John Burke's Blackpool   Pleasure Beach 1977
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The front of the Pleasure Beach seen from the South Pier in 1977.

Many of the photographs on this page date from that year when for some reason I went somewhat berserk, taking photos...
The park had a double Big Wheel for many years with the animated figure of a clown "cranking" the handle to make the wheel turn! The original head of the figure was replaced by the face of "Mr Funshine", the Pleasure Beach's mascot in the 1970s.

Right: The site of the Big Wheel in 1998.
The Steeplechase under construction and below, the ride in action.

The sign proudly proclaims: "The World's First Steeplechase Ride!"
The Monorail opened in 1966 and was 11 years old when this photograph was taken in 1977. Having seen film and TV images of the sleek, fast monorails at Disney parks in America the appearance of this train - which appeared to have been designed using Lego bricks and which crawled round the track - was an initial let-down.

There were a couple of trains and the rather strange design was made even more striking when they were joined later by a sleek futuristic tube of a train which was what everyone had been expecting in the first place.
The one disadvantage of the more modern monorail train was that it was enclosed. Whilst this certainly kept visitors dry on wet days, with the doors shut the atmosphere soon got rather stuffy inside. The doors were highly sprung to keep them closed and keeping the door open with your foot to allow a bit of fresh air in soon meant an aching foot...

Blackpool almost caught "monorail fever". There was a scheme reported in the local paper to replace the trams with a monorail service along the Promenade. Thankfully the trams remain!
Here one of the two original trains comes through the wooden structure of the Big Dipper and out to the front of the park. Reaching the Promenade it turns to run alongside the front of the park and gave good views of the Promenade and the Log Flume.

Since the building of Ocean Boulevard and the Big One this stretch of the ride give a rather more restricted view of concrete, bricks and steelwork...
Whilst the new Monorail gave an elevated view of the entire park, it did not detract from the popularity of the Pleasure Beach Express, whose station is seen here.
The miniature train gives kids their best opportunity to exasperate parents, by insisting on squeezing into the enclosed rear coach on sunny days instead of sitting on one of the open bench carriages!

The train is seen here at its southern station, about to go under the Monorail track that we have just seen in our photograph above.
   
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