To understand the roller coasters of John Allen, one must understand the man.  That is easier said than done, as Allen, a man Robert Cartmell described as a sort of classic anti-hero, was not the type many expected for the media to shove into the limelight as the one responsible for the roller coaster boom of the 1970’s.[1]  Allen was first and foremost a lover of numbers and in many interviews he said his greatest contributions were those that dealt with the mathematical aspects of the design process.[2]  He transformed his mathematical abilities into wooden coaster design that were better engineered than many of the coasters before his time. 

            John Allen was born on May 21, 1907.[3]  According to historian Torrence V. Jenkins, Jr., Allen often followed his father, an amusement park insurance inspector, to work.  The coasters he saw were simple figure-eight layouts where the cars reached between ten and twenty miles-per-hour.[4] Allen noted that his earliest influence was a visit to Luna Park with his dad when he saw the Thompson Company’s Dragon’s Gorge Scenic Railway.  He said, “He [LaMarcus Thompson] got me into this business with that dragon!”[5]  Not much his known of his other childhood activities, therefore Allen’s next recorded activity was attending Drexel University’s night programs where he studied engineering.  According to roller coaster historian Richard Munch, Allen dropped out of the program when a professor told him that he would make a better salesman than engineer.[6]  After he left school Allen entered the burgeoning world of outdoor music systems.  He said, “It was just about the time canned music was coming out, and we were building fifty-watt amplifiers and installing them in parks.”  He also replaced carousel organs.  In 1929 the Philadelphia Toboggan Company (P.T.C.) contacted Allen to install a sound system within one of their fun houses.  Within a few years the economy remained slow and Allen, having trouble getting clients to pay up, joined the company.[7]  There is no source that clearly states when Allen officially joined the P.T.C.  Most say he started in “the early thirties” and Cartmell wrote that Allen operated the Mountain Park Flyer, a Herbert Schmeck/P.T.C. design, for one season as a P.T.C. employee.  At Mountain Park Allen not only operated the ride, he also studied the engineering and construction principles that lay behind it.  The “ebb and flow” of a coaster is one of its most important aspects and at Mountain Park Allen saw how these many pieces of the puzzle fit together.  Jenkins said that it was after this that Allen became a production manager within the company.  During this time he oversaw the construction of many different types of P.T.C. attractions such as “carousels, mill chutes, fun houses and coasters.”[8]

            After moving back to Philadelphia (the P.T.C.’s headquarters were at 130 Duvall Street) he learned from many of the era’s best designers.  During one interview Allen said that “they [other designer’s in the company’s employ] called me a young squirt” when he first joined the company.[9]  Herbert Schmeck, Shirley Watkins, Aurel “Dutch” Vaszin, Joseph McKee, John Miller and Harry Baker were some of the many designers that helped Allen learn from their own mistakes.[10]  The man Allen worked with the most was the Philadelphia Toboggan Company’s head designer and president Herb Schmeck.  As head of the company Schmeck kept pace with designers like Frederick Church, Harry Traver, John Miller and created many coasters that followed the trends of the twenties. Schmeck also built the Philadelphia Toboggan Company’s first two-bench car that debuted on the Coney Island (Ohio) Wildcat.[11] 

           John Allen was Schmeck’s understudy and became known as a great troubleshooter in his own right.  Together they worked on one of the greatest roller coaster transformations in history, the Crystal Beach Comet.  The park had erected Harry Traver’s first “Giant Safety Cyclone” in 1927 but throughout its life the coaster experienced severe structural problems.  The ride literally shook itself apart because of the heavy articulating trains and bad design.  In 1938 the park hired the P.T.C. to reinforce the ride in several places.  Herb Schmeck added additional structural ties to keep the ride together, but by 1946 rising maintenance costs forced the park to demolish the coaster.  Schmeck and Allen reworked much of the Cyclone’s structure into a new out and back layout inspired in part by Schmeck’s 1947 Rocket at Playland Park in San Antonio.[12]  The Comet, which opened on May 22, 1948, was a perennial favorite on coaster polls and provided massive amounts of airtime.  Although Crystal Beach closed on September 4, 1989 park owner Charles Wood moved the coaster to the Great Escape Fun Park in Lake George, New York.  It reopened on June 25, 1994 sporting the original Cyclone station and new P.T.C. two-bench trains.  Wood said that, “Getting the Comet- one of the best in the world- was a once-in-a-lifetime experience.”  The popularity of the ride today shows what an amazing feat Schmeck and Allen accomplished on the Comet.[13]

            Herbert Schmeck’s last rides were a string of junior wooden coasters that appealed to the new family audience that came out of the baby boom.  In 1952, 1954 and 1955 his junior designs were constructed and all had near-identical layouts.  Schmeck retired from the company in 1954 and sadly died two years later.  Although Allen and Schmeck worked together for many years historian Charles Jacques, Jr., noted that there was tension between the two.  Much as Henry Auchy, the first P.T.C. president, did not allow Schmeck to design a coaster until he left the company, Schmeck was the principal designer while in charge.  Herb Schmeck “was the boss and Allen the employee,” and this caused some problems between the two men.  Allen stopped working for P.T.C. in the post-war era but returned and later the company’s future was placed in his hands.[14]  John Allen took over as president and C.E.O. of the Philadelphia Toboggan Company on January 18 in an amusement industry that was ever-changing. 

The post-war boom had brought with it new rides like the Eyerly Aircraft Company’s Spider and Loop-o-Plane and later the Hrubetz Paratrooper and Round Up.[15] The period also saw different “mice-related” coasters come about in the mad, wild and monster mice varieties.  These were small coasters that utilized flat track, tight turns and one-car trains.  Two of the most popular designers of these attractions were Ben Schiff and Allan Herschell.  Both designers offered parks new styles of roller coasters that took up small footprints and were affordable for the family parks that dotted the nation.[16]  Disneyland opened in 1955 and redefined what an amusement park could be.   Walt Disney wanted no traditional amusement park rides within the park’s walls.  The New York Times said that “…it [Disneyland] has no such banalities as roller coasters, Ferris wheels, and dodge-‘ems in a milieu of honky-tonk.”[17] Although Disneyland purchased a roller coaster in 1959 its Matterhorn featured new tubular steel track that fit with the new theme park style Disney had invented.

            John Allen slowly worked against the stereotype of the roller coaster as a relic of the past and designed his first three coasters for the 1956 season.  Philadelphia Toboggan Company’s coaster number 123 was his first design.  It was erected at Hunt’s Pier for the pier’s owner Guy Hunt and called the Flyer.[18]  The same design was used again on the Roller Coaster (later the Valley Volcano) at Angela Park in Hazelton, Pennsylvania, a park owned by the Barletta family.[19]  His third coaster was the Jet Flyer at Gooding Zoo Park (now the Sea Dragon at Wyandot Lake) in Columbus, Ohio.[20]  Jacques and Jenkins both list these coasters at 36 feet.  This means they were taller than the Schmeck coasters at Hillcrest Park and Kiddieland (both in Illinois) but shorter than Waldameer Park’s Comet.  Allen did not deviate from the basic Schmeck junior coaster concept in his first designs.  The coasters often utilized curved stations and P.T.C. junior trains with flanged wheels.  From my research I know that when the Valley Volcano closed it utilized one four-bench P.T.C. car as the entire train, but I do not know whether or not it opened with this rolling stock.  Wyandot Lake’s Sea Dragon is the only one of these three coasters that has survived.  Although it is at Six Flags, Inc., park, the coaster is well taken care of and runs like it did in the fifties.  Angela Park closed in 1988, several of the flat rides were sold two years later and although I have no exact date for the coaster’s destruction, my guess is that it occurred around the time the land was sold to Pete Sabia in 1993.[21]  Hunt’s Pier destroyed the Flyer in March of 1989 to make room for their Vekoma-manufactured Kamikaze (now the Ninja at Six Flags over Georgia).[22]  

            Two years later Allen designed the Comet for Rocky Glen Park.  The coaster and the park had several names throughout their existence (a complete list can be found at: http://www.defunctparks.com/parks/PA/rockyglen/rockyglen.htm).  It is surprising that the park needed a new coaster as they opened one of N.A.D.’s (National Amusement Devices) best out and backs, The Million Dollar Coaster, in 1945.  The coaster, placed between Glen Lake and the Wyoming Valley & Lackawanna Railroad Tracks, was designed by Vernon Keenan and utilized N.A.D. trains (the coaster featured a unique one headlight front car, as opposed to the double headlight made famous by the firm’s Century Flyer trains).  It had a beautiful profile and was one of the largest (and only) coasters built in the decade.  In the grandiose amusement park fashion the coaster cost $900,000.00 less than the name implied.[23]  A winter storm wreaked havoc on the coaster’s structure, possibly because it was so close to the lake, and it was dismantled in the winter of 1957-58.[24]  During this time the park built a John Allen coaster named the Comet.  Its design was similar to his previous junior coasters, but its size was a step up.  The coaster straddled the line between junior & full-size and served as a “comfort coaster” for Allen.  Because the ride utilized standard P.T.C. trains (three three-bench cars) his calculations were on a different scale than the junior coasters, but the jump from his previous rides was not great enough to warrant any massive changes in the design style or coaster layout.  The coaster was a peppy little ride but did not have the thrill factor of its N.A.D. predecessor.  Like many struggling traditional parks Rocky Glen could not afford to keep its gates open and closed after the 1987 season.  The park’s rides were auctioned on August 24, 1988 but there were no buyers for the coaster.  It sat until November 12, 1994 when someone set fire to the structure.  The remainder of the coaster was torn down on December 7 and the last trace of another classic Pennsylvania park was gone.

            John Allen’s most important coaster for the Philadelphia Toboggan Company opened one year later at Roseland Park in Canandaigua, New York.  According to historian Charles J. Jacques, Jr., this coaster was built as a concession within Roseland because the park could not afford the ride on their own.[30]  Allen must have had some very large changes in design philosophy after the Rocky Glen coaster.  This was the first design in which he completely broke away from the junior coaster mold and created his most original design to-date.  The Skyliner featured a left hand turn off of the lift hill and a dogleg double out and back layout.  In a 1976 interview Allen recalled that after a 1956 personal accident he had a conversation with a neurosurgeon about the human body’s different reaction times to the events played out around them.[31]  He said it was this conversation that made him think about the psychology of a roller coaster, a psychology that was brought into full play on his first freeform design.

            The P.T.C. often filmed many of their construction projects for use as advertising at the national trade shows.  But, the company utilized a lot more film than usual during the construction of the Skyliner.  Viewing Tim Young’s Coaster & Park Films from the Philadelphia Toboggan Company one feels the excitement in the air as the coaster was assembled.  When the 66 foot-tall coaster opened everyone knew the ride spelled good things for the future of P.T.C.  It featured a first drop with very powerful ejector airtime in the backseat, three three-bench cars like the Rocky Glen Comet and a layout that was unique, something not taken directly from any of the masters of the past.  The coaster caused such a stir in the area that Allen said, “farmers came from 30 miles around just to look at it.”[32]  Roseland was small; the park had trouble supporting itself and closed on September 16, 1985. 

Luckily Herb Schmeck’s 1947 Rocket had reopened at Knoebels Amusement Park in the spring of 1985 as the Phoenix.[33]  Thanks to John Moyer, Charlie Dinn and many others this treasure was saved and, even more importantly, showed parks that it was economically and physically feasible to move a wooden coaster.  Lakemont Park’s (called Boyertown USA from May 23, 1986 through July 2, 1988) new owners, the Boyer candy company saw the economic success of the Phoenix and the Giant Coaster (which was moved from Paragon Park to Wild World [now Six Flags America] one year later).  They purchased the coaster, moved it and the Skyliner ran at its new home on the first day of the 1987 season.  Although the park owners did little else to benefit the park during their short period of ownership, the move of the Skyliner was a gift to the coaster community.

            Although not listed as a roller coaster in the official P.T.C. coaster list (found in the back of the books by Jacques and Cartmell) the Golden Nugget Mine Train is counted by the American Coaster Enthusiasts as a roller coaster.  The ride used steel rails like those found on many of the mice that popped up during this time.  Guy Hunt appreciated the quality work Allen and P.T.C. did because his Flyer generated great receipts.  So, he hired the firm to build a combination coaster and dark ride.  The company had no problems constructing the stunts because of their years of experience building fun houses and old mills.  The quirky Golden Nugget track was erected first then, the P.T.C. built the surrounding structure and dark ride gags.  The rides had five trains that had two four-person cars each.  Today the 1960 coaster is sadly standing but not operating, but hopefully that will change through refurbishment or a relocation.  [34]

            The early years of Allen’s career showcase two important facts.  The first is that, as designer John Fetterman said, the “ghost” of Herbert Schmeck was certainly with Allen.  His first designs stayed true to Schmeck’s successful formula and profits were kept as the sole concern.  The Skyliner, however, showed Allen was brave enough to explore his own design concepts and it was this almost whimsical style of coaster that would help rocket the firm and designer to years of continued success. One reason Allen’s designs were so successful throughout his career was because he had two trusted men sharing one important position.  From day one of his presidency Frank Hoover and Jimmy Martz supervised construction on most of Allen’s coasters, lived in the field for months at a time and ensured P.T.C. expertise was on site.  Historian Charles J. Jacques, Jr., said that unless a park had trustworthy and experienced employees who could supervise construction one of Allen’s men, almost always Hoover or Martz, oversaw the coaster’s construction on-site.[35]  Frank Hoover worked for the company from 1921 until the 1970’s and said that Allen was a “wonderful man to have worked for.”[36]  The expertise these men brought to the field cannot be underestimated.  John Allen and P.T.C. had very good reputations within the amusement industry as builders of quality rides and these construction supervisors ensured that Allen’s designs were constructed as he envisioned.  Allen later said, “Really in a coaster the lines that I put on paper do not mean very much unless the contractors and the builders that are going to follow these lines do follow them very precisely.”[37]  While reading about Allen’s designs be sure to keep these men in the back of your head as they turned his coaster dreams into reality.

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Adam Sandy, Copyright 2001.