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Fantastic old coaster footage/pics

The whole city has now been turned into a tacky theme park to compensate. Guadílandia would be a decent new name for it.
 
How about...Walibi Belgium without any rollercoasters?

10390064_240211626178117_4043773319799458235_n.jpg
 
zazobo said:
All cities have tacky parts but Barcelona on the most part is an awesome city?
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I don't want to totally derail thread. In a nutshell, Barcelona is a medium-sized city which is now completely saturated with tourists, to the extent that it's making locals miserable. Follow link below if you want to get an idea of what I mean.

 
sandgrown said:
I don't want to totally derail thread. In a nutshell, Barcelona is a medium-sized city which is now completely saturated with tourists, to the extent that it's making locals miserable. Follow link below if you want to get an idea of what I mean.

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It’s a busy city in peak season, but it doesn’t make it a theme park? That suggests the city has been constructed entirely synthetically and that there isn’t any authenticity.
 
Watch the video if you like and see what conclusions you draw. Further thread derailment will end up annoying posters or lead to mods redirecting conversation I guess.
 
sandgrown said:
Watch the video if you like and see what conclusions you draw. Further thread derailment will end up annoying posters or lead to mods redirecting conversation I guess.
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My thoughts:

Barcelona has been a touristic city for decades. Recently, there's been a movement where locals have started saying they despise tourists etc.
But just because they don't like the tourist trade doesn't mean Barcelona has become tacky does it?
Nearly a quarter of visitors visit on business, and the tourist trade brings plenty of spend to the city too, hence why they can continue building the Sagrada Familia for example.
Obviously it's a complex issue, because there's got to be a balance between tourist spend and resident's happiness.
I've been five times and I definitely wouldn't say it feels like a 'tacky theme park'...
 
vaugc002 said:
My thoughts:

Barcelona has been a touristic city for decades. Recently, there's been a movement where locals have started saying they despise tourists etc.
But just because they don't like the tourist trade doesn't mean Barcelona has become tacky does it?
Nearly a quarter of visitors visit on business, and the tourist trade brings plenty of spend to the city too, hence why they can continue building the Sagrada Familia for example.
Obviously it's a complex issue, because there's got to be a balance between tourist spend and resident's happiness.
I've been five times and I definitely wouldn't say it feels like a 'tacky theme park'...
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Tourist numbers have gone from 1.7 million in 1990 to 9 million last year (https://www.statista.com/statistics/452060/number-of-tourists-in-barcelona-spain/) . I lived there for 2 years and it very much felt like living in a theme park at times. My local park (Parc Guell) was overrun, going into town was a nightmare of tourists ramming out Las Ramblas. Nice that they can build Sagrada Familia but good luck trying to enjoy it in the afternoon if you're local. You can't even get a decent view of it upclose because of tourist buses and queues sometimes. Rents for locals have gone through the roof too. A good amount of tourism was great for the city, and locals were proud to have become popular. The current saturation for a relatively small city has ruined it.

Again have a look at the video above. It's Catalans explaining in very specific detail how they feel about the themeparkification of the city.
 
sandgrown said:
Tourist numbers have gone from 1.7 million in 1990 to 9 million last year (https://www.statista.com/statistics/452060/number-of-tourists-in-barcelona-spain/) . I lived there for 2 years and it very much felt like living in a theme park at times. My local park (Parc Guell) was overrun, going into town was a nightmare of tourists ramming out Las Ramblas. Nice that they can build Sagrada Familia but good luck trying to enjoy it in the afternoon if you're local. You can't even get a decent view of it upclose because of tourist buses and queues sometimes. Rents for locals have gone through the roof too. A good amount of tourism was great for the city, and locals were proud to have become popular. The current saturation for a relatively small city has ruined it.

Again have a look at the video above. It's Catalans explaining in very specific detail how they feel about the themeparkification of the city.
Click to expand...

Fair enough - if you've lived there you're bound to have a different perspective.
This sort of overcrowding is just a common day experience in London so I'm used to - perhaps that's why I didn't notice it in Barcelona as much.
Interesting to see your view though - I appreciate you sharing.

Back on topic - I've found a bizarre old video of a 'Motor Car Rollercoaster'.
Apparently in Seattle in 1929 there was a coaster-style track for cars to drive on.
Looks pretty fun!

 
vaugc002 said:
Fair enough - if you've lived there you're bound to have a different perspective.
This sort of overcrowding is just a common day experience in London so I'm used to - perhaps that's why I didn't notice it in Barcelona as much.
Interesting to see your view though - I appreciate you sharing.
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As a Barcelona local, let me clear some things.
Barcelona has always been a nice city but since the 1992 Olympics the tourist craze started. In the last decade or so tourism has grown so much to the point which rent has sky-rocketed virtually evicting people that have always been living in some areas. Gentrification is a fact, and people are fed up with real estate companies buying entire buildings, setting cost-prohibitive rent fees for the locals thus favouring high-end tourists and business people.

I don't mind tourists and I know where to go to avoid them and still enjoy the city. Tourism is business and business makes a city richer but I have to agree that Barcelona is a fat cow and everyone seems to be milking it dry.

Back on topic, Casino de l'Arrabassada is really close to where the current Parc d'Atraccions del Tibidabo sits but they are not related in any way. In fact, Tibidabo was meant to be a park for everyone whilst Casino de l'Arrabassada was aimed at the burgeois of the city. There they could gamble and be amused amongst other rich people. Gambling was not always on the gamblers' side so much so that legend has it that the owner of the casino built a room where those who had lost everything at the casino could go to and take their lives privately.

I have a book called "Amusement parks of Barcelona" with plenty of pictures of former amusement parks of the city, like Turó Park, Parc de la Ciutadella. Did you know Barcelona had a full-fledged wooden coaster and a Scenic Railway in the middle of the city? Those were the good ol' days! I'll try to scan and post some of these pictures!
 
oriolat2 said:
have a book called "Amusement parks of Barcelona" with plenty of pictures of former amusement parks of the city, like Turó Park, Parc de la Ciutadella. Did you know Barcelona had a full-fledged wooden coaster and a Scenic Railway in the middle of the city? Those were the good ol' days!
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I remember finding about a coaster called Gusano Monstruo a while ago (I think it's in this topic somewhere). It must've been one of the very first steel coasters anywhere!
 
Ha I'd seen pictures of that thing before but never realised it was such a white knuckle ride, what a great job it must have been to drive it!
 
Going back to some from my own collection here are some images of the British Empire Exhibition which took place at Wembley stadium between 1924 and 1925.
I shall start with the pictures from my collection.

The exhibition featured 3 roller coasters.
The first was a large Scenic Railway type ride without any actual Scenery like many of its contemporaries. Called oddly enough the Gigantic Scenic Railway. The ride like the Margate Scenic Railway Featured 2 side by side lifts but slightly varying layuts on each loop round.
Gigantic Scenic Railway London.jpg
Next door to this ride was the Grand National (also known as the Giant Switchback it seems). This ride doesnt appear to have been a Switchback in the traditional sense but more just a large wooden coaster with a more elongated layout than the nearby Gigantic Scenic Railway.Giant Switchback.jpg
Wembley Grand National.jpg

In a seperate amusement section to the North of the site sat The Racer. A large Scenic Railway coaster that featured two side by side tracks. That as the name suggests raced.
Racer at Wembley.jpg
British Pathe has some good footage of this ride running in this video at 13mins 44seconds

Using a couple of images which are not in my collection and I found online I mapped out the locations with a map of the Exhibition. The oddly shaped India Pavillion in the middle there was really handy :)
Green = The Racer
Red = The Grand National
Blue = The Gigantic Switchback
Wembely Locations.jpg
On a non coaster front you can see a reference in one of those images to the Never Stop Railway. This was a really weird railway design that used rotating tubes with a spiral thread which propelled the train along its course. The thread is variable in its length so when the thread is more compact the train runs slower through stations and then when the thread is stretched out the train runs more quickly. Allowing the train to change speed without changing the speed of rotation of the tubes. Ingenious if not too efficient I imagine.

There is another great video from British Pathe of this running here.
 
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