Thunder Road tops out in May, 1975 - HERE
Thunder Road cartoon ad promotion from 1976 - HERE
More Thunder Road images from 1980 - HERE
Built at a cost of $1.6 million, Thunder Road was an all wood racing coaster that opened to the public on April 3, 1976. A quick history lesson here. The name Thunder Road (the best coaster name at Carowinds in my opinion), was taken from the 1958 Robert Mitchum movie depicting moonshining in the Carolina mountains. Route 9, going north from Atlanta, was nicknamed Thunder Road during the prohibition when bootleggers with souped up car engines would race to outrun the law & revenuers.

Thankfully, the great Thunder Road roller coaster is still taking on screaming riders to this day, so the real significance of these photos are that they display the original rolling stock that operated on it between the 1976 & 1980 seasons. Two trains were purchased (one for each side) from Chicago's world famous Riverview Park's, Jetstream Coaster after the park closed in 1967. The front ends of the trains were modified to depict the Outlaw (yellow) & Sheriff (blue) as depicted in the lower photos. The top photos show the trains with the original V-shaped front end, as it looked at Riverview Park. Carowinds eventually bought 4 new matching trains from PTC in 1981 to increase rider capacity and the old Riverview trains were said to be scrapped
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