Jan. 23, 2023—Mahoning County Career and Technical Center (MCCTC) collision repair students are getting the chance to test their restoration skills in a new way, working on weathered artifacts from long-closed Idora Park in Youngstown, Ohio.
According to a story from WKBN, the students are repairing a piece of the Kooky Castle, an attraction that closed along with the rest of the amusement park in 1984 after nearly a century of operation. It's the seventh such project that MCCTC students have gotten to work on, and it's a good challenge for the students to try something different and think about things in a different way.
“Our students are beginners, and they’re learning, so their skill level was low,” collision repair instructor Jeff Sander told WKBN. "But that’s what our goal is, to practice on something like this. So when they get in the real world, they’re ready to go."
Like any repair the project involves sanding, painting, grinding and more. What appeared to be bullet holes had to be patched and filled with fiberglass. It's all in the name of bringing some local history back to life as items from the park have sat abandoned for decades.
“I wouldn’t say it’s gonna be perfect. I would say it’s gonna be like, Oh yeah, you can definitely pass this off as it’s good enough, it’s good enough for a museum,” student Jonathan Oles said.