Restoring 100-year-old dragon is roller coaster ride for engineers

THE UK’s oldest roller coaster has been reverse-engineered back into life by specialists at Sheffield’s Advanced Manufacturing Park.

PES Performance has restored the historic wooden ride at Margate’s Dreamland attraction, nearly 100 years after it opened.

The Scenic Railway, which is one of only eight rides in the world that still requires a brakeman to physically control the speed, had been damaged in an arson attack.

The only part that remained from the original carriages was one of the ornate dragon-heads that were part of the front structure of each carriage. 

PES Performance was approached to reverse engineer the remaining dragon-head and manufacture six wooden dragons from the original to become part of the three-carriage train required for the ride.

The first challenge was to accurately reproduce the Dragons from the original. The original was hand carved, ornate and organic in shape, and the PES team used a 3D blue light scanning system to capture the data.

The salvaged dragon-head had been damaged with 270mm cut off from the lower section of the Dragon, plus further damage to the head. The team searched through archived information on the original scenic railway before commissioning a sculpture to rebuild the missing section in clay.

Once the scan data was complete, Lancashire business GCNC used the data to programme a CNC cutting machine to manufacture from wood the six dragon-heads.

PES managing director Mike Maddock said: “The PES team are very proud to have played a small part in this amazing project and to have used our cutting-edge 3D scanning technology to help restore this historic landmark.”