Howie
Donkey in a hat
Got some updates on this from Monsieur Getley if anyone's interested:
The trains were manufactured in Friborg, Switzerland by a company called Stephan S.A.
HOME - STEPHAN
www.stephan.ch
It's funny, with him being a Stoke lad, I kinda assumed that train assembly took place somewhere nearby, ready to be whisked a few miles down the road to Alton Towers but nope, he was working in Switzerland at the time, although he did visit the construction site a couple of times during the closed season.
No mention of Blivvy or any other coaster construction on their website - they seem to be focused more on large, steel framed buildings nowadays.
He's not sure whether they fabricated the actual track for the coaster (my own goon mind seems to think it would have been Giovanola back in those days?), but they definitely built the small section of dummy track to be used, as @roomraider said, to check gauges and tolerances.
B&M don't actually manufacture anything themselves, or at least they didn't back in '97/'98. All they did was design stuff, then paid loads of other people to do the actual graft.
The old boy in the hat assembling the bogies is called Mario, lead fitter for Stephan.
The 2 guys fitting the bogey to the chassis are B&M lads, one of which was the mechanical design engineer, Georges Petitpierre. Still works for B&M, apparently.
The Alton Towers guy who my man also worked with (not pictured) was Dave Bennett who was last seen as the head of engineering at Alton Towers, although he may have retired now.
Thassit. That's all I got. Hope it helps.
Oh, and one more thing he did say to my missus was: "So, was your husband one of those geeks I used to see trying to peek over the park fences at the construction site?"
The answer is yes.
Yes he was.
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