[fmfm20j]

I'm relatively new to this forum and have spent many hours reading the excellent posts here. During the past year or so I've experimented with various scalextric classic layouts in my roof and have decided upon a U shaped loop with a long ramp crossing. In all, it's about 19 metres.

Up until now, the track has been just that, a length of track (and a computerised lap counter). I've both watched and read with great interest how people both within this forum and the various railway forum have built scenery. As a youngster I built many a model kit and, now that our house is in reasonable condition, my thoughts have turned to something more creative to do inside the house during the winter months. So, my 9 year old son and I have decided to turn our track into a scenery based layout. We hope that, as skills improve, so will the quality of what is produced. The mid term plan is to turn the whole thing into a partly open country and partly town based layout.

As it is in our roof and because the loft hatch isn't generous in size, I decided that the best way to make the scenery was to do it in the garage and to take into the roof in a modular form. With care, the various parts will be able to fit together and I plan to join some of the pieces with trees (some using the bottle brush method and some using sea foam).

We'd like to share with you the first little section. It's a loop of about 1.5 metres in length and the cars will actually go around it anti clockwise. It has a slight gradient from end to end of about 3 degrees and this gradient is achieved by using two cut sections of ply sandwiched between vertical spacers. The majority of the scenery shape is mod roc on chicken wire and ply. The covering on this is several shades of paint and home made flock (everything, really, is home made). In addition, the rocks are foam rubber made using the frocks principle devised by others much more experienced than we are.

This section took a week of evenings and half a day over one weekend.

We hope that you like what you see and any suggestions for improvement are warmly welcome.

Thanks for looking.

 

[jcoop]

Looks like a great start, I on the other hand am still playing with designs in my head.

Keep the pics coming

John

 

[MattZani]

Looks very nice! it seems lots start to scenery tracks this time of year, perticularly loft racers

Matt

 

[My Fault]

Looks like a nice track

.

Great landscaping

, brilliant

.

Is this for yourself and a few Mates to have a play, or to form a club

Ever visited Pinewood just down the road

Regards Rollover.

 

[fmfm20j]

Hi Rollover,

to he honest, it's a family track mainly. The roof wouldn't stand the weight and it would also become a bit of a sauna with too many people up there.

I have been to Pinewood. Very nice bunch of people there too. My aim was to get my son interested so that we could go together. Unfortunately, he didn't find the spark that was needed, plus, we've been on holiday and I'm suffering from a string of business commitments in the coming weeks.

Maybe, once this is of the ground, he'll show the necessary interest and we can return.

 

[Ian B]

Ian,
It's lookin' good, another bloke having ago at Frocks welldone. And a fellow loft racer too

QUOTE My aim was to get my son interested Give him about 30 years and and he will be on here posting the exact same coments about his son

Still its a great excuse to build a track Ive been using it for years too!

Regards

Ian

 

[fmfm20j]

Hi Ian,

My wife has wondered for some time about this curious hobby (this and being a BMW fan). When I told her I was making frocks she looked to the sky and smiled. As I said to her "I could be down at the local bar chatting up the talent. Instead, I'm at home making frocks". I think that she is even more worried now.

Perhaps it's an "Ian" thing?

"frocks", for those who don't know, is a British description of a ladies dress. .... and for those who are wondering .... the answer is no!

 

[snowmanf]

Finish looks nice. As I've noted before I appreciate the good use of colors.

Some of those rocks on th inside look mighty close to the action.
I guess you better not go slow around the corners huh.
Probably never happen though

right?

Frosty

a bad typist ;(

 

[taxi]

I'm not sure what to make of this recent outburst of frock-making...

But whatever, that section looks good, especially the couple of outdoor ones. Nice work. I like the idea of modular scenery, I know it's for convenience but it'll come in handy when you want to make changes to the track or scenery.

It's always fun to watch a new track being dveloped, keep the pics coming.

Welcome to SF, btw.

cheers,

Rob

 

[Ian B]

QUOTE I like the idea of modular scenery

Just a quick note all my Autodrome Scenery is modular, this was because I wanted the scenery to be at the same height as the track. Consequently, I have a layer of Foamboard as an insert and then I build on that. It may come in handy should I ever decide to change the appearance of one section I just lift it out and redo or replace.

It must be an "Ian thing"

Ian

 

[taxi]

Oh Gawd, there's two of 'em!!

cheers,

Rob

 

[snowmanf]

I'd like to say there'll be three soon but, in all earnest, I think by the tiem I start up again there'll be dozens

I hope!

 

[athrlyth]

Hi Ian

Great start, in fact great, really impressive, well done like the idea of building the scenery in stages and taking it into the attic. more pics when your ready please.

Athrlyth

 

[Savage]

Coming along nicely

Hmm Modular scenery, it makes a lot of sense, now logged in the dodgy grey matter, if the day ever comes I get room to build a scenic layout

 

[JB05]

It's looking great so far

well done

Thanks from,

Mike.

 

[fmfm20j]

I thought that now might be a good time to add an update to my racing project. I wanted to get to a point where the supports for the track and the scenery attached to these supports is contiguous. This means that it is possible to race on the track even though the cars are likely to spin off where barriers or scenery is not in place.

There is still a huge amount of work to do and much of it is the near view buildings. I'm still thinking about the best way to produce these because there will need to be quite a few of them given that over half of the circuit is on the harbour side of a town.

Anyway, it's a little hard to understand the layout shape from the pictures because the roof shape makes it quite dificult to get a full view of the track. So, the first picture is a plan of the track. Racers stand in the middle and the racing takes place on all four sides.

The next picture is a view looking down on the majority of the track. The camera is positioned equivalent to about 40 feet above the waterline. This is closest to the highest elevation of the track. The track is immediately below having risen through a suspension bridge and through a tunnel section.

This view is looking back to roughly where the last shot was taken from. It shows the tunnel and the bridge. I plan to add houses to the right of the bridge (immediately behind the bend in the track and just at the base of the hill) and a hotel to the left of it.

This shot looks up the bridge towards the tunnel and the contemporary house on top of the hill.

This view looks towards the rough terrain loop at the end of the bridge. This is the section where I experimented with frocks for making rocks.

Here's a view of the bottom two loops of the track. I'm not too happy with the backdrop. I may re-do it later.

This is the section where the Ferrari dealership is located (San Marino Sales). It is loosely based upon Tower Garage in Egham, UK. This is where the Ferrari dealership Maranello sales is based. Their garage is a lovely art deco building that I often admire. The building in the foreground is an old chapel and his has been remodelled as a scruffy engineering works.

This is the pit area and control tower. There's still a lot of work necessary in this area.

This last picture is the place where the town needs to be added. I plan to build a pub on the water front and a range of houses and shops in the space where the mouse mat, pencil and other junk currently is placed. The crash barriers are temporary and will be replaced once the buildings have been made.

You may also notice the pc mounted on the roof. This is the lap counter timer and sound effect unit.

The track was thoroughly cleaned and the joints overhauled before assembly (much of it being old classic track either bought for or given to me). The track has 5 power taps running underneath it (picked up from a parallel wiring bus). The cars can be set to run in either direction. I run each line using separate transformers. It also has braking on the controllers.

I hope that the images didn't take too long to download. Thanks for looking. Any suggestions or comments are much appreciated as this is my first attempt at anything like this.

 

[Nomagnetix]

Looking really good.
I really like the suspension bridge.Any details on how you did it?

Look forward to seeing more.

 

[fmfm20j]

The suspension bridge is relatively easy to construct: firstly, decide how long it needs to be and find a piece of soft wood which is that long and about two inches wide. You can make it wider if you wish but the main purpose is to keep the track straight yet retain a sleek profile.

Next, decide the angle of the bridge. I decided to make the bridge go from ground level to a height of about 20cm in one straight length. You need to do a bit of trig to calculate the angles of the start and end point. The length of my span and the height rise gives an incline of about 2 degrees. You need to cut one end of your long plank with this angle. This is for two reasons: it provides a flush anchor point to allow you screw it to your base and it also means that there wont be a horrible step at the end. If you leave a step, you could end up with a track join in free air and unsupported.

Now you need to build a support for the other end. Cut a square of wood of the right height to support the other end of the beam. In my case, the wood was about 20cm square. If you can, cut the top edge with a chamfer to match the incline angle of the beam. Now attach the beam to the square of wood and you should end up with two sides of a triangle.

The next step is to build the suspension tower. I decided to make mine triangular just so as to make an architectural statement. The roadway needs to pass through this triangle and, if it is a triangle, you need to consider the fact that the sides will rake inwards as they merge to form the point at the top. So, decide at what height the roadway will bisect the suspension tower and measure the height of your tallest slot car (and add a bit). From this, you can work out how wide the suspension tower needs to be at road level so that your tallest car can pass through. In my case, the tower needed to be about 3cm wider on each side (6cm in all). Cut a piece of wood that will form the hanger of the roadway, cut the tops of the suspension tower at the correct angles (mine were about 75 degrees if I recall correctly) and join all three peices to form an A frame. In one of my pictures you will see that the pointed part of the A frame has a filet of wood into which holes have been drilled to hold the suspension cables. This filet also gives the structure added strength. There's a picture of it below.

Now you need to build the hangers for the roadway. The hangers serve two purposes. Firstly, they keep the track fairly flat as it passes along the beam and, secondly, they provide the termination points for the cables. The cables, by the way, are totally cosmetic (unlike a real suspension bridge) because the weight of the roadway is supported by the plank beam. They have to snugly fit around the beam (on which they need to be screwed) and they need to hold the roadway. I cut a slot in the long side and this slot is the same as the cross section of the plank. When screwed on to the plank there is a nice flush surface on to which the roadway sits. On the ends of this is a raised section on to which screw eyes are connected. These will hold the cables. The profile is also shown in the picture.

I cut three of these hangers and attached them to the beam at equal intervals.

Now I assembled the bridge on a flat surface and srewed the suspension tower to the base, one end of the plank to the base and the other end to the 20cm end block. I also attached the end block to the base. This gave something like in the picture.

I then assembled the track and crash barriers.

The next step is to drill two holes in the base where the suspension cables will acchor to the mounting points. The holes need to be large enough to take all of the cables that you intend to wire. There is one hole either side of the track. You need to make sure that your tallest car will not foul the cables as they pass into the base.

Now screw in some hooks or round screw eyes in each of the hangers. It is upon these that the cables will be attached. For each cable pair the cable will be attached to one of the screw eyes or hooks, it will be threaded back up to the filet at the top of the suspension bridge tower, through it, down through the hole in the base, under the roadway up through the other hole in the base, back through the filet in the suspension tower and down to the other side of the same roadway hanger. It needs to be pulled tight and then tied off. I used coaxial cable and soldered each end but string or wire would do. You need to repeat this for each hanger. Dont pull the cables too tight because you will put undue stress on the cable and may cause other cables to become saggy.

Paint colours to suit (I did this before assembly) and start your racing.

Good luck.

 

[fmfm20j]

I've been working upon the town section of FPR and decided to provide a quick update. The track is really starting to take shape now. The main problem that I have is deciding if I should convert the track to Scalextric digital or not. Part of me says that it would make the whole thing much more fun. The other part worries about the expense and disruption to what I have already completed.

Anyway, eclosed is the harbour section (where most of the town is). Behind the camera are the pits and to the right of these shots is the suspension bridge.

The foreground section, including the orange crash barrier, hasn't been done yet.

It's a shame how all of that water damages block rendering. At least the pub still serves a decent pint!

This is behind the pub. I haven't done the bit between the road and the cliff as yet. The cliff face also needs a bit of naturalising too.

 

[taxi]

Very impressive, the town looks really good. I'll definitely be watching out for the next installment!!

cheers,

Rob