Backyard Roller Coasters | Hacker News Reader

Backyard Roller Coasters

backyardrollercoasters.org

I actually need to build a short (500 yard) railway at some point in the next few years. Disease is spreading into my ash woodland and a very large amount of timber needs to be harvested before it dies. It’s the excuse I need to have a site railway.

If you haven't seen it yet, Tim over at the Way Out West Blow-In Blog[1] has been building a cartway to do farm work where a tractor wouldn't serve the purpose well. I haven't watched recently but last I checked he had built a wagon or two and a boom-mounted trenching wheel. It looked like a neat project!

[1] https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCSViWfOV4pEcYnzpV6w548Q

Very nice, thanks. The steel rail design is a great little hack.

Why is this here? It is a sales link to an e-Book.

There's some backstory there, and some photos, and links to other things like https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCogxwyWHLKCTnBXRGQXbnYg. I think it's ok. It's a hell of a topic after all, and better yet, seems to pass the "can't be predicted from any pre-existing sequence" test, which is the gold standard for HN topics.

https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sor...

HN allows sales links to subscription-only services from tech startups, I'm not sure why a book would be off-limits

This one https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xbTQoFjOAdM looks like something simple enough that you could maybe sell it to families? Like, instead of installing a playground, install this coaster.

I'm not sure what the safety/liability situation would be like, but the coaster is close to the ground—if the child wears a helmet I don't think this would be more dangerous than a set of swing set or jungle gym?

Using plastic pipes you can get at any home improvement store for the track is pretty smart. It's all very approachable; you don't need any expensive tools to build one.

This seems like the type of thing that could be a liability nightmare. If my child told me someone in the neighborhood had built a backyard roller coaster, I would forbid them to ride it.

Amusing this hits the front page the same time as

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Euthanasia_Coaster https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27970824

"Subsequent inversions or another run of the coaster would serve as insurance against unintentional survival of more robust passengers." - This sentence just cracks me up

I wish I had a backyard big enough for a Euthanasia Coaster!

I misread that as backward roller coaster. That'd be fun.

There was a coaster at King's Dominion in Virginia called Rebel Yell (since renamed Racer 75) that ran backwards on one of the 2 tracks from 1992 to 2008. I remember it being fun but I preferred the forward facing ride.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Racer_75

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=adES4jZpAHk

Kennywood used to have a ride where you were launched forward through a loop and then up an incline till gravity counteracted momentum. You'd then fall backwards down the incline, back through the loop, through the station, and backwards up an incline, then roll down and forward back into the station.

It was a fun ride.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shuttle_Loop

There's a surprising amount of coasters that run backwards nowadays! You have a handful of wooden coasters that generally run (or did run) backwards as part of a Halloween event (Racer 75, Thunder Road (RIP), Racer at Kings Island and Viper at Six Flags Great America) but a lot of modern steel coasters actually do it by design. Like Hagrid's Magical Creatures Motorbike Adventure at Islands of Adventure in Orlando has a decently lengthy backwards section (plus some other surprises I won't spoil) or Mr Freeze at both Six Flags Over Texas or Six Flags St Louis both go through their courses both forwards and back. And that's not even counting Boomerangs like Bat at Canada's Wonderland that another sibling commenter mentioned

(PS glad to see my favorite hobby being mentioned on HN, I could literally talk about this stuff all day)

The Racer at KI originally ran forward on both sides, then switched to one forward, one backward in '82.

I have fond memories from the 80's and 90's riding both sides. There was always some good-natured trash talking between the two tracks as they headed out from the gate and up the first hill (think "Great Tasting" vs. "Less Filling" and corny stuff like that). They eventually turned away from each other, but came back together for the finish line.

Sadly they flipped it back to the original configuration a while ago.

Carowinds, in the Charlote NC area, had a design based on the Rebel Yell / Racer 75 called Thunder Road. two tracks mirrored each other and one side ran the train backwards.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thunder_Road_(roller_coaster)

It was a tough call between riding in the last car on the forwards side or anywhere on the backwards side, but on slower days when everyone was standing in line for the stand-up coasters, you didn't have to choose. Those were good summers.

Canada's Wonderland has a forward-and-back ride called The Bat:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z_UF0ozd2ns

The real issue with it is that capacity is severely limited since you can only have the one train. So there's none of the usual 3-train flow where one is always loading, one's climbing, and one's waiting to load.

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