What's new

The World's First Steel Roller Coaster.. What Was It?

bezzzzzer

Hyper Poster
The obvious answer would be Matterhorn Bobsleds, but was it?

I recently found this on RCDB. High Speed Thrill Coaster at Knoebels. Built in 1955 (4 years before the Matterhorn opened).

It definately doesn't look as impressive, but, as this image shows, it is a steel coaster nontheless.




So this raised the question to my head, what actually is the first steel coaster ever constructed?
 

marc

CF Legend
The Mattaherhorn was the 1st coaster to use tubular steel tracks I dont think they ever claims it was the first steel coaster?
 

furie

SBOPD
Staff member
Administrator
Moderator
Marc's right. There have been steel coasters pretty much as long as there have coasters (the first coaster was a railway after all :) ). It's the tubular steel thing which makes the difference.

Flat steel has poor strength, so needs lots of support. It's very heavy too, and in the end, very costly. It also doesn't handle forces too well, so it was actually much more limited than wood at the time. Used a lot in small, kiddie coasters :)

Tubular steel overcomes all of this.
 

davidm

Strata Poster
High Speed Thrill Coaster rocked! :)

They took it down at the end of last season though. :-(

(it was your basic-kiddy-coaster-simple-oval type thing, but with some pretty extreme ups and downs (extreme for a basic-kiddy-coaster-simple-oval that is))
 
Top