Building a Roller Coaster

The Melbourne Meteor

Hi it's P here.  Well, we just spent the first week of the holidays building a roller coaster!  OK, not quite full size and just out of paper, but a great family construction project none-the-less.  I found a great site called paperrollercoasters.com run by ex-teacher Andrew Gatt.  You can buy templates for $20 and print them onto card.  They come with a detailed instruction manual:

How to build paper roller coasters

We first cut out the designs and folded and taped them to make the parts - columns, beams, bracing, shelves, brackets, straight track, sharp turns, wide turns, loops, merges, switches and funnels!  The templates were very well designed and we appreciated the thought that had gone into them.

Construction of the framework then began, anchored to a cardboard base.

The Snork Maiden at work building a strong foundation

Moomintroll checking on proceedings

The finished frame and a bucket of track parts

We all had input into how the final roller coaster would look.  The Snork Maiden designed and assembled the fast track section.  Moomintroll created the slow track section.  Over a few days it all came together, and "The Melbourne Meteor" was born!

Marvin & The Melbourne Meteor in 3D

There were so many things to like about this project.  The girls got great experience thinking in 3 dimensions.  They interpreted plans, worked with nets and created parts.  They were also exposed to the engineering challenges of team work, project management, problem solving and innovation.