Blackpool Pleasure Beach 1979

These photographs were all taken in 1979 but not all on the same day so blue skies may come and go...

Actually most of the photos were taken on black and white film anyway (Ilford FP4 in case anyone is interested) so perhaps I should say light skies may give way to darker skies here and there. The Derby Racer.

I have quite a few articles already on the Pleasure Beach so forgive me if I inadvertantly repeat a photo that I've already used. This shot shows the Cyclone ride - a compact roller coaster of metal construction. At this time the Pleasure Beach south of Watson Road had quite a few of these more portable fairground rides. This had small two-row, four-person cars and wasn't a bad ride at all.

This shot may have already featured I think, but the Astro Liner gets enough comments on the various Blackpool Facebook pages to warrant this being shown again perhaps. It was a simulator ride with a film of space or underwater travel being shown at the front of the seated passengers whilst the tube twisted and lifted or dipped to make the "journey" seem more believable - as if the various space or sea monster attacks weren't enough! Behind it is the station and track of the Steeplechase.

Another portable ride based on the ever-popular Octopus ride. I can't remember what this particular one was called - if you know, leave a comment!

Recently demolished and much lamented, the Wild Mouse was much-loved and one of the few rides where you could expect to be truly terrified as the little mouse car hurtled towards the first extremely tight U-bend.

Woo-hoo! Colour! The Revolution was a brand new ride in 1979. The first looping roller coaster in the UK was catapult launched off a high platform down a dip slope then around the vertical loop, up a second loop/rise to a second platform before repeating the ride backwards. The way up to the starting platform was up a long series of stairs, no lift or ramps. To the disappointment of many riders who came to a sudden realisation that the ride was going to propel them once again around the loop but backwards, there was no exit from the ride on the second platform!

The Revolution's first dip leading to the loop. Under it is the dome of Cinema USA which, whilst it didn't move, was a similar idea to the Astro Liner. In this dome you stood up to watch a film that was filled with motion shots from helicopters, roller coasters, fast boats and a New York fire engine with a long ladder requiring steering at both front and back wheels. The film was projected on the inside of the dome, filling your vision and requiring you to tilt your head up at an angle. All of which made it very difficult to keep your balance as your body tried to make sense of all the movement.

Blackpool Pleasure Beach Index Page

A Sun-Drenched Pleasure Beach 1979

We are back at Blackpool Pleasure Beach for this article and the year is 1979. It takes me a while to write these things you know...

I'm mainly on the look out for people enjoying themselves and these two girls certainly fit the bill.

The dodgems found their way onto fairgrounds in the early 1920s and, as the name suggests, the original idea was to avoid contact with other cars. Consequently the cars of the time were little more than a seat and steering wheel on a flat circular platform with only the minimum of protection. In fact the protection was designed more to protect the circular platform than the riders who must have found it all too easy to fall out, with no seat belts and no enclosing bodywork on the platform!

The Log Flume was always a great place to take photos of riders enjoying themselves, though the opportunity disappeared when the shops and businesses of Ocean Boulevard were built, blocking the view of the lake.

The Cyclone. For a while in the late 1970s through the 1980s, the southern half of the park had many of these travelling fairground rides, many of them operated as concessions.

Until the advent of more modern tall rides the landmark feature of the Pleasure Beach as you walked from the town centre down the Promenade towards the park was the double Ferris Wheel. By the 1970s it was rare to see both wheels in operation at the same time. They travelled in opposite directions, one rising at the front and the other descending at the front. The huge figure of a clown stood at the side of the wheels, facing north up the Promenade and appearing to crank it by hand as it revolved.

The Grand National ride has two cars racing each other side-by-side along a double track and the ride forms a Möbius loop, meaning that each car returns to the starting point of the other car as the ride finishes. This is accomplished by having the cars turn away from each other at the start of the ride, then coming together to ascend the chain rise. Thus the car on the left as passengers got on, will be on the right as they start to go up the first hill of the ride.

A simple ride but effective. Balance a cone on a stick, tilt it and twiz it round and you can achieve a similar ride for your insect collection...

Another of the portable rides from the south half of the park, this was a similar ride to the north park's Monster ride. A variant of the old Octopus ride.

The Revolution was the UK's first 180-degree looping roller coaster. It looped twice, forwards and then backwards as it returned to its station.

These were the days before the turnstiles. You could enter the park for free and buy your tickets as you found something to go on. Tickets were originally bought at the entrance to each ride, then later these ticket booths came out with each ride designated A-Rides for the white-knuckle rides, through to D-Rides for gentle kiddie-friendly rides like the Pleasure Beach Express.

And we'll finish with a smile from a pretty girl on the carousel.

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Fairground Pierrots

During the 1950s and 1960s you would see loads of these on any fairground.

Blackpool Pleasure Beach used to have them on the sideshow stalls amongst the darts and the hoop-la stalls. There would be a row of these pierrot figures.

Having paid your 3d or 6d the operator would release half a dozen ping pong balls which came out of the bottom slot and you fed them into the pierrot's mouth. They then came out of the shute below and bounced about, finally settling in one of a row of columns with a number indicating the score. The object was to get a high enough score to get a decent prize.

It was made more exciting as the head of the pierrot (and therefore the shute) turned from side to side so you had to time the release of the ball hoping to get the top score. Easier said than done and it was normally "Any prize off the bottom shelf!" so you walked away with a comb or a small screwdriver or a pencil.

Variations were ducks and clowns.

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Scanning Old Photos

Several years ago I bought a film scanner to be able to scan all my old slides or transparencies.

Once I started I found that I could get much better scans of the black and whites and colour negatives than I achieved by scanning 6"x4" photos so started to work my way through them. An almost never ending job as I have at least 30,000 negatives!

Every time I think I'll just choose the best ones I always realise afterwards there was another one I missed out that I want to see so I started scanning them all. It will take years of course as I could spend all my spare time doing nothing else.

The sad bit is that as I got into digital photos early on there's a gap in the 1990s where I stopped taking photos on film but the quality of digital wasn't up to having full-screen sized shots. Nothing I can do about that now!

The one featured was taken on my Canon EOS 500 in 1995 and shows the then new "Big One" (then known as the "Pepsi Max Big One" - sponsorship and greed don't make for snappy names or titles!) and the 1904 Hiram Maxim Flying Machine.