Thorpe Park engineers have cake after a 200-foot climb to celebrate the 200th birthday of roller coasters

Posted | Contributed by Jeff

From the press release:

Maintenance engineers at Thorpe Park celebrated the 200th anniversary of the rollercoaster with a dizzying celebratory lunch, 205ft above the ground atop of the Stealth ride ahead of the park’s 2017 opening tomorrow.

The engineers celebrated as they took a break from the annual pre-opening safety checks tucking into birthday cake whilst sporting party hats on top of their helmets. It took the workmen 20 minutes to scale the attraction which is the same height as four double decker buses stacked vertically.

Using harnesses and ropes to scale the rides, the engineers spend 11,500 man-hours meticulously checking every inch of the amusement park – that’s 13,552.9ft of track and 11,766 nuts and bolts. Over 10 million litres of oil is used to maintain the rides – which equates to approximately 4 Olympic swimming pools!

The first rollercoasters with wheeled vehicles on tracks appeared in Paris in 1817 - the Les Montagnes Russes à Belleville (The Russian Mountains of Belleville) and the Promenades Aeriennes in Parc Beacon.