Here are some pics of the completed track:









I've hosted one race night on it so far and it was a huge success. Indeed the other guys I race with are now actively planning a change from plastic to wood which of course would please me greatly!

Ronan

I made a decision to take up the 3 lane track I routed last year and start fresh with a new 4 lane layout. Overall the track width is now 4 feet for the whole length of the track which frees up a lot of space in the room, and makes the track easier to marshal. The lane lengths are shorter, but I think the new design flows better. I went for a 4 lane design as I recently started meeting up with a group here in Dublin who race every 2nd Thursday in each others homes on 4 lane tracks so I felt it was the way to go.

The track is a figure 8 and the bridge section is removable. I have more wood sections to fit in the space and I'm going to use my router to make a section to turn the track from 4 lanes into one lane when using it myself (as what Luf has done many times on oldslotracer) and I think I'll also route (rout?) a squeeze section. I think for racing though the standard straight bridge piece will be used.

Hopefully I'll have it running in a few days kids and wife permitting! LOL!

I've been working on the scenery end of things and I've just finished adding in a lighted Sunoco sign as well as grass, bushes, trees, the lot. Now that I finally started doing some landscaping I'm enjoying it in a big way! Here are some photos of what I've done so far:

I had a new friend and his daughter over this afternoon to play with the track and do a little racing (which went very well). Olivier recently moved to Ireland from France with his job and he is disappointed there are no slot clubs in Dublin, but he was delighted to get in touch with me and we have met up a few times now and are both very much into slot cars!

Anyway, I tried taking some video of the track in use with some slot.its (Porsche 956/962s and 2x Alfa 33's and a Ferrari 312PB) of which not much was any good! (8 year olds who like clowning around and turning the camera to face themselves every 2 seconds to comment inanely on the action do not make good cameramen! LOL!)

I've uploaded the file to you tube and here it is:

You tube video of track in action

I've been busy painting borders and some markings for the start/finish area of my track, plus I've also started putting together some Bauer card pit buildings too. I'm waiting for a bunch of Fly pit wall sections in the post to finish off the pit area (nicely I hope!).

Here are some photos of the start/finish and pit area as it currently is with some of my collection.

Finally! I have the basic structure of the track and timing system up and running and it is superb to use! As expected my slot.it's and Racer's are fantastic on it, as is my Sloter Lola T280. My son and I are having a lot of fun with the track and my wife can now see the point of the whole exercise! LOL!

I'm using a Racecontrol sensorbox which is working a treat, and the slot man software is great, with a car database and so on.

Obviously it's not called 3 rock mountain speedway due to it's elevation! The name comes from the south Dublin mountain (a large hill really) that overlooks our house. I was planing to elevate the main straight but I have 4 kids (7 year old son, 2 year old twins and a new daughter!) so I had precious little time as it was to work on it. Hence I decided to go for a flat layout for simplicity.

The lap record to date is 6.5 sec in the middle/red lane with my Racer Ferrari 312P NART (a beauty!), closely followed by a slot.it Porsche 956K (6.7 sec). I can totally see why slot.it and Racer are so highly regarded, they are excellent straight out of the box on a wood track. My Fly's drone around like tractors but now that the track is ready to use I'll be busy fettling them to run more smoothly!

I have a ton of superb scenic items which I will now start to add to the track in stages, so I hope in time it will really acquire a nice landscaped look.

My 7 year old son and me have already had some terrific races on it and it beats plastic by a country mile! My 2 year old twins (Abigail and Mark, Mark Donohoe that is! I'm amazed my wife let me away with picking that name! LOL!) love it too and with the voltage turned down to 4.5 on their lanes they can drone around all day long with no deslots, plus they make for a neat "rolling chicane"! LOL!

Of course there is no Dublin based slot racing scene that I know of, but maybe in the future I might get hooked in with like minded local enthusiasts as I'd say it would be fun to have a race meeting on the track.

I'd love to hear back some comments/suggestions about the track which I hope is going to be an ongoing project for me and the kids.

Here are some up to date pics:

Not a whole lot to report, but given what little spare time I have it's a minor miracle when I get anything done!

I finished smoothing and sanding the slots, and now I've finished painting them (outer is yellow, middle red and inner blue). So the next step is painting the surface and then taping which I have to say I'm really looking forward to! Also I got around to measuring the length of the middle lane and it's 47.5 feet long.

A word of caution though, don't leave a brand new flat screen monitor (bought to put on the wall behind the track to show timing and so on) sitting unattended near sandpaper when you have 2 year old twins around! Needless to say the finish on the screen is now a little rough, but hopefully it will still look ok from a few feet away. Kids!....

I thought I'd post a few hastily taken photos of my new routed 3 lane track which is not quite complete yet! I've finished the routing, and at the moment I've mounted the MDF sheets and I'm nearly finished sanding and correcting any imperfections in the slots. I had to fill and re-rout the infield part as you can see as I made a dog's dinner of it the first time round (rushing to get it done, the boss giving out as I'd spent hours on the track while she was minding the kids and so on!).

I hope to start painting it on Saturday, then comes the tape, wiring and then hopefully it will work! I've got some great scenery items planned and I'm going to mount the flat screen monitor to display the timing system info.

Obviously it's not called 3 rock mountain speedway due to it's elevation! The name comes from the south Dublin mountain (a large hill really) that overlooks our house.















I started out last year with a Ninco N-Digital set but for many reasons I've decided to change to an analogue routed set up instead. I found I kept burning out chips, I didn't like the all or nothing throttle feel I got from the digital cars and I've already got over 100 1:32 slot cars so to add chips to them all would be prohibitive. Additionally I would say much of the time I'll be using the track on my own against the clock, or with my kids, so three lanes is plenty.