Earliest known hand controller, Is this the earliest known hand control? Options

[Guest_Rail Racer_*]

During the research for the book, this is the earliest hand control we found, still belonging to the rail racer who used it along with some of his original rail cars. Does anyone know of an earlier one?

RR

[JohnP]

Did you ...---... the marshal if you went off?

[Mecoprop]

LOL!
That's exactly what it looks like!
I thought they used bell pushes in the 'good old days'?

[Guest_Rail Racer_*]

Yes, they used bell pushers, light switches - or anything else that could make and break the current.

RR

[JohnP]

Then there was Henri Baigent's P.O. generators/winders.

[RichD]

At first they didn't use the telegraph key, they just touched the bare wires together!

[speedyweenie]

I remember seeing an article on Japanese slot racing in one of the mid-60s slot mags. The popular controller was a modified foot pedal (squeezed with two hands) from a sewing machine. I think Japanese technology made considerable strides after that.

mp

[Tropi]

Roughly what year are we in with the buttons and switches?
Trying to remember when varispeed controllers came in . . .
My first Scaley set was about 1963/4 so it's a bit earlier than that.

[Guest_Rail Racer_*]

1955, this was right at the start of rail racing.

RR

[JohnP]

Interestingly, in D J L-D's book he says that the first tracks used variable resistors but the operators soon found that by using an on/off switch they could go considerably faster.

What goes around comes around.

[Guest_Rail Racer_*]

The hairpin on the Brookland rail track would make it almost inpossible to use any kind of on/off switch controller. As the inside lane is very tight.

RR

[JohnP]

The hairpin on the Brookland rail track would make it almost inpossible to use any kind of on/off switch controller. As the inside lane is very tight.

Yes, and I imagine that it would have been even tougher using cars with early worm drive railway gears. Worm drive locks the drive wheels when the power is off preventing the car from coasting gracefully - I know this from racing model railway trains in my younger years

DJ L-D goes on to say that they then developed a middle ground controller which had both a fixed resister for slower speeds and a full on button. This would solve the problem by enabling the car to coast in corners under low power.

I wonder RR, did you run a class for worm drive cars at Brooklands? If so, what were your experiences?

[Guest_Rail Racer_*]

I own a couple of worm drive rail cars including the one raced in Abergavenny at the last summer rail race meeting.
This car was built and raced by John Jenner and is a copy of early ERA rail car. The car raced very well and was not much slower than the gear drive cars.

The advantage it had was their are no brakes on the rail track and the gear drive cars take a long time to slow down. If this car had been higher geared say 3.5/1 instead of the 6/1 it was it would have been hard to beat.

When Rail and slot racing ran side by side in the early 1960s it was rail racing which was the faster system by far.

RR

[Mecoprop]

When Rail and slot racing ran side by side in the early 1960s it was rail racing which was the faster system by far.

This quite surprises me!
Were they the same scale?
What were the significant differences?

[JohnP]

...and no bias in your reply please RR