Coming of Age

Pepsi Max Station, Blackpool

Architect: Philip England

The tallest and steepest roller coaster in the world at the time of its opening, the Pepsi Max (now known as The Big One) joined the several other architecturally notable structures at Blackpool Pleasure Beach – Joseph Emberton’s Casino (1937-39) and Sir Hiram Maxim’s Captive Flying Machine (1904) among them. Earning the praise of then Sunday Times architecture critic – now C20 Chair – Hugh Pearman, he likened its blue and white latticework structure to ‘some great inverted railway bridge’. Or indeed, a passing resemblance to Grimshaw’s Waterloo Terminal. The ride was engineered by vintage American coaster-designer Ron Toomer, but it was the ingenious station by Philip England that won an RIBA Regional Award. On an extremely constrained site, the station could manage 1,700 passengers per hour, storing and loading the trains vertically (and perhaps appropriately) like the magazine of a gun.

Coming of Age

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