(no subject)

Learned this week that the back half of the Lincoln Park Comet collapsed early in May. The collapsed section was the far turnaround that you went into right after the first drop, and I'm surprised it lasted as long as it did. Every time I visited the ruins the bottom of that first drop was always in standing water. That's hell on the wood.

The Comet closed in 1987 when Lincoln Park shut down for good. The coaster's remained standing, left to the elements, for over 20 years now. The lift hill collapsed several years ago and the trains were taken out of the coaster structure for use at another park (which I thought had plans to resurrect the entire Comet design at one point, but it never came to be.)

I last visited the coaster site back in August with Joye and it was pretty clear then that coaster structure didn't have much longer to live on its own, anyway. Shame nobody stepped up to take care of it back when it could've been saved, but back then this whole coaster preservation thing was new and unfamiliar territory (Knoebels and the former Wild World had both moved existing wooden coasters by 1987, at least, but those were the major exceptions.)

Ah well. In a way I'm glad nature's doing the job on the Comet and not a developer's bulldozer making way for crappy condos or something.