Steel Force Construction Diary #6

To celebrate President's Day let's continue following Steel Force's construction. Last we saw they had begun to work heavily on the turnaround as the season approached.

This was taken April 26th, 1997. As you can see, they have still been working on the turnaround. The water level is pretty low in this pic, and I'm not sure if that is because they were working on the damn for that lake or if it had to do with the ride's construction.


This is also from the 26th of April. They had put the track up on the first bunny hill in preparation of connecting with the soon to be completed turnaround area. Also take note that the parking lot is having some major paving going on. As we saw from earlier pictures, Dorney's lot did not even have a majority of itself paved until the 1997 season.


Here we are on May 2nd, 1997. I believe the park had announced by now that the ride would not open with the park. As you can see, the push to get the ride done even involved adding the large supports for the turnaround while they were not yet painted.


This was taken on May 9th, 1997 - the day before the park opened for the year. They got the helix tracked, but still had to add the midcourse brake run and the track between that and this helix. You'll take notice of the piece of track that has been removed from the helix to allow the crane to move in and out of the area.

There's more from the 9th as it was an exciting time - but that'll have to wait until next time!