1959 Welkut slot racing, Early & very rare Options

[SAMPSON]

Hi,heres a couple of 1/43rd scale diecast slot cars made by Welkut around 1959 in England. The cars are a BRM & a Ferrari. I think the motors are Ks. They appear to be glued together. The track is made of Paxolin which was used as circuit board. The only other company to use Paxolin was Paruna out of France in their race set made in 1947. The long straight is 45cm long,the short straight is 17 cm long,both are 12cm wide. There is a terminal track & a bridge track with wooden sides for a figure eight. The track looks handmade. The fence has the posts stapled to it. There is also a photo of the transformer. You can see how the motor & chassis fit in the body. I included a photo of the SRM Vanwall next to the Welkut car for comparison. The SRM car has a Romford Terrier 7 pole motor. The Welkut cars had blade guides while the SRM cars were pin guides.Today there appear to be no sets around,production was probably around 100 sets. They may have been made in a building not much more than a garage. I have only ever seen or heard of 3 cars. 2 BRMs & 1 Ferrari. I also believe these were the only 2 types of cars made. Others were conversions individuals made themselves. I dont have the controllers but i believe they were plunge types. These quaint cars are a wonderful part of our hobbies early history. What might have been when the standards were still being developed.Enjoy,Bernard

[tedm]

Fascinating-the cars look like they are converted from Crescent Die-casts. I think there was a company selling a conversion kit around this time. Was this perhaps Welkut?.
TED....





HPSCC...Scale racing in the Merseyside area.....

[scaleslotcars]

10 out of 10 for your Slot car History Ted, that's exactly correct!
I'm surprised Bernard didn't mention that, unless he didn't know

[SAMPSON]

Hi Ted & Phil,yes the company who made the conversion kit was RHV. I have 1 of these very rare kits. The kits were made around the same time.I presented my RHV kit in an earlier post. But these are not the same as the Welkut ones & yes i did forget get the obvious,the cars were converted from crescent diecast cars. I know only these 2 cars were used in the sets & i dont believe
their plans to add other cars was ever fulfilled. Bernard

[dgersh]

Thanks Bernard, fascinating stuff.

There was actually a - relatively - large amount of discussion at the time about Welkut and over diecast conversions, although maybe only in Model Maker magazine.... I think Welkut was mentioned in a few articles in the general press on what sets were available at the time. Kind of surprising more cars haven't popped up!

Don