Tula Central Park 26th August 2019

Tula (Тула) is a industrial city of half a million people located roughly two hundred kilometres south-east of Moscow. At its heart lies the enormous P. Belousov Central Park of Culture and Recreation (Центра́льный парк культуры и отдыха им. П. П. Белоусова), which was established in 1893 on a site that had previously been used for the city dump. The original 36,000 square metre facility was quadrupled in size in the 1950s, resulting in what is by some margin the largest public park in the area. (Petr Petrovich Belousov was a medical doctor who made important contributions to the development of the science of hygiene during the nineteenth century.)

The park has a number of different ride areas. The one of most interest to enthusiasts is a long straight midway located around fifteen minutes walk from the official parking at 54.1770, 37.5952, as it is here that one finds two roller coasters. Our first tick was the run-of-the-mill Caterpillar (#2794), a Vostok machine charged at ₽125 (~€1.70) per person for a three lap cycle. With that done we walked across to the Cyclone (#2795), a vintage Zyklon equivalent with a chain-driven brake and a ₽200 (~€2.72) price tag. This ride had a bit of an identity crisis; huge signage both on the station and the apex proclaimed it to be the "Z40 Roller Coaster", though whether this was accurate or not is anyone's guess; the cars didn't look like what one would expect to see on a typical Pinfari Z40.

Most of the other hardware in the park was generic (and antiquated) though as ever there were a handful of curiosities waiting to be discovered. The most interesting was Bazooka, an outdoor shooting range using a tripod-mounted weapon that apparently dispatched clay pigeons; a pile of orange-coloured rubble could be seen on the ground near the target. It would have been fun to try, but sadly it was unstaffed for our visit. We also spotted a handful of machines that had apparently been retired from the Czech fair circuit, notably the Bungee Jumping Miami that still carried branding for the defunct Lunapark Josef Zahradnik.