Scenic Railway, Wooden roller coaster in Melbourne, Australia

The Great Scenic Railway is a wooden roller coaster at Luna Park Melbourne, built from white-painted Canadian Oregon pine beams that form a tall lattice structure. Its track climbs a long straight lift hill, and a train of linked cars — a red lead car with a white circular emblem followed by dark cars — carries riders up the slope. The ride is 967 metres long, reaches 16 metres high and 60 km/h, and a brakeman stands on the train to control the manual brakes.

This ride opened in 1912 and ranks among the world's oldest roller coasters still in operation. Its construction from Canadian Oregon pine and manual braking system date from that original era and have been kept running continuously.

The railway is part of Luna Park and represents a hands-on approach to building and running rides that has survived for over a century. Visitors can watch a brakeman control the speed manually during each journey, a job that connects the present experience to earlier times.

The ride is 967 metres long, reaches 16 metres and tops 60 km/h, with a brakeman standing on the train to control speed. Each train has two cars; the rear carriage seats 8 riders rather than 10. The cable lift climbs above Luna Park's entrance before the first drop, and the layout circles the park perimeter twice, the second lap with smaller drops and lower speeds.

Today, only a handful of roller coasters worldwide employ a brakeman who manually controls speed throughout the entire ride. This hands-on approach is exceptionally rare and gives the experience a distinctly different character from modern rides.