Hello! I'm new to this site (Well, I've been a reader for several months but only got around to signing up a couple of days ago!), so please bear with me if I make any mistakes...
I am currently working on a website about the history of coin operated rides and their manufacturers. Please don't laugh. These amusement machines seem to have been largely ignored by fairground and arcade enthusiasts alike thus far and there is very little information out there. Whenever I mention my research to people, it seems to be met with confusion or even scorn.
These rides were a big part of my childhood. My mum and I decided it would be fun to see how many different models we could find and photograph. I ended up with well over 1600 photographs, mainly taken throughout England in the 1990s and these unfortunately seem to be the largest record of their existence these days. The biggest problem is that I was not born until 1991, so many of the older models had already been completely scrapped before my time.
There are only a very small handfull of the older traditional rides still in service so I have been desperately touring the country as much as possible for the past couple of years, trying to take better photos and film these last remaining examples before they too disappear forever, replaced by the large garishly painted rides that we import from continental Europe nowadays.
I do feel these rides have played a large part in amusement history and they and the people who made them deserve at least a small corner of the internet dedicated to them. I'd like to publish a book someday, but I'm a long way off of that! I started drafting out the site on Webs - the home page can be seen here: http://coinoperatedrides.webs.com/ - but will most likely have to upgrade to a better host before I publish the actual site.
Anyway, enough of my rambling. I guess I just wanted to see if anybody else, anywhere was even slightly interested in these machines, and appeal for any photographs or information which people wouldn't mind sharing for the site (full credit will be given, of course). As I say, many of the older rides were long gone by my era so every photograph or memory is precious and important to my research.
Thanks for reading!