After the success of Batman: The Ride at Six Flags Great America in 1992, Theme Parks around
the world rushed to install a version of the B&M Inverted coaster at their parks.
By 1994, 8 Inverted Roller Coasters had opened in theme parks around the globe, including
Europe's first inverted coaster opening at Alton Towers.
Just one year later in Germany the world's largest portable inverted roller coaster debuted.
A coaster created by Intamin with parts subcontracted to Gerstlaurer, MACK Rides and Giovonola,
who would once again use their box style track.
A ride which would later be sold to a park in Russia and disappear for numerous years.
Oscar Bruch was born into the showman industry that he would work in for his whole life and
was no stranger to creating huge travelling attractions.
Attractions that you would expect to be fixed in place but were not.
The first travelling looping coaster, Looping Star was manufactured by Schwarzkopt and introduced
in 1978.
Anton Schwarzkopft would go on to introduce other huge travelling coasters such as Thriller,
one of the most intense coasters which debuted at a fairground in 1986.
Oscar Bruch would go one step further after seeing the reception to B&M Inverted Coasters
such as Batman The Ride opening at parks around the world and he wanted a traveling version.
The requirements for such a huge travelling attraction are vastly different from one that
would be constructed once and remain in place for the majority of its life.
One issue was that moving and rebuilding coasters would cause them to become rougher and rougher
just like so many that had been in the six flags ride rotation program.
These rides would not have to be moved and rebuilt once but many times in unbelievably
short windows of time and require a huge amount of people to do so.
Not only would it have to be rebuilt it would have to be moved across the country on trailers.
Time consuming, labor intensive and more importantly not cheap.
Because of all these additional requirements many manufacturers just avoided making anything
that had to travel.
Other than Schwarzkopt very few large scale movable coasters had been built.
In the late 80s Anton Schwarzkopt had fallen ill and the hopes for large scale travelling
coasters were fading.
Those hopes however were saved by one man.
A frequent collaborator who had worked under Anton Schwarzkopt himself.
Werner Stengel.
While he had worked on tons and tons of rides before, many with world firsts such as Revolution
at Magic Mountain he was also a consultant for Walter & Claude working on the very first
inverted roller coaster design itself Batman The Ride.
It was from that experience he would bring into this new travelling ride for Oscar Bruch.
The new hot ticket attraction, the worlds largest travelling inverted roller coaster.
After much speculation it was confirmed.
A full size, stengel designed four inversion inverted thrill coaster that could travel
around to fairs was in development.
Under the supervision of the Bruch engineering office the development and construction of
the attraction began in 1993.
It would not be designed or have any involvement by B&M who considered the project too risky.
Instead a consortium of roller coaster companies would work on the ride together, rather than
one company work on the attraction and deliver it, the supervising office would give individual
tasks to several sub contractors and coordinate it together into one complete package, This
Included Intamin, or more specifically their subcontractor GIovonola.
The exact place Walter and Claude previously had worked.
The Stengel engineering team conducted the calculations based on a rough track layout
designed by Oscar Bruch and a detailed model was built.
Subproject management was done by Intamin, who designed and produced the control system.
Giovonola would use that iconic box track they had used in the past once again and they
would also create the lift and most of the electrical systems.
The supports were produced by Mannhardt, a german company that actually declared bankruptcy
during the construction period and Oscar Bruch founded a company to take over the section
of Mannhardt that was working on the supports to make sure it was completed.
Mack rides built the cash box area to take payments for the ride, while the station and
entrance and exit area were constructed by Johaann Gerstlaurer, whose brother Hubert
owns the Gerstlauer company, another who had previously worked for Schwazkopf.
The trains were also unique using the 4 across design in stripped down B&M inverted style
seating.
They were made by an unknown dutch company and assembled by Giovonola.
They didn’t feature seatbelts like the B&M versions, most likely to decrease loading
times.
The station also did not feature the moving floor found on the B&M Inverted Coasters,
though you couldn’t reach the floor when sitting anyway so it didn’t really matter.
To choose a name for the ride Oscar Bruch would be inspired by the multiple manufacturers
all over europe who would work on it, calling it the EuroStar.
Nothing to do with the train between france and england that had opened the year before
with the same name.
Each part of this engineering marvel would come together to create one of the most impressive
feats of engineering in roller coaster history.
A 1200 ton, 126 segments of track that would be 2769 feet long and yes that is longer than
Batman The Ride and Nemesis, a 50 miles per hour inverted roller coaster that could be
transported around using 18 trailers.
If needed it could also be moved around the country by train.
Costing 14 million Deutsche Marks(around 9 million dollars) with a drop of 99 feet and
a total structure height of 115 feet it was one of the largest coasters in Germany at
the time, travelling or not.
While I would normally talk about the rides construction, this ride would be constructed
and deconstructed over 60 times.
The first opening of the ride would be on July 20th 1995 at a fair in Dusseldorf.
It opened 6 days later than expected as the time to construct it was underestimated.
The ride experience itself is quite intense, after leaving the station the train heads
up the loud lift and down the tight right hand turn drop.
Next through a vertical loop followed by a zero g roll and a tight double corkscrew.
While all the inversions were done the ending was the really intense part as the ride headed
increasingly faster through tighter and tighter helixes giving some really powerful positive
g forces.
All of this in an incredibly small space weaving in and throughout each other.
This was not a milder travelling version of stationary inverted coasters, this was every
bit as intense if not more so.
Not only was it a great ride but it looked incredible, it was intense and exhilarating.
Leaving just the question, how does this thing move around?
Assembly and Disassembly would follow a strict scheme with every aspect of the attraction
having a specified place on one of the many trucks used to transport it around the country.
Each trailer would be specifically designed to carry that part of the ride.
The trains would even remain attached to a specific piece of station track while moved
to speed up reassembly.
The fastest time possible to safely deconstruct the roller coaster would be 8 days, this was
if using the full force of 20 workers around the clock and four cranes.
Then 18 trailers would carry the ride to it’s next destination.
The usual time would take 10 days to disassemble and 14 to reconstruct piece by piece, support
by support.
In 1996 two trains on the ride collided, injuring 30 people when a safety shutdown stopped a
train on the final break run.
It was hit from behind by the following train as it went through it’s block break because
the brake pads were so worn it was unable to stop the train passing through.
After this incident the ride operated with less trains on the track, out of the possible
4 trains the ride had.
Just as with any ride that is taken apart and put back together after a few short years
the ride did get rougher.
Many even would say unpleasant, when combined with the incredible forceful tight ride experience.
From its first winter some of the joints were stiffened and steel plates were added between
the backbone and the track tubes to help with the roughness but by the year 2000 the ride
had begun to lose popularity due to stories about the rough ride it gave.
In 2003, 8 years after it debuted the Bruch company tried to increase the enjoyment of
the attraction for riders, by refurbishing sections of the track.
Once again several companies were brought in to work on the project.
Each piece of track and the forces on it were measured to find what improvements could be
made and new track tubes added to replace the roughest areas, other changes included
reducing the noise on the lift hill and updating the electrical system.
Another issue the ride had, was at sections the ride would make a large banging noise
when it went between certain sections of the tracks, this was so loud it caused some passengers
to have short term hearing problems, such as beeping or humming in the ear.
While they made the chain lift quieter this noise never went away.
The next few years saw further track pieces replaced during the rides down time and millions
spent on improving the ride.
However the ride remained rough but continued to appear at german fairs until at the Hamburg
fair for the final time in early 2008.
The roller coaster would be sold, not only because it was becoming rougher but because
of staff shortages to even construct it in the first place.
The huge amount of personnel required for the operation of the fairs were becoming harder
and harder to find, especially for such large attractions.
The sale caused the cancelation of the rides appearance in dusseldorf, as well as the Munich
Oktoberfest in 2008.
By July 2008 the EuroStar had left Germany, while it sometimes appeared in neighboring
countries at Fairs, this move would be permanent.
. It had been sold to Russian, Gorky Park Located in Moscow.
A place many german carnival attractions had been sent for their final operating place.
The park had been interested in Eurostar since 2004 and wanted to purchase this unique attraction
and it was finally sold in 2008.
EuroStar would be the largest coaster in Moscow, the park was unable to pour foundations for
large rides to be installed legally so would get around this with the purchase of the huge
travelling coaster.
Euro Star would be Located on the site of a Standing but Not Operating roller coaster
made by the Pax Company.
That would be until 2011 when they were forced to remove all attractions in the park after
an inspection showed many of them as unsafe to operate, heavy noise from the area and
excessive electrical consumption for the operation of them.
The city administration decided to return the park to its historical appearance, rather
than the location of carnival rides.
It would take over one month for the ride to once again be taken down after just 3 years.
Euro Star was placed into storage nearby and never heard from again.
Many speculated over the years where the ride had gone, had it been scrapped or lost to
time.
It had remained in storage and rather than just being lost it would emerge once again.
8 years later in 2019 the ride was back.
Fully operational and looking fresher than ever, nearly 900 miles south in Anapa, Russia
at Detskiy Park where it had arrived at the park to be constructed the year before and
where you can still find it today.
For years EuroStar was the only Inverted Roller Coaster in Germany along with being one of
the tallest.
It wouldn’t be until 1999 and 2001 that the country would get two vekoma SLC inverted
coasters, (which were just as rough) and 2006 until you could find a B&M inverted Coaster
in the country with Black Mamba at Phantasialand, All of which would be shorter and slower than
the travelling version that was found at fairs from 1995 which really puts the scale of EuroStar
into perspective.
The Euro Star was Oscar Bruch Seniors final major project.
He had created a technical marvel, a feat never seen before or again after.
Something incredibly unique and unusual, a gigantic inverted B&M style roller coaster
made by multiple european manufacturers that could travel around the country, even if it
was slightly rough to ride.
Sadly Increasing operating, transportation and construction costs make it unlikely any
travelling coaster of this magnitude will ever be produced again.
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We Will See you next time.