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Smallville Creekvalley Raceway

17K views 50 replies 23 participants last post by  Nick Rijke 
#1 ·
Hi all,
Thought I'll share with you my project for the winter - a more permanent layout of my four lane Scalextric Sport track. So with this rather long first post... here we go.

Facts about the track
Name: Smallville Creekvalley Raceway (Rough English translation of the area I live in)
Track: Scalextrics Sport
Lanes: Four
Length: about 15 meters (50 feet)
Power supply: Scalextrics sport
Timing: Scalextrics RMS (Hopefully exchanging supply and timing to Sports World when that is made available)
Scenery inspiration: Classic Le Mans or similar, no exact copy
Height difference: 35 cm on highest point of the track.
Location: In my basement in our house in Gothenburg Sweden
Table size: About 220 x 450 cm
Direction of driving Will drive both ways.

Layout
For those of you who remember, I asked for advice some time ago on how to expand my layout in this thread. What I ended up with was this:


When testing the track flat on some tables it looks like this


Still some areas to work with but I was more eager to start doing some scenery instead of achieving the perfect layout. So I decided to get started in the corner of the track which I was satisfied with and left the right part as it is in the meanwhile.

Table construction
First thing I did was to build a table. It is based on 3,5 boards with the dimensions 220 x 120 cm. Total table size is about 450 x 220 cm (I think the type of board is called chipboard or fibreboard in English).




Then I started working on the elevations. The base for the elevation is 4mm plywood. The highest elevation of the track is 35 cm.


]



]

Also, got some good help from my son and his friend to test the elevations… to get the track even and without sudden "breaks" took more time than I expected.


The old bridge and curve I have made previously will be rebuilt to fit the new structure.


Scenery details
Parallel to building the track I have started on my first two "building" projects. The Dunlop bridge (more info found here):


And some pit buildings, inspired by Nuros pit buildings but altered a bit in height and width, as seen in the pictures, not finished yet...




Further on with the scenery, based on the tips from Bastumannen, I have started to create the rock walls/mountain sides with the help of styrofoam, glue, a fork and a vacuum clear at hands. First pieces unpainted looks like this:


Areas beside the track are leveled with the help of cardboard/paper board or what you call it, making it easy to just paint slide zones and apply scenic material.



More pics
More pictures of the building of the track can be found in my gallery.

That's about it for now. Not much progress yet but I will post more pictures along the way as the track progress… And a big thank you to all the others that have posted pictures of their home tracks on Slot Forum, without this forum, I would never had been inspired to do a more permanent track with scenery to it!

Stefan
 
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#2 ·
Smart layout...I really like it...especially the climb on pics 4-5....do you get many deslots...scenery is going to be a looooong job.....good luck
 
#4 ·
QUOTE (nitro @ 10 Nov 2005, 13:25)Smart layout...I really like it...especially the climb on pics 4-5....do you get many deslots...scenery is going to be a looooong job.....good luck

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Well, the track is quite technical in the elevated areas. It varies though depending on what direction you are riding. So racing is done in to high speed through that part, there will be deslots. But I'm not experiencing to many deslots due to the elevation changes.

Yes.... scenery is going to be a loooooong job....

Thanks,
Stefan
 
#5 ·
QUOTE (dil @ 10 Nov 2005, 16:50)man are thoose table tennis tables you have there, thery look like TT tables that have been modified,

"stiga"

nice track though damm nice good work
<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Yepp. That is an old table tennis table that serves as the biggest base for the table. Turned out quite handy to be able move the table around on the wheels.

/Stefan
 
#9 ·
Hi again,
After a couple of hours today with styroform all over the place, chicken wire that just did not want to be were I wanted it to be, plaster bandage that kept bugging me and tried to cover my arms instead of nicely covering the net... I have finally finished the "scenery base" for one of the hills off the track.

Really, If I'm not picking up while I'm working, the scenery is going to take a real long time to finish. But well, somebody said this was a hobby for life and I start to understand what he meant...


Pictures:




Despite the trouble, the result turned out quite good. Hope to get some time tomorrow to start painting and applying scatter material on the first parts. Longing for having at least one part kind of ready so I can feel progress...

/Stefan
 
#11 ·
QUOTE (bacardibeast @ 16 Nov 2005, 00:14)The track looks fantastic!


& a four laner.
A man after my own heart!

I bet that corner at the top of the main raise is a bitch to get right!
Braking on a steap raise. Easy if taken slow, a real skill to get 'just' right.

I'd love to drive it. A well deserved well done.



Bacardibeast
<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Thanks!

Yes that corner is tricky... can't go full speed up the hill if you want to stay in the slot.


/Stefan
 
#12 ·
Time for a short update on development,
After quite some agony, I started applying different kind of grass material to a corner of the track. Wanted to try in a small defined area first and see how it turned out. As of now, I'm pretty satisfied with the result so I think I will continue with the same principal in other areas.





The border is as you can see standard Scalextrics sport, pushed down and hot glued in holes I made in the base material. I'm also thinking of supporting the barriers with nails on the back or with "tires"-barriers to accommodate a crash or two into the barriers.

Principles I have used for the grass:
This is probably old news for you scenery experts of this part of the forum but still... if I can spare some hours of surfing for some, I might as well add them here too


To make your own base scatter material / flock (or what the appropriate name is)
Found this tip on: http://homepage.mac.com/pmarchand/scenery_demether.htm
1. Buy a couple of different small colours of water based hobby paint. I found some for Euro 0,15 in the local supermarket. Tree green,grass green, autumn yellow, cinnamon brown etc. Those were the colours I start with
2. Go to your garage and use your saw on some wood. Gather the saw dust.
3. Pour a little paint in an old ice cream container or what ever you have available, obviously you can mix different colours to get a number of shades. Pour some water in to it until it is similar to milk. 4. Add some saw dust.
5. "Stir" until all is mixed.
6. Repeat step 4 to 5 until the mixture can not take more saw dust. You will notice when you have some trouble getting the last saw dust to be colored, then it is time to stop. The mix should now be quite dry.
7. Remove the mix from the container to a spot where it can dry.
8. Occasionally during the drying, flip the mixture over and try to squeeze it so you avoid the small lumps that else will be formed.
9. After dried, it is ready to store until usage.

La voila, For not so much money spent you get a good base of different colours of scatter/flock:


The creation of grass matting
I used the techniques that JohnP introduced, also discussed here: http://www.slotforum.com/forums/index.php?act=ST&f=7&t=10770. So very short, I paint the ground red-brown (or grey near mountains) cover with some black material to get nice variation. Added the different green, green, green, yellow and grown scatter materials I made before. And on top of that, finish off with some nice static grass from Heiki. Fix the material with diluted PVA glue as adhesive material.

Other progress
Have painted the first walls of styrofoam but they need to be repainted to get the right shades. Work on borders "Bastumannen-style" is also ongoing on the most elevated part of the track.



That's all for today, let's see what the weekend can bring... Hope to get some more work done on the styrofoam parts of the track to finish them off.

/Stefan
 
#14 ·
Another short update on the progress...
Have worked hard tonight to get some more areas ready. Have to post two pictures for you before I go to bed... Will take more pictures tomorrow when there is daylight coming in and helping with the lighting.

Still missing some fences on the top of the track, benches for the spectators and some trees if I eventually come around making some... But the base is there, and that feels great.

The latest car buy, the Fly Alfa is stepping on it on the straight at the highest part of the track:


Same AR just before the last turn at the end of the slope


Bigger close up's are available if you click the images!

More pictures to come, I promise...

/Stefan
 
#15 ·
great track! the different heights give a very realistic touch to the layout comparatively to a flat track I think.

...and I'm very happy that my article on P.Marchand site is useful for slot car enthusiasts!
(for french people you've got the original article in french on the website of my signature
)

bye
 
#16 ·
QUOTE (demether @ 19 Nov 2005, 23:47)great track! the different heights give a very realistic touch to the layout comparatively to a flat track I think.

...and I'm very happy that my article on P.Marchand site is useful for slot car enthusiasts!
(for french people you've got the original article in french on the website of my signature
)
bye
<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Thanks!

And yes, the tip was very useful. I think I found it here in the forum some time ago in the first place. Have certainly planned to try doing some of those trees as well. Was actually looking for a brush and some green spray at the supermarket today but was not lucky so I will try another store tomorrow...


/Stefan
 
#18 ·
I did promise you more pictures... but I have not had the time to either build anything or take any pictures. The day has instead been busy hunting problems with the power supply of the track... which turned out to be errors with the braids on the cars... not the track...

Todays addition to the pictures is four step by step pictures of the making of a grass area. This is from the most elevated part of the track.

1. Prepare the area around the track so it is level where it should be and some hills where appropriate. I do not want the area between the track to be completely flat, that will not look realistic.


2. Paint and use colored scattermaterial as described earlier. Saved a pieces in the middle which will become a parking space.


3. Parking space fixed with paining the ground black and adding some black/grey/white scatter material from Faller I believe.


4. Spray everything with diluted PVA. Powder the Heiki static grass material. IN lack of other tools, I use a colander when applying the static grass.


Still to do in this area: Some benches for the spectators, add fences, backdrop possibly and plant trees.

/Stefan
 
#23 ·
Thank you guys!

QUOTE (zipp @ 21 Nov 2005, 04:02)Stefan,
Thats looking great.

You seem to be making good progress with the scenery?

Any chance of another overview pic, please? Just to see how it's all coming together

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Overview picture... sure, I will try to fix that, just have to clear the rest of the track of all the mess that building brings....

/Stefan
 
#24 ·
Oups&#8230; two months since my last post&#8230;. I knew scenery was going to take time but not this long time&#8230; What happened?

Well, to make long story short. In all my efforts to try out different elevations and layouts for my track I think I was a bit to hard on my track&#8230; After having working a lot with the scenery and wanting to do some racing, I realised that I had sever powering issues with my track. E.g. if I stopped a car in the steep uphill, I sometimes did not manage to get the car going again. Also, going around the track in a steady phase, i.e. holding the trigger in the same position, I clearly noticed dips in the engine behaviour. As you can understand, this made me quite tired since I did some thorough testing of the track and performance before putting it together and staring seriously on scenery.

Ok, what to do??? Home made "booster cables" here we come! First attempt was to copy and past the design of the Scalextrics booster cables. I never managed to get these to work out fine, they came loos all the time and did not really fit my plans for the wiring. So I decided to solder the cables directly to the track instead.

Since I did not want to regret doing a pore job later on, I think I over did it a bit instead when it comes to connection points on the track. But hey, better to be safe than sorrow&#8230; Including the feeding points by the powerbase I did 9 connection points per track in the elevate area. The cables where then connected beneath the track in an area that will be accessible but not shown.

OK, let's post some pictures to show how it was done and how it looks:
To be able to solder the cables to the track you have to bend the clips of the track a bit:


It's allways good to have a third "hand" helping with holding stuf when doing the soldering.


Calbes soldered and taped to the track piece:


Holes are made in advance where the wires were soldered to the track.


Replace the track piece with cables.


Cables coming down underneath the track


Cables connected together


The question that all you guys, that have read this far at least, ask yourself is then: Did it work?

Are you kidding me??? It was super!!! Now the cars run smoothly around the track and you have full power wherever you want! I'm so satisfied! I now have a racable track again!

Worst thing though is now I do not have any excuses for not getting on with the rest of the scenery&#8230; Have to make sure it does not take two months until the next update&#8230;
So back to work again...

&#8230;but first I have to do some racing again... vrooooom!

Regards
Stefan
 
#25 ·
Hey guys! Time for a quick post on scenery progress. More pictures than talk this time&#8230;

At last I'm getting somewhere on stuff on the top of the table&#8230; not only wires&#8230; Bigger pictures, and others, of the latest build phase are available on pages 8 to 10 on my photo gallery. You have to excuse the colors and quality of the pictures this time. I usually try to take all the pictures during daytime to get good lighting but we have been away and occupied all weekends lately so I have had to shot them at night. Which have resulted in not the best colors&#8230; But nevermind, this is after all just a work-in-progress post... When the track is finished, I'll put some more energy in photographing the track.

OK, what is new then? In short I can say that everything that is to the right of the track where the cars are in this picture is new. And a lot of details on other parts.


Yet another overview. On this picture, the hills to the right and the rock walls to the left are new.


Also, I have made some bushes and trees from white moss that I sprayed green. These are placed on small sticks, length depending on if it was trees or bushes I wanted to make.


Some more fences a la Bastumannen have been built. Slowly public and press are taking up interest for the racing around the track and finding their favorite places.


Some more pictures:








There are also some more things that have happened but lets save them for another post..

/Stefan
 
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