| |
Point Brique Ghost Train, as seen at Brickvention 2008 (where it won second
prize) and on television.
While I’ve built hundreds of MOCs over the years, it’s only recently that I’ve
become interested in building amusement rides. Inspired by Stump Dunn’s
contribution to the SLTC layout at the AMRA exhibition in October 2007, and
being committed to exhibit the Point Brique Historic Cable Railway at the St
Luke’s Exhibition in November 2007, I constructed a couple of amusement rides (a
small Ghost Train and a Merry Go Round (Carousel) to accompany a modified
Creator Ferris Wheel and the Point Brique Historic Cable Railway itself.
With Brickvention 2008 looming in late January, I was looking for something
unusual, interesting and portable (I had to fly from Sydney to Melbourne with
it) to build and take to show there. I received a Tie Crawler for Christmas,
and, while it’s not a particularly vool set in and of itself, those tracks
definitely had possibilities. It didn’t take long before a bigger, better Ghost
Train was top of the list. Once I’d sought advice from the community on how to
attach things to the tracks, I was ready to build.
Or at least I thought I was ready to build. The exercise of mounting a track
horizontally and securing Ghost Train cars to it proved more problematic than I
expected. The track sagged. The cars snagged. It was about three weeks of
on-and-off experimenting and redesigning before I came up with a track and
mechanism that was reliable and ran at a reasonable speed. The motor of choice
is an old 4.5V train motor – it ran slow enough, so a short (and therefore
reasonably quiet) gear train could join it to the track, the track mechanism is
basically an oval – longer than a tie crawler pontoon – sized to fit within the
chosen baseplate area of 48x16 (to fit easily into carry on luggage).
| | Once the mechanism was built, and tested to be reliable enough (ie run for 30 minutes unattended – a feat that was never duplicated at Brickvention!), it was time to build up the façade, the scenes, and the behind the scenes elements.
|
The façade is fairly simple as these things go, the highlight being the light up snotted Ghost Train sign. I went with a predominantly black façade, with dark grey and some brown. Not great for photography, and not great for making it stand out in a crowded room (in fact, one person apologised to me on day two of Brickvention for not realising it was a Ghost Train – he’d assumed it was “just another castle”). The standard ‘spooky’ accessories (Ghosts, vampire, cobwebs, spiders, rats etc) have been used to break up the blackness.
| | 
|
| | The entrance and exit is fairly simple, although there is an awkward half stud offset involved in the ‘landing area’ to provide adequate clearance for the cars. A couple of Arkham Asylum assistants are moonlighting as ride attendants. It is probably best that riders follow their directions.
|
| | The first scene of the ride is the haunted forest and cemetery. Riders sweep around a bend whilst creatures of the night loom, and the graveyard appears to be oddly busy...
|
Fortunately, the riders do not have to stay in the graveyard too long, because the refuge of a brightly coloured cottage is not far off. It seems attractive, even edible...
| | 
|
| | Gingerbread cottages are of course not to be trusted as places of safety, and the witch greets visitors – perhaps they’ll “stay for dinner?”
|
Leaving the witch’s cottage the riders enter the haunted castle, where ghosts dance and suits of armour seem a bit scary. It’s cold in here, but it’s getting warmer...
| | 
|
| | From the ghostly castle into the fiery darkness of the Inferno! Flames flicker around the rider’s cars, as they swing around the corner, and Lucifer himself gets ready to greet the latest arrivals. “Stay a while! Stay Forever!”
...and then the riders vanish into the darkness beneath Lucifer’s cloven hooves, to who knows what horrors, before emerging, shaken, into the daylight at the ride’s exit.
|
Of course, a ride like this can’t function without a lot of work behind the scenes from a group of hardworking, dedicated, coffee drinking staff in the control room (which is located above the witch’s cottage).
| | 
|
| | This shows the layout of the ride behind, each scene consists of one or more modules that can be removed for transport (and repairs, and – particularly - access to the track).
|
Of course, the ride would not be open at the back. A series of panels enclose the scenes, ensuring that this is truly a ‘dark ride’.
| | 
|
| | The ongoing issue is cars snagging and detaching themselves from the track. Because the cars slide along tiles on the long straights, if one tile becomes slightly raised the car snags. If a car is slightly out of alignment, it can snag on an adjacent element (this was a big problem at Brickvention with cars transitioning from the cottage to the castle, but has subsequently been fixed with a slight design change). The gear train has been designed with a gear that ‘pops out’ if the technic chain jams – however at Brickvention this failed to protect the track twice, with the chain breaking. It is a major effort to rethread a broken chain!
|
Overall, I’m please with the result. The technic chain provides a way to build a
really tight radius curve and opens up possibilities for rides (and other MOCs)
which aren’t easily achieved through other methods. I’d appreciate any feedback
and/or thoughts and suggestions on how to address the problems I encountered
with this build.
Cheers
Richie Dulin
|
|
Message has 1 Reply:
2 Messages in This Thread:
  
- Entire Thread on One Page:
- Nested:
All | Brief | Compact | Dots
Linear:
All | Brief | Compact
|
|
|
|
