The Yankee Cannonball in its previous life

[mmcirvin]

Near the bottom of this page on the history of Waterbury, Connecticut (along with a lot of other information, including some unpleasant reminders of what things were like in the pre-civil-rights era, and as late as 1968) there's a picture of a 1930 PTC roller coaster at Waterbury's short-lived Lakewood Park, which, according to all available sources, was relocated to Canobie Lake in 1936, where it still runs and (since the 1980s) is known as the Yankee Cannonball.

Two interesting things about the picture:

1. My first reaction was "that's not the Yankee Cannonball." It's hard to tell exactly what part of the coaster that is, but the profile was clearly changed considerably either when it was moved or sometime later on, since there's nothing like that bit where the out and back legs have nearly parallel low hills. I'd heard that it had to be altered to fit into the Canobie site, and there are stories about all the sections being shortened horizontally by six inches. I sort of vaguely imagined it was a proportional shrinkage that kept the shape more or less intact, but it was obviously more complicated than that. Wooden coasters do tend to evolve considerably over time, of course, as they get repeatedly retracked and reprofiled; the lift was even destroyed by a hurricane in 1954.

2. Jeez, look at the bottom of the hill in the foreground. It looks like it'd break your neck! I'm not sure I'd actually want to ride that thing.

I saw another page that had a larger version of the picture and more history about the park, which implied that the coaster actually only operated until 1932, when the amusement park shut down, and was standing-but-not-operating for a few years. But I can't find it at the moment. Update: It's this page of accounts of the park's history. And, for comparison, here's an aerial photo of the modern layout (from a few years ago, but it hasn't changed apart from repainting).

Additional factoid: ACE New England speculates that the Yankee Cannonball may have been the first coaster ever to be relocated, which would be mildly interesting if true. Though they also say it operated for five years at Lakewood, which contradicts other sources.

Comments

[mmcirvin.livejournal.com]

My leading theory at the moment is that what we're looking at here is most of the layout, and that it was originally a straight out-and-back design with the lift/first drop on the side facing the camera. For Canobie the layout was (1) mirror-imaged so that the out leg was on the left, (2) bent 90 degrees where the second-lowest section was originally, and (3) had new, relatively high hills added at the 90-degree dogleg (to reduce the speed on the curves to a manageable level). That would bring the design pretty close to the present-day Yankee Cannonball.

Also, the old terrain looks like it sloped in a way that the Canobie Lake parking lot doesn't.

[agent-mimi.livejournal.com]

I was about to suggest the mirror-image theory as well. That first drop on the original layout though... ouch. I can't figure out how it was managed without major jostling of the internal organs.

[mmcirvin.livejournal.com]

By modern standards, there was an amazingly low general regard for safety in the amusement rides of the time. People often speak of the high level of litigiousness in our society as if it's a bad thing, but I'm not sure it really is here.

[beamjockey.livejournal.com]

Shouldn't it be possible to describe the shape of a roller coaster with suitable polynomials and a handful of coefficients?

[mmcirvin.livejournal.com]

Only if it is shaped like an elephant.

If it's 1930 and personal-injury lawsuits are still relatively rare, there's the possibility of some really bone-jarring discontinuities.

[mmcirvin.livejournal.com]

...though the 1920s roller coaster on Coney Island that was actually supposed to jump a gap never worked well enough for it to run with a passenger, fortunately.

[mmcirvin.livejournal.com]

Here's that other page (http://freepages.history.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~shepaug/amusement/lakewood.html).

One of the emails collected there claims the coaster was shut down after somebody died on it, which is not so implausible, but I've heard no mention of this anywhere else, and such rumors tend to accumulate about every roller coaster in the world. My general impression is that, after the great wooden-coaster boom of the 1920s, times were really tough for amusement parks at the start of the Depression.

[mmcirvin.livejournal.com]

Canobie's history page (http://www.canobie.com/history.php) claims the Yankee Cannonball was called the "Greyhound" on initial installation.

RCDB lists an even earlier one, a figure-8 side-friction coaster that was there from 1902 to 1935, but there is not much information about it online.

There were some other roller coasters there that are no longer standing. Some of my readers will remember the standard S.D.C. Galaxi coaster (briefly renamed "Rockin' Rider"), a transportable compact steel coaster, that stood where the Frisbee is now; I never saw it, but Sam rode it once. In the early Sixties there was a small Wild Mouse coaster about where the Skater is now, and there was a very small oval kiddie coaster in the Seventies and early Eighties.

[mmcirvin]

The outside links to the photo of Lakewood Park's Giant Coaster are long-dead now, but the photo I was talking about here can be seen on the website of Quassy, a still-operating amusement park in Waterbury:

https://www.quassy.com/about/blog/first-roller-coaster-greater-waterbury-area-was-not-quassy

The ground slope in the photo looks such that I'd call this a terrain coaster. The Yankee Cannonball is very much not one--it's one of the earliest examples of a parking-lot coaster.