Historical Preservation
The coaster, along with other rides in Playland are under the protection of a National Historic Landmark status. A marker on the wall of the loading station lists the ride as one of the original attractions at Playland. The ride is still being manually braked, a feat few coasters can claim today. The ride ran using the original flanged wheel trains until the early 1980s, when the lack of rare parts forced management to switch them out with Morgan Manufacturing trains. These trains are also in use on the two Giant Dipper roller coasters in California, (San Diego and Santa Cruz respectively) the only other roller coasters designed by Church still in operation.
An original train car is mounted across the path from the entrance, next to the on-ride photo purchase booth, so visitors can sit down and take pictures.
Read more about this topic: Dragon Coaster (Playland)
Famous quotes containing the words historical and/or preservation:
“The analogy between the mind and a computer fails for many reasons. The brain is constructed by principles that assure diversity and degeneracy. Unlike a computer, it has no replicative memory. It is historical and value driven. It forms categories by internal criteria and by constraints acting at many scales, not by means of a syntactically constructed program. The world with which the brain interacts is not unequivocally made up of classical categories.”
—Gerald M. Edelman (b. 1928)
“Is not our role to stand for the one thing which means our own salvation here but with which it will also be possible to save the world, and with which Europe will be able to save itself, namely the preservation of the white man and his state?”
—Hendrik Verwoerd (1901–1966)