October 27, 2007

NEXT STOP: DARK RIDES

I've always admired, but never obtained these amazing dark ride models that were made to accompany HO scale train sets...







7 comments:

Adam Gott said...

Wow! Those are really cool. I was big into trains as a kid and I never saw any of those.

http://cool-mo-dee.blogspot.com/

David W. said...

I never knew these models existed.
Nice find!

John AKA Reggaexx said...

Hey Kirk, you ever think about "kitbashing" one of these babies into a Phantasmagoria? Now that would be an amazing centerpiece for a model railroad!

Steven Finch, Attorney At Law said...

As a kid, my father and I used to go to a model train show every year and one of the displays had a whole carnival setup which included the haunted house you have on top.

We searched years and years for one but never found it. The closest we came was an interesting dinosaur-themed carnival ride, but it just wasn't spooky enough to catch my interest.

John Rozum said...

I wish I'd seen these when I was a kid and had a model railroad. I wouldn't mind setting some of these up on tables or shelves for the holiday season though.

Mr. Karswell said...

Wow, I didn't know about these either. Totally makes me wanna ride one now. The damned Dark Ride is a dying artform, I remember them in the 70's being loads of fun and spooky. But every once in a while some carnival rolls into town here and sometimes they have a dark ride but it's 9 times out of 10 really really stupid, like they don't even bother putting anything inside 'em anymore worth looking at, or half the thing inside is broken down and covered in spit and won't light up or make sounds, or even remotely scare you... wahhhh

Kirk D. said...

I'm glad this post enlightened you Adam and David

raggaexx- that's a great idea. A pal of mine is actually building a phantaz model from scratch and I'll certainly post it if it gets finished.
At my last house I had a shed that I was planning to paint like the phantaz. Though I doubt the current owners would have appreciated it.

steven- I've been trying to get my hands on that top one for years. I had one on perpetual back order from some internet store for over six months before I gave up. Someday.

rozum- I have my dad's old train set and I never have taken the time to set it all up. I probably will when my kid gets older.

karswell- no doubt. This year the local state fair didn't have a single dark ride. There's a great Simpsons clip that goes right along with what you're saying about how terrible and unmaintained most dark rides are. I was going to post it, but it got pulled from YouTube.