Kings Island's 230 ft. "Diamondback" almost ready.

Thanks to Don Helbig, Public Relations Area Manager of Kings Island, I was able to partake in an exclusive construction tour of Kings Island's newest roller coaster; Diamondback, as a staff member of KICentral.com. At 5,200 ft. long, 230 ft. high, Diamondback will be the park's tallest and fastest roller coaster once it opens in April and is speculated to maybe be one of the top steel coasters in the nation.

Photographs from the KICentral construction tour on Feb. 21, 2009:




-Entering the park on a dreary, cold day Diamondback dominates the skyline.

Take a Virtual Tour of the Cincinnati Skywalk - "Downtown's Ghost Town"

Skywalks. "Modern" ideas of the late 60's/early 70's born out of a major city's desire to keep shoppers downtown and out of the suburban, indoor shopping mall. These enclosed bridges crisscrossing over city streets were envisioned to network hotels, office buildings and retail centers. In the summer months they kept pedestrians cool with air conditioning and warm in the winter months with heat. Ideally, these skywalks would provide one of the largest conveniences of the suburban shopping mall while keeping businesses downtown. The skywalk sounds like a great idea with the best intentions at heart, but there are those that argue they do more harm than good and over the past decades skywalks have had mixed results. This is especially evident in Cincinnati.




-The Skywalk over 5th St.

Cincinnati's Forgotten Railroad History

At the beginning of the 20th Century, Cincinnati was a chaotic mess of seven different railroad lines all converging on the Queen City. In a time before crowded interstate highways and an over priced Delta hub airport across the Ohio River, rail was king and a solution was developed to Cincinnati's growing rail traffic problems. That solution was Union Terminal, a central hub where the majority of freight and passenger lines running through the city would converge in one central location. In August 1929, construction was started on the massive Art Deco structure.




-Union Terminal under construction. Image courtesy of Cincinnati Museum Center.