Joining me today, he reads books y'know, it's Chris Joel.

Hullo!

Everybody's favourite Gary Brannan, Gary Brannan.

I--

Let me get the line out, you b******s!

And standing in for Matt Gray, stand-up mathematician Matt Parker!

Always clear all before an important calculation.

In front of me I've got an article from Wikipedia and these folks can't see it.

Every fact they get right is a point and a ding

and there's a special prize for particularly good answers which is...

And today we are talking about the Flip Flap Railway.

Ay, ah, hah!

- Hmm. Err. Erp. - Wow.

Is this... this is where the word “No”...

if we had an actual railway tunnel,

and there's a big steam engine coming down the tunnel

with the word, “no” written on the front right now.

You'll notice that sometimes I have my hand ready over the ding button here.

This is not one of those times.

Er, is it a pneumatic railway?

...in the south of England?

Am I right? Am I wrong? I'm wrong.

He's wrong.

Both flipping and flapping are things railroads should not do.

Yes.

So this is some kind of disaster...

- No, it's not a disaster. - Oh!

If you got on this railway expecting a normal ride, something has gone wrong.

Oh, so it's like a metaphorical railway.

Whoa. I was going to go for, like, theme park or something, but I like that better.

And you'd have got the point. What might the Flip Flap Railway be?

Is it a roller coaster?

Yes, you're absolutely right.

Is it one of those scenic railways, the 19th century ones where it would,

rather than like a normal rollercoaster now, you've got all the bits and bobs underneath exposed,

you'd put big panels on and paint an alpine scene.

So from a distance it would like you were riding a train up and down mountains

and there's a guy at the back who acts as a brakeman to stop the train.

Gaaah!

The interesting thing about that is:

No.

Can I just say--

But you have successfully got several things later on that we were going to talk about,

without any questions. So, yes, absolutely.

What were those really early rollercoasters called? We're talking 17th century here.

Pushing someone down a hill.

Yeah!

Yeah, they weren't called that, but they were giant slides.

The first ones were just park benches going down a…

There's one in France somewhere, where literally there was a park bench

and you kind of sat on it sideways and then it slid down a hill

and it was terrifyingly dangerous.

The thing is now when we hear the phrase, “a park bench”

we just think of Matt and Tom sliding sideways down a hill on a very poorly fixed one.

Yes, there was a gravity track in Paris in 1812.

- Gravity track! - Ohhhh...

And you said brakeman, this was before that.

Before someone thought of stopping the f***ing thing!

Are you stuck on them forever? Just falling and falling through eternity like Sisyphus

pushing the rock…!

Sorry, wrong meeting.

Er, no.

Well, f***!

What, it wasn't falling through eternity for ever? Really?

I'm getting sick of his negative attitude this episode.

Push up a hill, drop back down the hill.

The very early ones were called Russian Mountains.

Oh, I just thought you meant some Russian mountains.

Well, this is what they originally were.

Russian sled rides on hills of ice that had been constructed.

So that's where the name came from, and they would just...

So, up until the point someone went to Russia and saw a mountain that had ice on it,

nobody had had the idea of even sitting on a cart and riding down a steep hill?

Not specially constructing an ice hill 200 feet tall to slide down.

I'll grant you, that would be difficult in Norfolk.

Then you started getting the scenic railways. Now, you talked about brakemen...

It's done with a guy at the back who acts as a brakeman

and just puts the brakes on in the right place,

rather than any kind of retarding device that you might have on the wheels,

like you would now.

Oh, brilliant! So if he decides to let it all hang out you get a…

Well if it does that on that height, everyone's seeing it, let's face it.

The brakeman is the opposite of a hype-man.

So instead of someone going, “Yeah!” there's a guy going, “I don't know.”

“Go steady, or I could make this dead boring for you.”

You're right, he is the fun-killer of the roller coaster world isn't he?

“Not that! Too much fun. There we are…”

“No, everybody be calm.”

There is also something here in America that is an early rollercoaster

that is called the Mauch Chunk Switchback Railway.

I both trust and utterly distrust that ride.

I'm just trying to imagine who thought the word “chunk” was a good word to put...

Well, that's the name of the place where it was. This was a nine mile track.

Oh! I don't know what it is, but we're going.

- Smash cut right now. - Special!

Is it just some old railway?

It was one of the very first permanent railways in America.

Is it like that bit in Indiana Jones 2?

Go on, press it! Go on, I saw you go…

Yeah, I did, because this is 1827, so what didn't they have for this railway?

Power!

Harrison Ford!

Just.

Lucasfilm special effects.

Chris gets the point. Yes, they didn't have that. Obviously, gravity, they can get cars down,

how do they get the cars back up?

Gert big men shoving up.

Er, you're close...

Whoever's on the ride next.

You say ride. This, to start off with, was just genuinely a railway to move coal.

Oh, someone would have managed to sneak onto that.

Yes, you're absolutely right.

When there was down-time people would just sneak onto it and ride the cars down,

but how do they get the cars back up?

I guess it's not a loaded-car-pulls-down-an-empty-car scenario here?

No, no.

Levitation.

Hosses!

Yes! You're absolutely right, mules.

But they would send down enough cars and then they would send down the mules...

- In the car? - In the car...

- In the car. - That's very good.

- They get a ride! - And in fact yes, have a point.

- Their little ears… - That's probably not how they felt about it, Gary.

Yeah, but the first time they're like “what the hell is all this”,

we all would be, but then they'd be like, “Fantastic.”

They'd be going down and their little ears'd be flapping in the wind, all like that…

I think you've chronically misunderstood what it is to be a mule, my friend.

And there's a bloke halfway down doing a drawing of it

so they can buy it when they get to the bottom as a souvenir of the day.

There's always the smart mule

who works out where the etching guy is so they can make a face.

I reckon people saw the mules come off going,

“they look pretty excited, I'm having a go on that”.

That is basically what happened.

I don't think it was the mules there,

but it was people going “this is an exciting ride”.

“This is fun wasted on mules”, basically.

And then someone else went, well, we can charge for this

when there's not enough coal to move.

Or mules to play with.

Or...

Steady.

Lonely country town, let's say...

That was basically the world's first roller coaster.

Someone sat on the back of one of the mules as it goes down.

“This is f***ing awesome!”

That is Indiana Jones, just a century too early.

Nah, that's Slim Pickens riding the bomb!

Dr Strangelove with a mule in the compartment.

Sadly that has now been dismantled.

There is a trail there you can walk down,

but I imagine that's not the same.

Ironically a trail there you could ride a mule down,

which is worse for all concerned, isn't it?

You could, or you could ride a mule down on a little wagon with some wheels.

Oh my God, yeah. ...Wagon Wheels?

They're just going to go squishy.

They'd overheat and get flat spots!

Yes, they're smaller than they used to be anyway.

You can't trust a marshmallow bearing.

Can't, no.

Just overheat and then you'd get decent speed.

Jam lubricant's all well and good up to 50mph, but once you go over that...

Yeah. You're looking for a stout marmalade aren't you?

Something fine-cut though.

Oh yeah, you don't want the bits in it.

You can't have a coarse shred, it'll get jammed.

Oh absolutely, absolutely.

Marmite is your breakfast lubricant of choice isn't it?

Yes, but it burns up quickly.

It does and gives off quite the odour.

And woe betide the man who uses Branston!

For breakfast?

Matt, for God's sake interrupt, you've been going like this for about two minutes.

Yeah, but I go, “okay, I think they're finished”,

Oh no, there's more. Yes. No, they've peaked now. No, they haven't…

I was just going to say, but then I realised I was going to give actual advice, saying,

“use Maltesers as bearings” then went that's just a practical….

Oh yes, yes, you could have a race couldn't you? You could have a bearing race!

I've misunderstood this conversation, yes, yes, if you're actually going to do it…

Yes, Maltesers in.

Chocolate finger, Maltesers…

What's the outer race though?

Oh, that's a good point.

Doughnut!

I'm just going to point out for anyone not in the UK that Wagon Wheels

are a type a big chocolate round biscuit, so...

- They look a bit like the wheel off a wagon. - They're awful.

If your wagon were about yea-high.

No, they're smaller than that.

Yea-high…

There we go.

So we had the Mauch Chunk Switchback, which is arguably the first rollercoaster…

For donkeys.

We had the Russian mountains which could also be early roller coasters, that sort of thing.

By the point that we had the Flip Flap Railway,

there was this idea that you might want to get in a car that careened down a hill.

What was the Flip Flap Railway adding to that?

Flapping.

Flipping.

It wasn't an early attempt to do a loop-the-loop or something?

Spot on.

- Oh my god. - It was the first loop-the-loop in America.

And they got the shape wrong?

Yes!

Were they lured in by the easy appeal of a nice circle?

Yes, they were, would you like to tell us some more about this?

Oh, they didn't think about having a nice, consistent amount of acceleration on their passengers.

And I bet they were either passing out or bleeding from the eyeballs by the time…

Or both! They're not mutually exclusive.

Those poor donkeys.

You see I thought they'd go too slow and it'd get to the top

and they'd stop and all the donkeys would fall out.

Yes. That's exactly where I was going next.

No, because the problem is, right, the amount pushing you out as you're turning...

I'm going to be very careful here, or physics teachers will email me afterwards.

It depends on the rate at which you're curving,

and so to stop people from falling out at the top,

because the curvature of a circle is pretty consistent,

by the time you get to the top you've got to be going bloody fast

to have enough force to keep you in your seat.

Or the mule.

So what you want to actually do is change the rate at which your loop is curving

to give you extra force where required.

And so you don't have do it all with speed, you can do it with curvature instead.

Whereas they tried to do it all with speed and it didn't end well.