Timaru, The Early Years - In Photographs Options

[superhornets]

Hi stan ?Graham
thanks for the heads up on the book ,steve has ordered one form me which I posted on monday so he should have it by ,
now
good luck with your 50th ,its great avhievement as only a handful of clubs have continuous running over 50 years
I think it may be North londons 50th anniversary next year
Dont forget to take plenty of pictures

Cheers tony

[THE NUTTER AT TH...]

Hi All,
Just a quick photo, this is a very rare photo of the timaru portable track !!!.We put the old dear up at a recent hobbies fair .The track was built about 20 years ago, and this is the first time it has been used for at least 10 years !.

bill jenner (the nutter at the back ) ( gladys the the char woman )

and one half of the norfolk & chance race team.

[THE NUTTER AT TH...]

S


A better shot of our old portable. All the large hammer marks and blood have been removed from this shot, it really took a lot of work to bring the old girl from out of her dark corner up at the old timaru track room.
many thanks to graham who did much of heavy rhythmic hammer work, and to gladys who did the moping up at the end.

bill.

P,S NO SLOTCARS WERE HURT DURING THE USE OF THIS TRACK .

P,P,S THE LADS USE TO RUN GROUP 12 MOTORS AROUND HERE !!!!!!!!!!!!!

[THE NUTTER AT TH...]

Sorry, thats bob and graham in the top photo, i am outside holding back the multitude of fans and autograph hunters, gladys has the camra balanced on top of her mop for a better shot ?.

bill.

[stanleykirk]

A couple more photos from the Timaru archives.

These are Timaru 2 and Timaru 3, the second and third wooden built tracks.

Timaru 1 was the track built for Worth Mill (situated just outside Sandwich in Kent) which features in the early part of this thread and which subsequently moved to the Fleur De Lys pub in Sandwich. The track moved upstairs at the Fleur (a fact which I had forgotten) on a change of Landlord in 1978. That will have been the arrival of Randolph (aka 'Randy') who also had a business interest in a couple of interesting establishments trading as 'School Dinners' in Baker Street and Holborn in London and which involved young ladies dressed in......but I digress!

The Club lasted another year at the Fleur but then the space was needed for more bedrooms or something and the club then moved a few miles to the Bull at Eastry (Timaru 1 ending its days as firewood!) where a new track was built between Jan - Apr 1980. This was situated in what had been the upstairs hayloft of the stable (the Bull being a former coaching inn). I remember the stairs as lethal (although long standing members had plenty of lethal stairs experience at Worth Mill) and the floor was in places rotten, still with unrepaired holes where people had stepped through. Such are the places where slot racing clubs operate. Apparently we found the Bull through my connections with CAMRA (the Campaign for Real Ale - no not something you take photos with Bill), a fact which I had also forgotten - obviously memory lapses due to too many school dinners!

This is Timaru 2 at the Bull in Eastry.



One downside of Pubs is change of landlord. This duly happened in 1984 and the club moved to the Seaview Hotel in Birchington. The name is a misnomer as it was a couple of miles form the sea, so no seaview. This pub/hotel was taken over by friends of club members Richard and Pete Bayliss. No stairs this time but plenty of drafts and no heat as the location was an outbuilding previously used as a coal shed and storeroom. Timaru 2 was cannabalised with some sections rearranged and some new sections added to make Timaru 3. I remember the resulting track as being very high. Any deslot along the back wall straight was a definite 'track call' as you needed a long broom handle to knock the car back into the slot.

This is Timaru 3 at the Seaview Hotel in Birchington.



I'm sorry that there are no more photos covering this era as we didn't then have the equivalent of a Phil Green (responsible for the 60's and 70's photos) keeping a photo archive.

Suggestion to all clubs, make sure you take and keep lots of photos - with digital it is now much easier than it was!

If any readers have knowledge which they can add to this story, we would love to hear from you!

The Club survived two changes of landlord at the Seaview until mid 1997. A new track, Timaru 4, was built Jan - Oct 1999 and this is the track featured currently on the Club's web site; www.timaru.co.uk

This track has now gone to the 4LBT club in Swindon and we look forward to racing on it again.

Meantime we await the arrival of Timaru 5 (see New Track thread in the Timaru section of SlotForum) at the new Crampton Tower premises in Broadstairs - possibly the least cruddy premises the club has ever occupied!

Stan Kirk.

[chris nicholson]

hello stan, alan p told me about the reunion so we thought we might come, might even bring my wife, is she safe with phil green around ?

[stanleykirk]

Chris,

Fantastic to hear from you, we would be delighted to see you, Saturday 20 June at 3 pm at the new Track at the Crampton Tower Museum, Broadstairs.

I saw Phil recently for the first time in 3 decades. Now age 90 and just the same as he always was

I hope that Alan can make it too.

Also hoping that Dave Harvey and Steve Walker will be there.

Are you in touch with any other former slot racers?

Stan Kirk.

[RickJ]

Hi Stan, here is another bad penny from the past showing up! I was recently trying to introduce my youngest son to the joys of slot car racing as I experienced them back in the sixties and somehow found myself here. Fantastic to see the early Timaru pictures and see your name up there! I left for Canada on June the 30th 1967 as I recall, so would have missed out on the July 1967 photo by just a few days. Great to see all the old faces again, especially Mike Short, as I remember him with great appreciation for providing me with a lift to the club and back from Ramsgate. He was a very exciting driver in his Ford Anglia - especially on the after the pub nights!

I remember racing at Timaru right up to leaving England and I think I was leading the F1 championship at the time and doing well in the other open wheeled class we had (a kind of Formula Libre class) also. Of course that may just be a case of a convenient memory at work! I still have some of my cars and other bits from back then.

Would be great to hear from you and catch up on all your news some time when you have a moment.

Best Regards from Canada,
Rick Jones

[stanleykirk]

Richard,

Fantastic to hear from you and welcome to Slotforum. I have also sent you a Slotforum Private Message which I hope you can work out how to pick up.

Also fantastic that you have kept some of your 60's slot kit. Slotforum is definitely the place to share that type of stuff, once you've worked out how to post photgraphs here.

Did you continue with slot racing once you got to Canada?

Stan Kirk.

[RickJ]

I tried to continue slot racing when I got here but sadly there was nothing like the marvelous UK club scene to be found anywhere. I eventually located a commercial track in the next city from where we lived and went over there a few times but it was purely operated for the bucks and there was none of the camaraderie of Timaru. It wasn't the same so I moved on to chasing girls and fast cars instead.

It took a while for the girls to succumb to the charms of this particular puny little Brit so in the meantime I worked my way through multiple Mini's and MG's up to an E type convertible by which time my luck had improved considerably. The E type eventually made way for various other purely racing vehicles that I thrashed around Mosport for a couple of years including a Lotus Europa and Formula V and Ford single seaters but unfortunately I quickly learnt that racing big cars is a lot more expensive than the little electric ones! I raced karts for several years but these days in the interests of ecology I have downsized again. My passion now is vintage motorcycle racing.

I just accessed your message so will send more to you there over the weekend.

IT is Friday evening. Wouldn't it be great to be on my way to Timaru again!

Rick

[distantkiwi]

I thought I was going to be reading a post about a Slot Club in New Zealand. I guess that is where his dad is from.

Timaru

[Mike S]

Great to hear via Stan from Richard Jones. He mentioned my driving - well one club night I gave him a lift home, got a puncture and surprised Richard with the speed with which I changed the wheel !! I was back in Sandwich for another drink - halcion days !! Mike S

[stanleykirk]

Rick,

I was telling my wife about your message yesterday when it occurred to me that Timaru club night used to be on a Friday, very handy whilst still a schoolboy! It became Tuesdays for a very long time and then became Thursday only a couple of years ago, as you can tell from the Results thread also here.

I had also forgotten about the 'Formula Libre' category, I remember it was an opportunity to fit an Indy body and put a bigger motor like a 16D (instead of a 13UO) into a formula one chassis as the 1.5 ltr F1s were so small. Fortunately the real F1s then increased dramatically in size with the 3 ltr formula from 66 onwards. I had an early bright yellow Dyna Rewind 16D which really whistled, that was a monster to drive, steady through the corners and blast down the straights, on hard rubber tyres!

There's a very strong retro scene going on in the UK now catering for '60's style' chassis (always inline) and hard plastic bodies and hard rubber, not sponge tyres I find them challenging to drive (but still fun), and slow, compared to current and more recent cars which just shows how much things have moved on.

Stan.

[RickJ]

Mike, delighted to hear from you and let me say again - a big Thank You for all those rides! I had forgotten the incident with the flat tire until now you mention it. As I recall it was not just the speed with which you solved the problem that was so impressive - but also how fast we were going when you realized there was one! I loved those rides and as an impressionable kid felt like Dennis Jenkinson sitting next to Stirling Moss in the Mille Miglia.

I also remember going off to represent Timaru at other area tracks, undoubtedly with Mike as part of the 4 man club team, for away matches. The results we obtained weren't so great - especially from my own personal perspective - but then came the festivities after the racing. Because at sixteen (and looking about 12) I was excluded from the beer round, I nevertheless was always generously furnished with a large glass of apple juice instead. I recognise that juice now - it is goes by the name of Bulmers Strongbow! I recall the impact the stuff had on the brain of a then 110 lbs dripping wet runty little teenager! Even now as I enjoy the first sip of an occassional glass of cider, I am always momentarily transported back in time to those away races.

Stan, do you remember Terry at Timaru? I believe he had a gammy foot? He didn't show up so regularly towards the end of my time there but when he did he always brought something innovative and very fast along with him. Speaking of the problems with the skinny little formula 1 bodies back then and the way they restricted the motor size, I remember Terry neatly solving the problem by trimming the body exactly around the contours of the motor so that effectively its outer surface became the sides of a very quick car. Ex slot car racer Ross Brawn would have loved it! As I recall Terry always made sure his tyres were completely even and round, which must have made the car very stable and predictable handling. All I ever did was just fit the rubber onto the wheels and off to the track! I recall that Monogram F1 cars and their tyres were highly prized back then and I suspect it was the precision casting of the tyres that had a lot to do with their effectiveness.

The memories just keep rolling in!

Rick

[stanleykirk]

Rick,

It was Terry Coleman, who had polio as a child, hence the 'gammy foot'. That was not an unusual problem amongst children in post war Britain. In our year at Chatham House you may remember another with the same problem, name of Chetwynd I think. It still surprises me today how close to the war I was born, although that seemed so long ago at the time that it was another world. Terry subesequently took up model aircraft flying and still lives nearby, he came to have a look at the new track when we moved in last year. I also spoke quite a bit to Mike Billing last year (I had seen him a few times in the intervening years as we ended up in the same industry) but he lives some distance away and wasn't able to make our 50th celebration.

I also remember doing rather a lot of cycling at the time, from your house in Ramsgate back to Birchington, often late at night on very dark and unlit country roads - amazing how fast you can peddle when well incentivised! Then there was the Ramsgate Models shop, just down the road from the school. A quick trip out at lunchtime to get the latest Model Cars magazine was always one of the highlights of the month!

I also remember suspecting that I wasn't very popular with your Mum as I always seemed to be round your place! What has all of this got to do with slot racing, I hear someowne shout! Good question!

How did we find out about Timaru? I think that was your fault.

Stan.