Yankee Cannonball
Specific Type: Wooden
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Looking at it, it might not be impressive by today's standards: a simple figure-L layout bordering a parking lot with a lift hill topping out at just over sixty feet; a three-car train hopping over the white wooden hills that make up the coaster at a top speed of thirty-five miles an hour. However, the story of Canobie Lake Park's Yankee Cannonball is a tale of survival and the coaster a piece of living history that makes the ride not only significant for its past, but also a current park favorite suitable for riders of all ages to enjoy. That story begins in 1930, just after the Great Depression, in a time when few new coasters were ever opened at parks in the United States. Also around that time period, few parks had more than one or two major coasters, so for many parks, the first coaster was often named nothing more than Roller Coaster. That was the case at Waterbury, Connecticut's Lakewood Park, where the Philadelphia Toboggan Company had erected a Herbert Schmeck-designed wooden coaster as the first such ride at the New England amusement park since it opened several years prior. Roller Coaster ran for five years at Lakewood, but the screams came to an end when the park closed its gates. Instead of going to waste, another, older park in the New England region stepped in and saved the coaster, saving the expense of constructing a new ride themselves and moving the Roller Coaster north to Salem, New Hampshire where Canobie Lake Park had been in business for thirty-four years. Canobie Lake rebuilt the 2,000 feet of track that made up Schmeck's coaster in a prominent location at the very front of the park. The former Roller Coaster was given its own distinctive name to set it apart from the rest - Yankee Cannonball - and reopened for the 1936 season. At its new home, the hilly, L-shaped layout and classic appeal of Yankee Cannonball would make it a star attraction throughout the remainder of the twentieth century. Despite destruction of the ride's lift hill in 1954 by Hurricane Carol and a fire in 1976 that destroyed the station, the park rebuilt in both cases and continues to operate the classic Cannonball.
The first thing that guests see as they pull up in Canobie Lake Park's parking lot is the white structure of the Yankee Cannonball wrapping around the front right corner of the lot. Inside the park and on the loading platform, nine rows of riders pull down their lap bars and lean back against their headrests before the train is off on its way. A right-hand turnaround of 225 degrees takes riders past the midway and coasting underneath the shade of trees as they approach the lift hill. The rotating chain makes contact with the chain dog below the Philadelphia Toboggan Company train and the trip upwards gets underway. Canobie Lake Park sinks behind the trees out to the left and the cars in the lot to the right shrink as passengers reach the summit at sixty-three-and-a-half feet and start down. At the base of the plunge, the train makes a sharp pullout at the top speed of thirty-five, and a couple seconds later crests a speed hill at the bottom. Up to the peak of the third hill, riders round a 90-degree right-hand turn to get the ride on track for the next leg of the the L-shaped layout. Over a camel-back the Cannonball flies, then up into the far turnaround and past the waving flags that adorn it. At the end of the curve, the track begins to dive, then climbs up a small hill with a slight curve to the left. Up and over another speed hop, the up-stop wheels make contact with the rails again, and then again as another hill leads into the second L-turn. A quick dip follows, then it's over the top of two more hops, and at last the train enters the brake run, with a left-hand 45-degree turn back to the station. |
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