After a about 14 months of playing around with circuit designs, I've come up with one that I can live with and now I'd like to build it into a table and add a few trees and stuff.

My garage has a room above that I use for my gym and as a server room for my Internet servers that make too much noise in the house. Seeing as I don't get around to doing much gym for lack of motivation, I built a Scalextric Sport track on the floor.

I bought the Scaley box kit last year as it had the RMS system. This set is what brought me back into the hobby after a 25-year break. If you can plug something into a computer, then I like it.

Here is the final track plan on the carpet. It has been said before and I’ll say it again: Be happy with your track plan and play with it for a long time on the carpet before you build it into a layout. I might still add a S-chicane somewhere to add some spice, but I can do that without changing the basic layout.

Update: 4 Dec 2003

This is the power supply that I picked up at Pendle's recently:


Here it is running at full load with 4 cars trying to push it off the track (don't try this at home folks)

I'm about to start laying scenery. I've been getting the ramps right this last week and making sure I won't have to do any major surgery once the grass is planted.

Here I've lowered the approach to the down ramp, making it smoother. It still is a tricky bend with a slight negative camber. Note the bottle of Cologne, that give my track it's shine and it's smell!


And I've smoothed off the up ramp too, lowering the height of the underpass - but as I don't race trucks, it doesn't cause a problem. I could always raise it back again if I had to. Before this, it was a constant height across the bridge, but it created a sort of hump that didn't go down too well with some cars.

Update: 21 Jan 2004

I was adding wire mesh to start some landscaping the other day. I did the rear elevated section and thought that as it was all the same height it wasn't going to look too good done as a grassy bank.


So I took the mesh off.


And came up with the idea of building a via duct (Like railway arches).


I found a plan on the Net from someone that had made a railway bridge. Added some inside bits and some extra brick for the top.


I figured that a 16cm brick is going to be 5mm long in 1:32. So I re-scaled the arch accordingly in PhotoShop.


Printed it out 8 times (normal paper), cut it out and stuck it to cardboard with stick glue.


I cut a backing and glued it together, with a top section with white wood glue.


I've just pinned it in place and it'll dry for a few houres.


Then I'll paint the back black, finish the gluing and insert the roof under the arch and add brickwork to the top wall. Here it is finished off. I jus neet to blend the brickwork a little using brushed on dry oil paint.

Update: 24 Jan 2004

What a mess I think that it will take a week to dry. Papier maché reminds me of my childhood. Had to get my 5 year old to show me how to do it.

Update: 10 Feb 2004

Motivated by JohnP, I've started my borders. I wasn't keen on buying plastic ones as I would of had quite allot to get. Here is a cheaper way of doing it.

I've used 8 mm foam ceiling tiles cut to shape. I used some spare curves of the same radius as the track and a metal ruler to cut the foam. One glued with a special foam glue (no solvents), it is not even 1 mm above the track surface. This is easily sanded down to be level with the track allowing the outer lane some side-sliding room.


About 2.5 cm from the track, I'll start the decoration. Either grass or gravel. The gravel traps are sweeping curves going into the corners of the table. I'll have 'metal' barriers and tires on the inside of those.


Where the foam ends, will be the scenery, either turf or tarmac for the pits areas.


I noticed that the paint finish was better where I sanded down the foam and perhaps with the heat of the sanding, sealed the surface a little.


The paint is a water based acrylic. I notice that it does slightly eat the foam in placed where I haven't sanded. Not even noticeable though. Gives a more natural look.

I masked off the slide area. Mixed some PVA (white wood glue) with brown acrylic paint. painted it on to the corner. Sprinkled some HO train ballast (mixed brown). and voila!

I cleaned all the mess from the table, removed the remaining barriers that were attached to the tracksides (too close).

I've added foam to the inside of the track where I'll build pits and parking.

Update: 12 Feb 2004

Doing a little work each day on the track. A bit of painting, a bit of gluing, a bit of filling.

Here is the future pits area:


Adding more borders:


A neat wall made from 6 mm dense foam sheet:


Glued on with this foam glue that makes a great filler too:

Update: 14 Feb 2004

Much of the same. Painting, gluing and filling. All borders are on. Today I worked on the walls on the overpasses.

What a mess - starting out from yesterday's work.










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Update: 16 Feb 2004

I didn't bring my camera out whilst all the muck was about so here are some photos whilst it's drying.

I got the glue gun out and stuck down the railings in some of the infield areas.


I mixed up some white PVA glue with water and added brown acrylic paint.


I painted on top of the rocks and on the banks and next to the track - masking off the borders with masking tape.


For the large flat area, I used a grass mat.


Right now I have two grass types, a coarse (wood chip) light green that looks horrible fluorescent and a meadow green that is (too) fine. I need a medium green to blend the two and to fill in the gaps. I'm going to ad shrubberies to fill in the gaps here and there.


I'll add more mat on the exposed (flat) wood of the table.


I'm going to add trees to soften the overall effect.


A look from one side to the other.


I like the walls over the bridges with the rails on the inside. The rails are there to protect the cars and the scenery from the cars. The walls make it look more real and one day I might put up some advertising on them anyway.


A little vacuuming to be done

Update: 17 Feb 2004

I did some more grass today. It felt good getting it down. I still have a little more so I'll do that after I've scored some more turf from the hobby shop.

I added all the infield borders and I've actually now run out. I have quite a few as you see, but there is not enough to do the whole track outside of the gravel traps. I'll do some tire barriers first - some experiments forthcoming - and perhaps one day I'll add some more barriers outside of the tire walls.

Update: 20 Feb 2004

With all this talk recently of tyre walls, I came around to thinking about this. I need about 1600 tyres to finish off my track.

Where to get them

So I came up with these:

Update: 21 Feb 2004

Pits - well I though about this long and hard. I wanted a pits so I could park some cars and give my layout a racing feel. As the layout's a scale model of reality, I decided to add some pits, but to fit them in without blocking any view of the track and thereby hindering the racing. Some buildings are just too big and although those Carrera ones look cool, I think that many a modeler is going to have trouble fitting them on the table.

So I went about designing and building my own. I've recently been using compressed foam and quite like how easily it is to cut and work with. It glues well using a special solvent free glue used to fix polystyrene cornices to ceilings.

I looked around for a design and stuck upon Le Mans 1976. The pits were not the garages as we know today, but were not the work rooms of the 60's with cars being worked on outside the pit wall.

This is what I was after (Note the Greenwood "Spirit of Le Mans" Corvette):


I figured that the little 1:32 men would be around 5.5 cm high and I'd want them to look OK in and around the building. Although the building is not to true scale, they fit. The cars fit in the garages quite well too.

Here is my progress, about 5 hours work from design to what you see.

If you want to do something similar, here is a link to the plan

The design sketched out in my workbook:


Some foam cross-sections cut out and roughly assemble to see how it looks:


Starting to glue up the structure:


Quite strong in terms of structural strength:


To see what it looks like on the track:


Aging, it seems to look fine:

I finished off the 'tarmac' in the pits and secured the building to the base. It can be removed quite easily.