2024-12-30
45 分钟This is the Guardian.
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For the text version of this and all our longreads, go to theguardian.com longread the rollercoaster king the man behind the UK's fastest thrill ride By Tom Lamont when roller coaster fans speak of creativity, they speak of the old, the retired or the dead.
They speak of Anton Schwarzkopf, late pioneer of the loop, and Ron Toomer, who became the first engineer to haul people up more than 200ft before sending them into a drop.
They speak of Alan Schilker and Jeff pike, both slowing down now, both admired for their structures that marry timber with steel.
They speak of Werner Stengel, a living legend at 88, one of whose many new ideas was to send passengers hurtling around corners while tilted at 90 degrees.
Because the work of roller coaster creation asks for confidence of vision, the staying power to see through long projects, as well as an encyclopaedic grasp of which manoeuvres have and haven't been tried yet, it is not a conspicuously youthful game.
John Burton, a self effacing aficionado of theme parks and musical theatre from Staffordshire, is an anomaly.
He was only a few years on from working as a crab feeder at an English aquarium when he was invited to create his roller coaster.
He was given an 18 million pounds budget, a patch of damp ground and told make it big.
He was 27.
Burton had to warm to roller coasters from a place of cold terror.
Even standing near them upset him.
When he was young, I used to say to my mum, don't make me ride it, he recalled.
Aged 12 or so, he worked up the courage to get on Nemesis, a roller coaster at Alton Towers, a theme park near his home.
Curiosity became an obsession in his teens when he started to play Roller coaster Tycoon, a computer game that allowed him to devise his own rides.
He took the job in the aquarium while he was studying architecture at Birmingham City University.
The aquarium was owned by Merlin Entertainments, a live actions conglomerate, the second biggest in the world after Disney.
When a role came up in Merlin's creative department, Burton, nearing the end of his degree, applied.
He went through months of interviews, almost ruining himself on the train fares to London.