The Amusement Park Railroad Thread

[SonofBaconator]

Here's the old KIMVRR route from King Island History's Facebook page

Notice there's no covering over the tracks where the coaches are stored. Also note the slight curve after the storage tracks that would be later straightened. Finally, and probably the most obvious, notice the original loop to the left. Today the current loop would be where the houses are and the slides within the lazy river would be where the old loop was.

[SonofBaconator]

I believe this is the Lake Como Railroad at Coney Island

 

[CoastersRZ]

Yep.  That definitely looks like the Coney Island and Lake Como Railroad.  Interesting tidbit is that "tunnel"/bridge that the train was going through allowed cars to access the parking lot.  That tunnel/bridge is still standing to this day at the park.

[SonofBaconator]

A lot of people don't realize the second season of the Banana Splits Show was filmed at Coney Island. The 1st season had segments filmed at Six Flags Over Texas.

Here's some footage of old Coney Island

 

[kimv1972]

The CI&LC clip showed engine #35, the "George Rogers Clark", which had a dark blue color scheme that is quite rare for Chance Manufacturing.  The engines were actually numbered based on the order that Chance built them, so #35 was a fairly early build.  After Coney, it was sold to Guntown Mountain at Mammoth Cave, KY (I got to run it one day!), and today I believe it is still stored and possibly for sale at Beech Bend Park in Bowling Green, KY.  The other engine, #34 "Mad Anthony Wayne" is running at Oil Ranch in Hockley, TX.  It had the stock Chance color scheme with light blue boiler, red cab and stack.

[SonofBaconator]

My attempt to give the locomotives a more "accurate" look with my limited editing skills

[kimv1972]

Love walnut cabs.  Baldwin used varnished walnut until 1879, then switched to painted ash when they went from "lake" (burgandy) to dark olive Baldwin green on their engines.  There are Youtubes about how to paint "faux" wood.  Who is volunteering to sneak in the enginehouse this winter?  #12 always needed a red cowcatcher, domes, and front number plate.  And I wouldn't mind buying the park some brass polish for that cap stack!

[denis larrick]

Hey, that historical aerial of the track is missing something!  There are no settlers' cabins yet, no Charlie Flatt cabin at the throat of the return loop, and most of all, NO TRAINS!  That dates the picture to the summer or early fall of 1971 since the first equipment (#19) showed up in October 1971.

[SonofBaconator]

48 minutes ago, kimv1972 said:

Love walnut cabs.  Baldwin used varnished walnut until 1879, then switched to painted ash when they went from "lake" (burgandy) to dark olive Baldwin green on their engines.  There are Youtubes about how to paint "faux" wood.  Who is volunteering to sneak in the enginehouse this winter?  #12 always needed a red cowcatcher, domes, and front number plate.  And I wouldn't mind buying the park some brass polish for that cap stack!

My favorite look on any crown (minus the huge tanks in the tender)

[Tr0y]

5 hours ago, SonofBaconator said:

My favorite look on any crown (minus the huge tanks in the tender)

A good looking engine indeed. I wonder if Levi will keep that look after its refurbishment. I’m hoping they are going to swap those horrendous tanks out with tanks that are more original to Crown, assuming they want both engines to be able to share parts.

[SonofBaconator]

On 9/21/2020 at 11:25 PM, Tr0y said:

A good looking engine indeed. I wonder if Levi will keep that look after its refurbishment. I’m hoping they are going to swap those horrendous tanks out with tanks that are more original to Crown, assuming they want both engines to be able to share parts.

I want Levi to look like it originally did

Also that might not necessarily match with the coaches so they might just keep it how it is

 

[SonofBaconator]

Thanks Paramount.

(From multiple sources on Kings Island' fan pages on Facebook)

[kimv1972]

The Abner Sureshot and Golden Lamb buildings didn't come along until 1975 or beyond.  In the first year, we only had the buildings closest to the picnic ground fence (to hide the parking lot for the locomotive crew and the big propane tank) and two settlers' cabins (and those didn't get finished until June due to weather).  The wedding scene appears to be Charlie Flatt's old cabin that was behind the three houses on the straightaway coming out of the loop.  Again, this scene came from 1975 or beyond since Charlie still had an arrow sticking out of his chest when I left in 1973.  The real Charlie I believe was one of the higher ups in maintenance or construction.  Most of the names came from employees, though I don't think we ever had an Abner Sureshot.  Notice that the landscape lights on the ground were hidden by fiberglass tree stumps and rocks.  In the beginning, even the public trashcans in Rivertown were big tree stumps.

[Ltravis]

I'm curious as to what became of my Great Grandfather's train.  It was in Traverse City when I was a child in the 1960s.  I believe it went to a theme park, possibly in Indiana.  I'm wondering if it was the one that was involved in a tragic accident there in the 1990s.  If it was that train, I'm curious about where it went after that park sold its rides.

[MillenniumforceMike]

I found a picture of the old dominion line shops from 1994. It surprises me to see how it looked because I didn't a. it didn't have a storage shed for the passenger cars (cause if It did, I thought it would've been demolished). The storage tracks also curve which is a big surprise to me.

[kimv1972]

KD never had a car storage shed.  Kings Island didn't in the early years either.  Lew Brown had a lot of pull back then and convinced them to spend a lot of money on the ride that most parks don't.  The KI enginehouse originally didn't have doors and we had to put plastic over the openings in the winter.  He also convinced them to put in the jacks to raise the engines and the gantry behind the enginehouse to pull the propane tanks out and to lift the coaches for truck changeout.  Plus we added all kinds of stuff to the engines in the way of making the piping better and to heat the sand dome and lubricator.  There were many little things as well such as tapping in a drain in the exhaust to keep water off the engines in the morning, and adding the fake rivets and front door "bubble" (an old patio umbrella stand) to the smokeboxes.  They are the heaviest modified Crowns ever built.  I've always been curious why KD curved the storage tracks.  Maybe there was a big rock there that they didn't want to move.

[IndyGuy4KI]

A cool pic the park shared earlier.

 

[kimv1972]

I found a few slides from 1972 and had them scanned.  Quality is pretty bad (anyone remember Instamatic cameras?), but hey, it's history.  Here is the ORIGINAL Fort Mc Hale on the loop where the waterpark now stands.  It looks pretty new and I don't see the exploding Gatling Gun, so this was probably around June 1972.  I took it from the top of the mountain that we circled before the 1989 track relocation.

[kimv1972]

This one was taken very early in 1972 since the wood on the tender is still horizontal, though we had moved the whistle to the rear dome in May.  This shows Lew Brown in overalls (left) and his sidekick Dick Carmell on "Lew's" engine, the "Simon Kenton".  They were adding aluminum strips to the roof so rain didn't waterfall over the edge and down your neck if you stuck your head out to see where you were going.  I wonder how OSHA would feel about their techniques today?

[kimv1972]

And finally, the infamous Kenny Van Meter standing in the cab of "his" engine, the "Tecumseh".  Again the wood is horizontal but the whistle was moved from behind the bell (where it showered everyone in boiling water, turned the blue paint into orange stripes, and screeched and gurgled whistle signals).  I'm guessing it was taken in May 1972.  Hey, what happened to Mystic Timbers and the White Water Canyon?  It sure was nice and quiet in the enginehouse back then.

[TombraiderTy]

@kimv1972 Thank you for sharing all those photos! I especially like the one with Fort McHale - I wish that the ride still had show scenes like that today.

I don't think I've ever noticed the little white stars in the wheel hubs. I don't think those are on the cars anymore, but they look like a neat little detai.l

[SonofBaconator]

7 hours ago, kimv1972 said:

This is my favorite look of #12 with the blue domes and balloon stack. Is it possible to return it to this look for the park's 50th?

[SonofBaconator]

Also while I'm thinking about it, when #12s balloon stack was removed in favor of a straight stack, was it meant to resemble UP #119?

[CoastersRZ]

Be sure to check out the latest KIC Podcast: Episode 12- KIMVRR: The Early years, with special guest, Denis Larrick (kimv1972) here.

[kimv1972]

The stars on the wheels were Dick Carmell's idea.  We were sitting on five gallon buckets repainting the wheels one night (the injectors used to dump on them and change the color of the Rustoleum paint), and he suggested the stars.  I took it one step farther, and although I'm not particularly fond of them today, I painted the cranks black.  I'm sure Dick was thinking of his California days since Disney's engines had stars on the wheels.  As to the straight stack, I think that was just a reaction to the very poorly done balloon.  If they would have put the same balloon on that Crown did with many other engines, it would probably still be there.  But, hey, check the sand dome on #19 and compare it to #119.

[SonofBaconator]

Here's a better edit of what wood cabs and altered colors would look like

(Original picture https://www.facebook.com/photo/?fbid=10218837939760685&set=gm.710714489611233)

[kimv1972]

Looks like the paint scheme on Jupiter in Utah!  Just gotta sneak in and paint fake wood on those cabs.

[kimv1972]

It's funny that back when I worked there, I was very critical of some of the details on the engines, particularly the windows in #12's cab and the skinny diamond stack on #19.  In recent years, I have found that early Chicago and Northwestern engines used that stack, and the "cathedral" windows on #12 were the signature window shape of Dawson and Bailey (National Locomotive Works) of Connellsville, PA.  But I have yet to find any prototype engines with dome covers the shape of the "stock" Crown dome.

[SonofBaconator]

This isn't exactly matched up perfectly but its still remarkable how things have changed

@kimv1972 do you have a preference on looks?

[MillenniumforceMike]

I've always wondered. Why did KI switch out the stacks on #12?