most entertaining bands out there.

Some bird or other. The Ians would know...

Back to Sunday morning. Bright and early, although the sky itself had that misty quality that promises sunshine later on, off we went in the van to the empty fields on the farm. All the lower fields are now set up for growing grass, which will in turn become silage which will feed the sheep and cattle next year. The ewes and their lambs are all up on the higher ground now, which means plenty of romping room for the hounds! The best part is that these fields are sheep and lamb-proof, which means a certain Husky can be allowed to roam off-lead.

Sonny, in a rare moment of calm.

Walking the hounds on the lower fields is a little like an episode of Sesame Street. Across seven, along the top of five, down through eight, round the edge of four. And when you get to thirteen, well! All referring to the field sizes in acres, apparently, but the fields aren't actually those sizes. Hmmmm. As Sonny enters each new field, he joyfully charges around the entire perimeter. I've been led to believe that this is down to his sheepdog instincts, looking for stray lambs, but really I think he's heard of these time trials that humans do on their cycle runs and is aiming for a personal best every morning. Boy can he move! At the other extreme is poor old Fred. He has creaky hip joints and barely gets above a brisk walk. Every time (albeit not very often) he breaks into a trot, I say "take it easy, Fred!", but I don't think he understands English too well...

Joey loves to bark, seemingly to annoy the humans as much as possible. From the instant he leaps out of the van, he's a yappin' and a prancin' with a wicked glint in his eye - cueing the first round of human yells. "Joey! Shut up!" - truly leading by example (not).

"Waiting for Freddy"

Then, Cody gets the whiff of something interesting. Huskies have a one-track mind: Food. This is one reason why it is unwise to have a Husky off the lead in the open countryside. At least in these fields, he (theoretically) can't get out if a rabbit does cross his path. In open countryside, he'd be gone for hours if he saw a deer in the distance. The next bout of yelling that morning was, therefore, at Cody. He tends to take the lead, but when you see him stop dead in his tracks, ears pricked up and nose niffling the air (which is the scientific term), it's time to call him to heel. Cody, of course, will have none of this, and off he charges. The only amusing aspect of this would be watching me charging after him. What's that he's found in the hedge on the other side of the field? Ah yes - a decomposing rabbit corpse. No, Cody. That is NOT your breakfast! "Drop! Leave! Bad dog!" - all of which is pretty futile when there is potential food around. I end up having to pick up the soggy corpse and throw it over the hedge, out of reach, but I know that he'll be niffling around that same spot on the next walk - just in case.

Fred bringing up the rear

The rest of this morning's walk was fairly uneventful - mainly waiting for Fred to catch up, so I took advantage of the pauses to take a few photographs. It really is a lovely place to be spending some time with the hairy kids...

Circus Circus

Amanda Thompson has a lot to answer for! I was quite happy riding the wonderful range of roller coasters at Blackpool Pleasure Beach, but then along came her production of "Eclipse" at the Globe Theatre, located in the park. I was at the park with a roller coaster club for the weekend and we'd been given the VIP treatment as per. The ticket for Eclipse, however, was destined to stay in my wallet as I was enjoying riding The Big One too much.

Then I bumped into a couple of other members at interval time who told me how good the show was, so I ventured in for Act II...

...and I was hooked from the moment it started. The entr'acte, if you like, was a fairly straightforward dance number called, erm, Bravadeo. It then moved into a section called Kaatoosh (!), where the stage was filled with jugglers, artistic gymnasts, ballet dancers and more all doing their thing to the fascinating music. Then came Spheres with the German Wheel, which remains one of my favourite acts to this day - a perfect demonstration of how humans can use the laws of Physics to create something quite remarkable. More acts with strange names followed - trampolinists surrounded by a wall of fire, more aerial work, contortionists, ballet and the wonderful, titular song where it blew a gale and started to snow in the auditorium. So much about this show belied the seaside resort location - true West End quality, meticulous attention to detail, music that I still listen to to this day, with superb vocals by Ian Meeson (who, I later found out, I had seen in Starlight Express at the Apollo Victoria and who had mentored members of the original cast of The Book of Mormon -small world, and all that!). I just wish I could find a lyric sheet for the songs. Needless to say, every trip I made to Blackpool afterwards just had to include at least one visit to Eclipse.

This show had introduced me to the fascinating sport of artistic gymnastics and I always like to watch Team GB when they are competing, albeit in true couch-potato fashion. I just wish the German Wheel was a bigger part of the UK gymnastics scene. Here's a couple of up-and-coming Wheel Gymnasts performing straight-line (Luca Christ) and spiral (Jack Gomberg) - now, set this to music with atmospheric lighting and add the risk factor of performing this on a raised, circular platform! It's great to see gymnastics getting so much more attention these days - London 2012 and the more recent Commonwealth Games really got this sport in everyone's focus, and Team GB demonstrated nicely how music and gymnastics can mix on the TV show "Tumble". Cirque du Soleil awaits, guys! It was also great to see Acrobatic Gymnastics winning Britain's Got Talent back in 2010 with Spelbound.

Now we have the Udderbelly Festival on the South Bank - a celebration of circus and cabaret - and that's where I'm writing this blog. A very pleasant venue, with plenty of shaded outdoor seating and good beer, and a huge purple cow, named Violet, inside whom are featured some incredible circus acts in the most stripped-back and up-close presentations ever. This afternoon, I'm watching (again) a performance called "A Simple Space" by the Australian troupe Gravity and Other Myths. The performance consists of, among other things, a series of competitions between the members of the troupe, such as who can do the most backflips and who can skip the fastest (which ends up as a strip-skipping competiton but all done in the best possible taste - this really is a show for the whole family). The audience participation is great fun too - especially the game of Human Skittles, but you really must see the show for yourselves. 

Later on in the season, two other circus-related acts will be appearing in shows called "Beta Testing" and "Bromance". The latter includes the Cyr Wheel - a single-hoop version of the German Wheel. Can't wait to see how it compares to that first performance of Eclipse that I saw all those years ago...

If you're in Blackpool this summer, treat yourself to Amanda's Hot Ice Show - "Desire" at the Pleasure Beach, which is certain to be another breathtaking show, and while in London, head to the Udderbelly Festival, which has shows for all ages!

Me, a balloon animal and a rather
bemused Daniel Liddiard of @GOM_Circus

Post script: A Simple Space by Gravity and Other Myths was brilliant once again, and I ended up with one of the balloon animals from the "make a balloon animal behind your back" competition (thanks, Simon ;-)

A few related Twitter accounts, if you're interested:

• @Pleasure_Beach 
• @UdderbellyFest
• @GOM_Circus
• @BMTroupe
• @CircusGeeks
• @BritGymnastics