Mark’s favourite ride of the fairground. Strange choice given you don’t see any of this type of ride on the fairgrounds anymore. The reason behind it though, is that as Mark grew up, the fairground would become a big part of his life.
Crow’s Fair visited his home town of Middlesbrough and he was fascinated with how the rides worked, especially the speedway.
It was then that he fell in love with Arks, so called because the earliest forms of these rides had animals instead of bikes. He built the rides out of LEGO bricks and one example still survives more than 30 years after it was first built. You couldn’t really build circles in LEGO way back then!
Once Mark left school he started working of the fair more and more often and would later work on the ride he loved. Sadly due to changing public tastes and health and safety becoming less keen on people not being fastened in while the ride was in motion the Speedways fell out of fashion. Sadly many of the older ones were either scrapped or converted into the other fair favourite, a Waltzer!
The speedway you find on our fairground is a built using instructions from BrickRidesUK, though it’s been heavily modified with improved drive mechanism, full LED lighting and strobe effects. It was recently upgraded again to improve the outer rounding boards and fitted with a vinyl roof.
The ride itself is themed to resemble Crow’s Easy Rider Speedway which the Crow family had from new in 1978, it was the second to last ride of this kind to be built by the Maxwell company. Today it survives as a waltzer owned by the Cullen family in Ireland.
The Model
The build took a couple of months which included sourcing the parts required. The base of the ride is nearly all Technic parts with the all the visible parts being system LEGO bricks. Several revisions to the track that the platforms run on were mage, removing the original designs ribbed tubing and replacing it with a smooth tiles surface. The gear was altered slightly and a different motor fitted. The centre axle had a habit of twisting with the torque being exerted on it. To stop this, a metal one from Metal Technic Parts was sourced and fitted.
Lighting was fitted at a later date and is totally bespoke. The interior LED strips are just narrow 5v LED strip cut to length, this has it’s own self adhesive backing and stick straight onto LEGO tiles. All the strips are then wired to a LED flasher circuit. Costs for the lighting was around £30. The front also features LED strip, some of which has had the PCB backing painted to match the LEGO plates. This was done using Humbrol enamel paint. The front also has an electronic LED sign, this is just a repurposed LED name badge!
