I made an early visit to the Bay Beach Zippin Pippin Roller Coaster construction site hoping to get a chance to see the latest progress before work wrapped up for the holiday weekend. I was able to get there before crews took a well deserved break for the holidays. The latest updates are below.
The first thing I noticed was work has started on the steel support structure for the roof of the transfer station where riders will load and exit the ride. The steel supports I first noticed on 12/16/2010 didn't have to wait long to be put to use. Workers were busy welding these into place atop white steel columns that are also new since last week. The pictures below show the work in action.
In addition to the roof work the exit ramp coming off the loading platform is starting to take shape, the image below shows this work on the left side with the new roof structure visible in the background.
The new forms at the entrance to the queue going under the lift hill are now gone and left behind is new concrete in this area.
Work has also restarted on the structure housing the lift motor. There are now walls and a roof on the building.
Out in zone 3 there has been a little bit of progress on the turn around of the out and back. A few more bents are in place and one other waiting to be put into place. Completing the structure should go very quickly after the holidays.
Standing at the turn around and looking back towards the east the entire standing structure is visible in this picture.
Walking back towards Zone 1 and 2 I love this view of the track leading to the out and back.
Before leaving I took four quick shots of the entire structure facing North and stitched them together creating this image. To see a higher resolution version of this image click on it to be taken to the on-line photo album.
That is the update for this week, I hope to make one more visit before the end of 2010.
Talk about harsh conditions! I would hate to work in construction, especially during the winter in Wisconsin. Being from Southern California, it begs the question: How many months out of the year can a theme park in Wisconsin really be open for? It seems to me that it would be a really short season.
ReplyDeleteKurt Dahlin
www.thecoasterguy.com
My wife and I were just talking a couple of days ago how people working construction really earn their money, between the cold of winter and the heat of summer the conditions always seem harsh one way or the other. Bay Beach typically operates about 5 months out of the year, at the beginning and end of the season they are only open weekends, but that is more related to having enough temporary help. It's not like Southern California where you can be open year round. I've always been amazed at all of the water parks in Wisconsin Dells, the outdoor ones can really only be open 3 or 4 months, although now they have a lot of indoor water parks now to keep people coming year round.
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