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'S-Ring' in Germany

345K views 405 replies 124 participants last post by  gus3049 
#1 ·
Hello everyone,

My name is Stephan (51 years young) from Germany, and this is my first post in this wonderfull forum. I'm following this forum more than half a year and I'm very impressed about the good and helpfull tips for planing and creating slotcar tracks. In the moment tracks and scenery is the favorit place I drop in every day and I'm fascinated about the track artists you can find here. So many helpfull hints who help me, to creat my own little slotcar track.
I started with Scalextric Sport 7 Years ago. From the beginning it was clear for me, that I want create a track with landscape, buildings and other things to give it a realistic look. Carpet racing I'm not really into it. At that time I lived in a little flat and the problem was, that I hadn't the place for a permanent track. I build a track in 3 pieces but the assembly and disassembly was no fun and over the years I lost the interest in slotcars. I wraped all track pieces, cars, figures, buildings in boxes hoping that sometimes it would be possible to build a permanent track. In 2010 I bought a house and in the middle of 2012 I my interest in slotracing again began.
When the winter 2012 came, I started with the construction of the new track. The dimension is 3,50 x 2,00 meters, the requirements for the track should be:
1. Scalextric digital for 6 cars
2. Pit lane
3. Similar park high detailing scenery with hilrocks, humps, trees etc.
4. Painted track
5. Special track passages (what I mean you will see later)
6. High detailing slotcars from for example RACER, Le Mans Miniatures …
7. The focus will be on a track which is nice to drive, rich in variety but not a high speed track for best times

All in all I have planed a lot to do. We will see, if I can realise this.
Because my english is not the best (please excuse me), in the future I will speak more with pictures.

At first a picture of me and my BIG slotcar a Lotus Esprit SE, MY 1991 which I own since 2000.



I'm wondering, that no one has ever build a slotcar of the Esprit S300 which started in Le Mans 1993 and 1994 or the V8 Esprit GT1 which started in Le Mans 1996.



Lotus was not very succesfull in Le Mans but for me the Esprit S300 and GT1 were one of the best looking GT racers. Maybe one of the Scalextric, Racer, Slot-it, Le Mans Miniature, Carrera … guys will read this and get an inspiration for one of their new slotcar models in the future.

Ok, enough words. Let's start with my track. I began in November 2012 with this.



The board size is 3,40 x 2,00 meter. I made a lot of pictures during the last months but I don't want to bore with every step I did. I think the most of you new the different ways to build a scenery.

For walls I use plasterboard. I had some pieces left, after building an inside wall in my house. It's 8 mm thick and covered with paper from both sides. To remove the paper, you must soak it 5 minutes in water. Then you can remove the paper with a plastic brush. But be carefull. With the water the plasterboard becomes crumbly. After removing the paper, the plasterboard has to dry. Then you have a good basic to build walls, stones etc.







I planed to give the track in some places the look of cobblestone. So I destroyed some Scalextric tracks and filled the holes up with plaster. At the beginning, it costs some self conquest, but after the first step, it makes a lot of fun ...





Horror of horrors!





But after removing the mask ...





A good basic to creat some cobblestones ...







For the first, I was happy with the result.

Ok. I will stop here for the moment. In the next days I show you the following steps of my creation.

I'm happy for every reply and positive and negative feedback. Thank you

Best regards
Stephan
 
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#2 ·
Hi Stepe,
Welcome to TheForum .....


What a brilliant idea for the cobble stones in the track .....
...... and the plaster board brickwork is so cool ..


With such a great start to your thread, this will be followed by many here .....


All the best - Greg
 
#4 ·
Very nice 1:1 car & track, love your couple stones. Well worth all the effort.
 
#5 ·
What a great idea to use plasterboard in that way! And that idea to butcher plastic track and create cobblestones is a masterpiece. We will be watching your build with interest!

Great car, by the way, obviously loved a lot! I had the poor man's version - the similar-looking Toyota Celica GTi in black.
 
#7 ·
Hallo Stephan,

Welcome on this forum. Nice one, your Lotus. I love most of the Giugiaro/ITALDesign cars.

Ditech made a resin body of the Lotus Esprit. And, I believe, Avant Slot has ( or soon has) the Esprit GT1 LM in their line-up.

So far your work on the track looks promising.
 
#9 ·
Hello again and thank you for the warm welcome. Yes plasterboard is a nice material to work with. I cutted it with a handsaw but also with a jigsaw. After removing the paper it has a nice surface to create single stones, walls or concrete areas. Check it out!

Dagobert: Thank you for the tip with Ditech. I have contacted them directly and yes, the have some nice Esprit racecar bodies in their program. Maybe I will build the first Esprit V8 GT racer in this forum or is there someone out there who has done this before?

Today I will show you the pictures of the next steps in building my little racetrack. This all happed in November and Dezember 2012.

I began to close the areas between the track with different materials.



On this picture you can see the two sections where I have cutted the track into single track pieces. Our friends in China have used a lot of plasticizer. It's very easy to cut them with a sharp knife. Above on the picture there will be a little "chicane", where the track with the round curve stays on the street, whereas the other track directly leaves the street and runs through the terrain. If you dont want to run through the terrain, you can change the track at the lane change before the chicane. Below on the picture there is a place were the track splits in two single tracks on different levels. Maybe a nice place for an interesting scenery.



All becomes white - sorry I forgot it was Dezember ...



At the right side of this picture you can see the splitted track again. The right slot is on a higher level than the left one.



Another little plasterboard wall.



Here I have cutted the plasterboard in pieces to simulate concrete slabs for the curbs. My plasterbord has the same thicknes as the Scalextric track. Later I will fill the holes between the stones. With some broken edges at the plasterboard pieces the "concrete slabs" get a realistic look. I will show this later.



Then I gave the track the first colour. Later it gets a washing with dark grey and black. Above in the middle of this picture, you can see the "chicane". Now I think it's clearer to realize what I have planed.



And here again from another position.



Here are the cobblestones with the first colour. There is a lot to do to give the "street" a realistic look ...



OK. I will end here for today. The next time I will begin with greening the scenery, I show you my self made "grasmaster" and I will tell you about the "earthquake", which came over the track.

See you!

Stephan
 
#19 ·
Me too!

I didn't notice the changes after the initial layout photo. It looks like he did some clever cutting to make it look like a double lane with a pit bay, but really it's just a single lane. Very cool.
 
#20 · (Edited by Moderator)
Thank you all for your replies. So much I have seen and learned here in the forum about slotracing. I'm glad to see that I also give you some inspirations.


@ fast lucky: Thank you for the tip. I have directly ordered a V8 GT body from Ditech. I think in the moment, this is the only way to bring an Esprit on the track. To build the Esprit slotcar would be a project for the future - not easy for me, because I never have done this. But I think when time comes, I will find a lot of hints here in the forum.

@ aerodynamic: I'm living in the near of Köln, Cologne but I'm sometimes in the near of Speyer (Hockenheim Ring) for watching races or to meet other Esprit and Lotus owners.

Back to the topic:
Next step in creating my track was giving the scenery a first colour. I used brown and black paint, mixed them together directly on the plaster together with more or less water, so the base coat got different colours and tints. Here I think you can do nothing wrong.



Then I started to green the scenery with different modelmaking gras types, sand, gravel and other suitable materials I found in our garden.



I think, creating a good looking and realistic scenery is a long process with many steps and various layers of different materials. There are a big number of „scenery artists" here in the forum who gave me a lot of inspiration.

And then once again I was happy that the internet exists. I found a manual for the construction of a „Grassmaster", a little machine, which helps to rise the blade of grass. All you need is an electric fly swatter, a little metal sieve, a big needle, and a wire (ca. 50 cm). The tools you need to assemble all these things are an electric soldering iron, a saw and some glue. The material for this devilish-engine costs not more than 10 Euro, for the assembly you need 30 minutes and then you have saved a lot of money, because the „Original Grassmaster" you can buy costs more than 150 Euro. I'm not sure, if you all know this. If so, please apologized this revision. If not I have found the manual on this internet site: http://www.bahn87.de/gras-master
It's in german, but with many self-explanatory pictures.

And here it is:



And in action:



During the next days while I was creating the scenery, I got the feeling, that I must change something. All in all the whole track looked too flat for me. I decided to raise it in some areas.

Ok, the earthquake took only 10 minutes ...




… but to realise the changes I needed 2 weeks.









All in all I'm happy, that I have done this. It wasn't easy to destroy a part of the track. Maybe with a better planning it would be avoidable.











OK. That's all for today. The next time we enter a time machine an drive back to the year 2006 where I want show you my self built pitlane building.

@ Slotrace.dk - You see, wishes will become true ...


Stephan
 
#21 ·
Looking good! I used the same design of static grass applicator, though mine had a "crocodile clip" on the end of the wire, which I needed to attach to a nail in the board. The needle option looks like a better solution! I found you needed to get the sieve part pretty close to the surface to get the strands to stand up properly.

Keep up the good work!
 
#23 ·
Hello again,

@ speedy Steve: You're right. But borders and fences will come.

Today we drive back to the year 2006 when I created a little pitlane with 8 boxes which had to look like it was built in the '60s or '70s. I'm focused on this time, because I like the technics and look of the racecars. I think in this time car racing was more an adventure than today. In my mind, the drivers were more grown men and the girls in the pitlane looked much more better.


For the pitlane I used Depafit (another name is Kapa panels), pasteboard, paper, computerprints for the advertising, logos, signs etc. and a lot of different things I found in my part box, such as springs from ballpens, lids from felt markers, rivets etc. Maybe you recognize the one or another when you view the pictures.

Here you see a german TV team in front of the framing in spring 2006.









And here an interview with the architect when the framing of the tower was finished.







The numbers for the doors at the rear side of the pitlane.



Because I work as a creative director for promotion, I love logos and I put a lot of them on the building.



And now to the details.













Some workshop wagons.



The Coke vendor. I found it on the internet. But I have pimped it a little bit:




The rear side finished. Later I have changed the flagpoles and flags because they didn't look right for me.



The top of the tower. Here you will later find a TV camera man.



The door from the tower to the roof of the boxes.



Details of the Porsche team manager.















And at his workplace.



Ok. Enough for today. The next time we're back on the track with a lot of details I have done in the meantime.

Stephan
 
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