Last Night in Great Yarmouth

Friday 23 August 2002. It was our last night in Great Yarmouth. Tomorrow would see us leave after breakfast and a morning coffee in our favourite beach hut cafe.

There was still a long row of amusement arcades along the seafront road, but sadly gone were the days when you caould find half a dozen or more pinball machines in every arcade. I think we only found two such machine the whole week and predictably one of them wasn't working all that well.

Instead the arcades were full of video games which simply required a good memory for the sequence of challenges rather than the skills to aim balls at various targets through an understanding of the laws of physics. Crane machines full of overweight stuffed toys and pushers with far too much weight of coins to be pushed forwards made up most of the other machines. Miss Franny armed herself with coins and spent the night trying to increase her haul of Winnie the Pooh keyrings. She came home with five...

Our childhood was spent playing the pinballs of the 1950s and 60s, the earlier ones with wooden rails before steel began to be used. They had weak 2-inch flippers that often didn't have the power to send the ball further than halfway up the playfield. The earliest had no flippers at all and targets were just a nail with a surrounding coiled spring that completed the circuit with the nail when pressed against it. The early machines also had gobble holes which scored - but you lost your ball down them for good.

The 1960s were a heyday for pinball players. Rows and rows of them would fill an entire wall of amusement arcades. Spinning score reels replaced the system where bulbs would light in different places on the scorefield to show your score - rows of ten bulbs for millions, 100 thousands, 10 thousands... You had to add them up to get your score. The space created on the back boxes (backflashes) of pinballs by score reels allowed animated features to be added - a lift door opening to reveal the passengers, or a small bagatelle firing tiny balls to signify the launch of a space rocket...

It would be another decade before pinballs became computer controlled, two decades before Gorgar became the first pinball to talk. Elvira - Scared Stiff was the pinball to go to this week and was a good game.

Great Yarmouth 2002 Index

Blackpool Pleasure Beach 1987 / 1989

We start in the year 1987 this time. As we get closer to the time of writing (a mere 37 years...[WHAT???]) there are fewer and fewer photos to draw on in my collection. Work was increasingly taking more of my time especially after I started a new job in 1988, my daughter was getting interested in other things and not wanting to go on rides the same and I was writing both magazine articles and a novel which was published in 2012 as a Kindle book - details in the side column!

Anyway here we are in 1987 on the south side of the park with my daughter and nephew on the front of this clown-themed coaster-cum-roundabout.

As more and more adult rides moved onto the south side of the park crowds got noticeably larger and more walkways had to be created to get them to the rides. These took the form of ramps from the Watson Road crossing and pathways with bridges over existing rides such as the Turnpike / Grand Prix.

Here we are on the ramp from Watson Road having passed the Roller Coaster on our left and coming up to the Pleasure Beach Express station and a row of shops on the right.

Before us to the left is the Space Invader: first a video game, then a wide-bodied pinball machine (at this point there was one still in the arcade opposite the Ghost Train entrance, which I was to buy myself - the pinball not the Ghost Train...) Now it became a dark ride roller coaster.

From across the Promenade roadway a view of the north entrance to the park. We have now jumped in time to 1989. Maxim's Flying Machine can be seen and at the front of the park an amusement arcade which at the time had but was about to lose another row of pinballs including the normal-sized version of Space Invaders which was called Silverball Mania. It also had Elektra, Devil Riders, Road Kings and Mousin' Around. None of them were working all that well. Those silver balls are solid steel and travel fast before they hit something so pinballs require a lot of maintenance.

The Rainbow ride just inside the entrance creates lines of colour against the night sky as it shakes the change out of riders' pockets. Behind to the right, the station of the Cableway can be dimly seen.

Back outside the park a similar long exposure of the Space Tower from the corner of Watson Road. Taking such photos was mainly a matter of using a very sturdy tripod to enable a shutter speed of a couple of minutes and guesswork as to a few other settings. On a windy night - forget it! The vibrations caused by the wind on the tripod and camera would result in an unsharp image.

Also these were taken on film. No one made film greater than 400 ASA at the time. You could "push" a couple of stops but now on digital cameras you can choose to shoot at the equivalent of 3200 or even 6400 ASA (or ISO - they meant the same thing in terms of film sensitivity to light and were identical calibrations).

Blackpool Pleasure Beach Index

Paignton Trains and Pinballs

Thursday 12 August 1993. We were in Paignton for the day during a week's camping holiday based in Sidmouth, Devon.

There's a famous railway that runs along the coast here - the Paignton and Dartmouth Railway. It had an unusual observation car at the rear of the train on certain days - the carriage can be seen here under the canopy.

We had seen notices in the town saying that the Flying Scotsman locomotive was there on that day and we had gone to see it. I was a bit taken aback. I was used to seeing the loco at Carnforth Steamtown museum in the 1980s in its LNER apple green livery and numbered 4472, but here it was in darker livery, numbered 60103 and with horrendous German-style smoke deflectors fitted to the front. I later found this was its British Rail livery and appearance. Built in 1923 it was the first locomotive to officially reach 100 miles per hour. In 1958 it had its single chimney replaced by a double one which tended to chuck smoke all over the place, obscuring the driver's view, hence the smoke detectors. It ended service running in 1963 and entered preservation status under a succession of owners and batting back and forth between the two liveries. At the time though, on this day, not knowing anything of its long history, I was doubting it was the same locomotive.

Dodging a far more modern and less interesting diesel Sprinter unit on the main line's level crossing, we went back to the seafront and had a walk along towards the pier.

The beach kiosks are a bit more like it today. Pasties and pies on offer, rather than your disgusting whelks and winkles. People were also sporting some bright summer colours as they tucked into some good old heart-warming foodstuffs! Never mind your cockles and mussels alive alive-oh, give us a carton of fish and chips a-fried a-fried-oh! I don't like any confusion over who's eating who...

The pier's amusements arcade didn't look exactly welcoming but closer inspection revealed there were lights on inside and one door slightly ajar.

Inside the arcade we found a Gorgar pinball from 1979 and an F14 Tomcat from 1986, both machines being very old for arcade use. I had a Gorgar in my own pinball collection at the time, it was the first ever talking pinball machine. It managed to make several phrases from its seven-word vocabulary of me; you; got; Gorgar; beat; speaks; hurt.

And we leave Paignton with a view of this intrepid pair at the start of their cross-Atlantic pedallo journey to America. Turn right once out of the harbour and mind that swell!

Return to Sidmouth and Devon Holiday 1993 Index Page

Coin Slot Machines

A series of articles dealing with my memories of coin-operated machine in seaside amusement arcades, on station platforms at enthusiasts meetings and at home.

Each of the articles can be read by clicking/tapping the photos below. A link on each page will bring you back here.