This Billboard report is valuable information, not least for the record of the rides
produced by the firm in its early years. Of particular interest is the 'Trackless Railway
Engine'; I wonder what the Health & Safety boys would think of a train (and trailer!)
load of kids weaving in and out of the isles at Sainsburys today! Do any older readers
remember one of these trains trundling round their local department store in the '50s?
Also of interest is the reference to the Cowboy Horse with built-in music, which must
have been a considerable innovation at the time.
Perhaps the two best known rides produced by Edwin Hall are Muffin the Mule and
the much later Dalek (thought to have been produced from 1964 -fJ7). It is believed that
there were less than fifty Daleks built in total, although Muffin must have been produced
in much higher numbers, if surviving machines are anything to go by.
It is not known when Edwin Hall ceased building kiddie rides, but by the 1960s the
firm clearly had its sights on bigger things. For it was the firm of Edwin Hall & Co. who
were the pioneers of introducing the 'Twist' to British fairgrounds, manufacturing rides
under licence from the American Eli Bridge company. The first six Edwin Hall
machines were supplied to Butlins camps in 1960, and by the 1970s the ride had become
commonplace on British fairgrounds. There are Edwin Hall twists still travelling the
fairgrounds today.
Original works photographs of Edwin Hall Helicopter and Spaceship.
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