Scenic Railway (Steam Fairground)

The Scenic Railway ride is the most impressive piece in the museum's steam fairground set.

It's a rotating steam-powered model of a steam powered fairground ride that hauls passengers over a humped and valleyed track surrounding the central engine.

Reconstruction

Received by the museum in disassembled form, we were originally presented with a mass of small delicate wooden spokes, panels and tiebars in a set of apparently unrelated boxes, with no real idea of what the pieces were supposed to make (or whether they all belonged to the same ride) until we started experimenting.

Organising the pieces according to their painted numbers showed that the spokes and ties were supposed to attach to a central steam engine that was in one of the assorted sets of boxes, and connected together to form a rotating fairground ride canopy, with dark red support pieces holding up a circular surrounding track with steep hills and valleys, which small passenger cars then rode over, hauled by tiebars.