NL2 Riverview Bobs

[mkingy]

Good progress - that technique seems pretty solid too!

I had a crack at the horseshoe fan turn of TA1 today. This was mostly an experiment to test out some ideas for placement of segments making the curve and setting the heights of the crucial points without distorting the curve. I messed up and deleted a few nodes I shouldn't have, but I know how to get it right next time. You can see in the screenshot it's not exactly the most graceful of curves. Max speed was 40 mph, and the slowest speed around the fan turn was 17.6 mph.

Tomorrow I will start with a fresh landscape and start building out from when the train leaves the station. Potentially there is room for improvement with the lift hill, and I'd have to start that from scratch anyway. Terraforming is needed, too, once the ride is complete.

^ No need to rush so you will be really satisfied with the trackwork. Just relax when you build something large or recreate coasters. I can see that you are trying to get each section "just" right by working on details.

lol240 wrote:

^ No need to rush so you will be really satisfied with the trackwork. Just relax when you build something large or recreate coasters. I can see that you are trying to get each section "just" right by working on details.

Thanks, and you're correct: I'm trying to get things just right. There's no excuses for doing a bad job when the blueprints are in front of you.

I've decided to have either another crack at the fan turn or do the first midcourse brake and high front turnaround before tackling the big guns - better to check I can get the turns correct first. There's over 50 bents and three 180 degree curves between leaving the station and the start of the lift alone, and any screw-ups on that section are going to be cumulative later on.

I ended up spending all evening on that fan turn, and it's a good thing I did because there is a problem with some of the bents in the first 90 degrees of the curve. They're not the right height, and so the shape of the curve isn't smooth, leading to the train sort of "jumping up the stairs" so to speak. The good news is it should be relatively easy to fix. The bad news is I'm going to have to create the ride profile for the entire coaster and match it to the one in the book before I can make any real progress. I don't trust the rest of the height marks to be perfect.

The blueprints' initial date is 1/29/24 and he's then labelled it as corrected on 2/24/24. Then on March 18, 1924 he writes his note to the builders explaining that he's checked it and found it safe. The ride opened later that year, so my theory is that Church was in a hurry, he got all the calculations correct and then messed up a couple of the height mark values here and there when amending the horizontal plan. The ride profile blueprint on the previous page of the book shows all the hills and curves as if they were unwound and plotted in 2D on graph paper. This made it very easy for me to correct the two errors on the lift and first drop, and Riverview's builders would have probably done the same.

The next thing is to do the profile of the ride in NL2, which means no more pretty pictures for now. Once I've fixed the fan turn I'll post a screenshot of that, but then it's back to 2D drawings until I'm satisfied the height marks are correct. I know fixing mistakes like this sounds boring, but for me it's fascinating, and I'm increasingly impressed by Fred Church's achievements. He wasn't reckless like Traver, he was smart and knew what he was doing, and produced what in my mind were some of the most aesthetically beautiful coasters ever built.

While I work on the fan turn problem I've mocked up TA2, the high front water wing turnaround, on the right of the station.

From a park-goer's perspective:

The shaping of a drop turn is spot-on while the bottom part still needs tweaking for "bearable" comfort.

lol240 wrote:

The shaping of a drop turn is spot-on while the bottom part still needs tweaking for "bearable" comfort.

Yes. I won't know the final force levels for that turn until it's connected with the rest of the ride, but there are photos of the train navigating the lower front turnaround (TA4) showing the riders being shoved to the outside of the turn by the intense laterals.

Hi,

This is a great website!

I am very intrigued that you are figuring out just how the Chicago Riverview Bobs rollercoaster was laid out. Indeed, I was 7 years old when Riverview closed and had visited the park at least three times before the fateful, sad day in October, 1967 when the park was officially sold.

I remember seeing my parents ride the Bobs in probably July or August of 1967 (my mother, who was talked into going on the Bobs on this visit by my father who, as he put it, said to my mother "Come on, let's ride it one more time!", still says how she looked down from the Bobs car as it was being pulled up the initial hill and saw my older sister holding my hand way down below on the walk area near the rollercoaster; she thought, "How irresponsible of me, a mother, to be on this very dangerous ride!").

My father, like most everyone else, always said that the Bobs was the best rollercoaster in the park. I can remember watching the 11 car Bob cars making that big, banked turn in font of the crowd with those Roman columns and such around the coaster. Very impressive to me as a 7-year old. Have also watched that youtube footage of the two kids who rode the Bobs.

So please tell me: based upon your experience with rollercoasters and watching this footage, just how would the Riverview Bobs have compared for thrills alongside modern wooden rollercoasters? Can you infer this from that youtube footage of the two kids riding the Bobs? It does not look like an especially tall rollercoaster to me. It does seem to have some steep banks and really doesn't give the rider much chance to catch his/her breath. So is there any similar rollercoaster similar to it that is around today? Does anything today ride like that? Are the stories of the Bobs of Riverview overblown? Thank you for your insights.

By the way, I was fortunate to have at least ridden one of the good rollercoasters at the park. This was the Comet. Nothing like the Bobs, of course, but a good wooden rollercoaster for a kid to be introduced to this form of recreation. Also rode the Shoot the Chutes (an iconic Chicago Riverview water ride in which a big boat descended along a water ramp) and a few other good rides as well.

Cheers,

Juscz (John)

Hi John,

I'm very envious of you having even been to Riverview Park, even though you didn't ride on the Bobs! Alas I am too young to have visited myself. There are a few modern hell-for-leather rides around. The Holiday World coasters are good examples, although Voyage was trimmed quite heavily last year. Perhaps others reading this thread can give you better comparisons, although I reckon the Bobs would still stand out on its own today. By the way, how did Riverview's Comet compare with today's coasters?

As for an update on the recreation, I had the idea to recreate the horizontal layout in Newton 2, and then raise the nodes to the correct height manually. This would mean a lot fewer clicks and it would also enable me to fix any problems before putting in the hard yards. One problem I'm having is handling Newton's approximations. In a lot of cases, the dimensions come out slightly over or slightly under direct conversion values. It's frustrating as well, because NoLimits 2 can run to four decimal places but Newton can only handle two. I want to believe that Church got everything right on the drawing in terms of scale and radius values, but I had a lot of problems with the TA1 fan turn to get the crossover at the right angle in relation to the lift. Here's what I have so far:

As you can see, the run to TA4, on the left of the screenshot, is nowhere near the lift. It should be parallel. TA3 is also too close to TA1. This wouldn't be a problem once the heights are adjusted, except that TA5 runs directly underneath TA1, so in its current position turnarounds 3 and 5 would overlap. Argh. Oh well, the more time I spend on getting it accurate now means fewer problems later on.

Edited to add: when the footprint is finally complete in Newton 2, I'm going to save the ride in several sections. This allows me to get every section just right before bolting on the next bit, and avoids painting myself into a corner.

Lesson: Don't be careless with approximations. I could not understand why my curves weren't working as they should. Problems in TA1 and TA3 were causing the ride to splay out too much. Then I realised that of course I was measuring the curves in degrees, but I was measuring the straight sections in distance. Because the conversion from feet to metres isn't exact, it was the length of the straight sections which was jeopardising the relative positions of all my track elements. Still, it's fixed now, and all that's left (hopefully!) is TA5 and the run back to the station. It's been a LONG day.

[mkingy]

Looks like you've made fantastic progres though! So congrats on solving the problem and being able to move forward!

Thank you

I couldn't help myself - I had to check out what TA3 would look like when built. Pretty picture time!

A dramatic shot, from standing on the ground.

It's steep!

Trying to get that famous shot from the top of the lift:

Intense laterals in 3, 2, 1...SLAM!

Lobster wrote:

Intense laterals in 3, 2, 1...SLAM!

I just want to know how many lat g's we can experience there, because that turn looks so exciting!

lol240 wrote:

Lobster wrote:

Intense laterals in 3, 2, 1...SLAM!

I just want to know how many lat g's we can experience there, because that turn looks so exciting!

I know! I can't WAIT to find out! I'm also really looking forward to flying around the coaster and seeing what the ride looked like from angles the camera never saw. Fred Church's rides had a wonderful grace and symmetry to their looks.

Rats. I've completed it and I'm 203.7 feet short.

[Coasterkidmwm]

It'll happen lol. I'm working on a recreation of a different ride and I didn't even check to see if my track length is correct.

Silly me. Of course it's too short - I haven't raised the height marks yet, which increases the track length between nodes.

I'm tired of the problems caused by inaccuracies in the length of the straight track and last night was the final straw - the little jink which turns the track back towards the station should be just after the crossover, but instead was miles past the crest of the lift and at the wrong angle. The most obvious solution, and I wish I'd thought of this sooner, is to take advantage of Newton and NoLimits' relative strengths: use Newton for the curves, as track length doesn't affect the total degree of curvature, and then NoLimits for the straight sections, as I can get an exact 10 feet in NoLimits (which uses imperial or metric) but not in Newton (which only uses metric). The other advantage of doing it this way is that when I join it all together in NoLimits I can be sure that the footprint is the right size and I'm not going to find that the track is too long or too short once I've raised all the nodes to the correct heights.

[Coasterkidmwm]

The game is an ever=changing learning process lol. Don't beat yourself up.

[mkingy]

Just remember that if it was easy it would have probably been done before - what you're creating is actually going to be impressive, and there's nothing more rewarding that completing a challenging project!

^ Exactly what he means!

Hi Lobster,

Thanks for your reply. Very interesting that the Bobs of Riverview would have still been regarded as a great roller coaster today. I am glad to hear that.

Riverview Park certainly had its magic. I remember seeing the parachute ride ("Pair-o-Chutes", as they called them) from the expressway (i.e., I-90; saw this ride as we drove on the expressway) that went through that part of Chicago. That ride especially was iconic of the park from a distance. And the Pair-o-Chutes structure was not super modern looking, either. It was a black, cylindrical, metal structure with sort of lattice work to the main column, from the top of which projected four "arms", each of which had its own "parachute". The black color contrasted with the white of the billowing "parachute" as the ride descended (in fact, everything was controlled by cables; but the descent did cause the parachutes to billow, thus creating the illusion that the parachute was actually functioning to slow the descent).

I was seven years old when Riverview closed and we had gone there (for the third time in my life) just a few days or so before the last day of the season (and it was unbeknownst to anyone at that time, including park workers, that the park was closing). I might have been tall enough to ride the Bobs at that time. My father says he tried to talk me into going on them. If that is accurate, I was probably just too scared to do it. Now, like you and everyone else on this forum, I'd leap at the opportunity.

The Comet was the first real roller coaster that I ever rode. It was not too far from the Bobs and pretty much paralled the North Branch of the Chicago River. Like the Silver Flash (sort of Riverview's bigger brother of the Comet), the formerly open cars of the Comet had become enclosed (maybe in the 1930s) such that the cars gave the appearance of looking like the silver Burlington Zephyr train (which is now housed at Chicago's Museum of Science and Industry). Apparently these two roller coaster did not have any safety bar or seat belt to wear (hey, nobody could fall out when the cars were enclosed this way, right?). Anyway, I remember that the first hill really scared me (you don't know what to expect on a roller coaster ride the first time and that 0-G and accelerated falling sensation just really took me by surprise. Relative to my then almost complete inexperience with roller coasters, it was an amazingly exciting ride. But I was only 7 years old. A classic wooden coaster and one that my father (a dyed-in-the-wool Bobs fan; nothing else compared) considered to be a good roller coaster. He once told me, "Well, at least you rode on one of the good Riverview roller coasters."

I remember seeing the television commercials for Riverview. Part of the commercial would say something like, "Ride the FIREBALL! Gets up to speeds of 90 mph!" (or maybe they said 100 mph?... can't quite recall the commercial perfectly). Well, that was ridiculous. The Fireball (like the Bobs an open car roller coaster) probably was a little faster than the Bobs, but I'm guessing that neither of these roller coasters went much over 55 mph (if they even went that fast). The television commercial left me with the impression that the Fireball was the scariest roller coaster in the park. But anyone who rode all the Riverview roller coasters would inevitably elect the Bobs for that title. They must have played up the Bobs in that commercial, but somehow I don't remember that.

They also mentioned the "Shoot-the-Chutes" in the Riverview commercial. If the Pair-o-Chutes was the most iconic symbol of Riverview from afar, then the Shoot-the-Chutes was the most iconic of the whole park in general. I remember the narrator of the commercial saying something like, "Ahhhh, Shoots. But what do you get?" The second part of this paraphrase-quote makes no sense, but that's what my ears told me I was hearing. Probably bad audio reception on our television or just faulty reception in my ears.

Well, I rode the Shoot-the-Chutes and remember, while being in the boat initially at ground level, that we had to go through some cave-like waterway to get to the lift elevators. All the while, a recorded message repeatedly bellowed out, "Keep your hands inside of the boat. Do not put your hands out as though you are steering the boat. Keep your hands inside of the boat." It might have said to "Keep your hands and feet inside the boat...", as that makes a little more sense. But I don't remember it that way. Anyway, we then ascended in the wooden elevator, emerged at the top of the ride, and the rather longish boat (long by today's water park standards, anyway) descended the watery slope to the pool below. I remember thinking how very non-terrifying the experience was. It was very gentle and I had expected it to be like a roller coaster.

The commercial also said, "Ride the Rotor and se the floor drop right away from you." Did that too!

Rode the Wild Mouse and that was scary! Maybe that was a lot scarier than the Comet as, in my naivitae, I assumed that a smaller roller coaster had proportionally smaller thrills. Not so with the Wild Mouse, especially for a young kid. Always came off those rides very happy for the experience.

There was a tunnel-of-love ride called "The Mill on the Floss". I rode that. No big deal for thrills on that when you're just 7 and with your family.

The fun house was called "Aladdins Castle." It had a hall of mirrors, moving floor planks that you had to negotiate to get across a room (I fell over on one of them), a rolling barrel passage way, and fans in the floor to blow ladies skirts up (a guy in a booth monitored the fun house and somehow seemed to know just when the "right time" was to push the fan button).

There was also the freak show and saw some of the outside attractions to try and lure you in (though I did not go inside).

You paid for the rides as you ride them (or you brought tickets that you got ahead of time and then gave them to the ticket booth person for a particular ride). I think that there might have been a general entrance fee but am not certain. The Bobs and the Pair-o-Chutes may have been the most expensive rides. While a high school student at Lane Technical School (located right next to Riverview Park), my father said he would ride the Bobs for 25 cents and then, if there was not a full load of people coming for the next Bobs go-around, he would give a nickel to the attendants to stay on and ride again (this was true for anyone who wanted to ride again). Apparently, you could keep doing this as long as there was sufficient space to take everyone for the next Bobs ride. I'll bet some folks rode the Bobs many, many times. I heard that the guy who ran the Bobs for all those years had collected a tremendous amount of lost jewelry underneath the roller coaster. He was once offered some huge sum (I want to say $60,000.00, but maybe it was $6,000.00, which still would have been quite huge at the time) and he turned the offer down. Maybe that ,more than anything else, says how exciting and slam-bangy the Bobs was as a roller coaster ride.

There was also a Jungle Safari ride, in which you drove through a completely darkened building on a jalopy-like Model T Ford that was red and traveled on rails. Things with animal-type motifs (such as a giant leaping frog) would intermittently light up as the car took a totally crazy path through the house.

OK, enough of my memories of Riverview. I am looking forward to seeing the computer versionn of the Riverview Bobs roller coaster realized here by the individual undertaking that task. Thanks for your insights, Lobster.

Wow. You have some wonderful memories there. It seems that everyone who writes about Riverview waxes eloquent about the place. Looking at photos, I've always been struck by how novel Riverview seemed to be. The only other place I can think of that had a parachute ride was Coney Island in New York, but that one came much later and is still standing today, though not functioning. And Riverview had eight wooden rollercoasters at one time! I rode my first wooden coasters three years ago and they have a very handmade feeling about them, very different from smooth steel, but that doesn't mean they can't be aggressive. I went to HoliWood Nights at Holiday World and rode their coasters. Voyage won out as my favourite by a hair, and the second night, where the park closed at midnight, the train was going ridiculously fast between six and midnight. It was almost completely black once you left the lift hill and there was a wonderful smell of honeysuckle, or something sweet, on the first drop. The next day I had bruises on my arms and shins - the ride isn't violent, but it is rough in a good way, if that makes sense. I've heard the same said of the Bobs. Thanks for the memories of Riverview!

As for the recreation, I felt a bit foolish last night when I discovered the curved track generator and the straight track generator, both of which work in imperial and have the same number of nodes and spacing as Church had. In some ways this has made the recreation easy, but I???m still discovering intricacies in the plans I didn???t notice before. For some of the curve angles, Church used right angled triangles with two of the sides used to mark the start and end of the curve. Some of these have their beginnings and ends between bents and I thought, ???Oh that will be easy; I can measure up the curve to match the bents ??? Church just did it that way to make it easier to see.??? NOPE. If the curve is marked as starting and ending between bents, it started and ended between bents. Back to the drawing board! I'll have to experiment tonight to find the most accurate way of representing that. Another thing is that somehow I missed 30 degrees off the curvature of the first turnaround. It was 260 degrees, only seven degrees shorter than my Newton 2 hack job. I???ve abandoned Newton 2. It???s just not good enough and too inconvenient for what I need. The nice thing, of course, is that the hard work will pay off eventually.

On some parts of the ride I'm going to have to raise the height marks before I've completed building the rest of the coaster. For example, The final turnaround, TA5, sits exactly under TA1 and its nodes won't be accessible if TA1 isn't off the ground first. This is turning out to be a lot harder, but a lot more interesting and satisfactory, than I had bargained for!

[Oscar]

Thank you for sharing your memories with us Juscz. Welcome to the site It was very interesting to read your post. Amazing memories

Hi Lobster and Oscar,

Thanks for your comments and insights. This project that Lobster is doing is just amazing. The Bobs was a classic and I will most definitely want to see the finished product he gets.

The coasters I have ridden the most are the ones at Six Flags Great America in Gurney, Illinois. My favorites there are the Viper (wooden; 100 feet high) and the Raging Bull (steel; 208 feet tall). Maybe somebody here has insight into how the Viper compares to the Riverview Bobs. Please give me your views if you do.

This summer, my wife and I will want to try the relatively new wooden coaster called Goliath there in Six Flags Great America in Gurney, Illinois. It looks very good on youtube and has a 180 foot drop for the first hill. The height factor alone places these coasters in a different league than those of Riverview. But the Bobs was THE coaster of Riverview and I wish somebody would make it again. Any chance of hat happening? It seems that Lobster's computer model might be very useful towards that end.

And please correct me if I am wrong, but wasn't the guy who designed the Riverview Bobs from England and wasn't he also the designer (or at least one of them) of the Bobs in England that lasted from 1929 to 1971? The youtube video of that England Bobs seems very reminiscent of the River view Bobs.

Thanks for welcoming to this site.

looking forward to seeing more of your progress, Lobster.

Cheers,

Juscz (John)