(SWNS)
One super awesome uncle made his nephews dream come true, by building him a roller coaster in the backyard! The cool part, the nephew designed the roller coaster himself!
Leigh Downing, 47, and his son Charlie, 20, used the sketches made by his nephew Calden Ashley to construct the 230 foot-long big dipper.
Leigh Downing and Charlie Downing used plastic pipes for the rails and old bits of scrap metal and wood to make the frame of the coaster. The inventive duo even used an old wooden chopping board as the seat of the ride which circles Leigh’s back yard in Wales.
They built it as a surprise for Ashley who was fed-up after being unable to see his friends over the summer holidays as a result of lockdown restrictions.
“Calden has been rollercoaster mad for as long as I can remember, former engineer Leigh Downing said. “Even before he was tall enough to ride, he was designing them on a computer.”
(SWNS)
“It all started a couple of years ago when I had an operation and was off work for a couple of months. I gave Calden a wooden marble roller coaster kit I had when I was a child. He was so thrilled with it,” said Leigh.
“We built it with a wooden frame for the structure, PVC pipe for the rails, and 462 wooden bearers that we mounted the rails on, all of which Charlie cut and filed a 40mm profile in,” Leigh added of the coaster. “We did it all in eight days.”
“Our next plan is a full steel roller coaster with a corkscrew and a loop which, of course, will rely on Charlie’s maths degree coupled with Calden’s roller coaster designs.”