With the preamble out of the way I needed to make a full wish list for the new layout... something that I really hadn't done before.
Preparing the loft as well as buying another pile of Scalextric stuff is no small amount of money... I was going to need to sell some bits off to finance the project... So making sure I had covered all the bases was important... And to be honest it was something nice I could do sitting on the sofa over the Christmas holidays... Dreaming of a scenic spectacular!
Ok so what was is the wish list for the new layout...
1) It has to be BIG... If I am going to all the hassle of boarding, insulating the loft, fitting a new bigger loft hatch and a loft ladder the track would need to be worth all the effort. My current layouts are 45ft and 25ft so something in excess of 70ft would be possible as I also had a pile of "track" which I had bought cheep on ebay... So with the ENSCA track at about 80ft it would be somewhere of that order... a real world track 1 Kilometre in length would scale to 31.25M in 1/32nd scale or a tad over 104ft! So that would be my target.
2) I like a big fast track for edge of the seat racing which is great for tuning "club" cars and for the less experienced racers. Using the bigger R3 & R4 curves means the track will be quick and cause less de-slots and has the big advantage of allowing pace cars to run quick for more fun when solo racing. On the other hand a more technical race circuit is more fun when racing solo and trying to beat your best times... tricky curves including R1's make for more challenge but ruin the pace cars... So a circuit with a "split" which would allow you to choose the all fast or fast and slow bits together for a longer lap would give the best of both worlds.
3) Any split in the circuit would have to be"automatic" so cars would not have to remember to change lanes to follow the correct line... Modifying pit lane pieces to allow this to happen is possible so more on that as the build goes on. Travelling in the Forward direction a choice between tracks should be possible for digital cars... In Analogue mode going in the forward direction I want the cars to automatically take the first circuit... Running In the reverse direction in analogue mode I want the cars to always use the long circuit and this has the added advantage as the analogue cars will not be accidently redirected by drifting flippers and offer a different driving experience to the Forward Digital direction.
4) The circuit should be as even as possible in terms of lane length. The fast circuit using mainly R3/R4's will be easy to achieve as long as a figure 8 approach is used but no more than one bridge should be included in the design of that part of the circuit. The more twisty section should also keep a balance of similar curves R2's and R1's in each direction to keep the lanes balanced in length as Inner lane lengths are much sorter on R1 curves to ensure that both the speed and the distance are even for analogue racing when lane changing is not possible. All bridges must be at least 10cm tall to allow for "Fly Trucks" etc so far I have not come across any car taller than this from any manufacturer.
5) The circuit has to have a pit lane with my pit pro in it, using the new APB and SSDC V5 to control it to give full refuelling control. The pit lane should be mainly a straight line so I can have a line of pit buildings. The circuit would have to be designed with the Powerbase followed by the Pit lane Followed by the track junction to allow the use of the "Anti pit" PR function to prevent pace cars using the pit lane or taking the wrong circuit for a few seconds at the start of each lap. I could use the PO anti pit function to stop cars pitting at the end of the lap but then I would have to remember to reset the time when I switched the part of the track to be used as the Fast track would be shorter in total tome to the longer full track.
6) The track design would be built on baseboards no wider than three feet and because of the position of the "rafters" in the loft would mean building a U shaped layout with a centre well, this also has the advantage when solo racing of easily being able to reach all parts of the circuit. The layout height would be 2ft-2ft6 from the ground so racing can be done from a seated position... Preferably with wheelie office chairs to get around to bring out the kid in me. I would prefer to have an entrance that is unobstructed to avoid a duck-under or if I have to resort to a circle it must have a "removable" or lift up section for easy access preferably with only one track on it to minimise connection problems.
7) I would like to avoid the "spaghetti" problem associated with long tracks by putting the fast track on one level and the longer twisty track at a lower level so it is easy to see which track you need to follow with your eye. There needs to be a lane change opportunity at least every 15 feet or so with the bulk of opportunities using straight lane changers at either the start of a straight to help get past pace cars or at the end of straights in braking sections to help avoid misses or de-slots on lane changers.
8) The track design should mainly use the parts I already have and use track borders on the outside of all curves and inner sides on twisty sections. All tracks will need to be "buried" so there is no step between the scenery and the track. The layout will be fully scenic but the narrow boards and two levels will mean minimal space scenery solutions will be a must. No doubt I will have to spend quite a bit of cash on borders but they are easy to re-sell later if I decide to try something else so I don't actually think of them as being expensive
9) The centre well needs to be big enough to get 4 racers in... so with a minimum space required for a racer set at 2ftx2ft therefore the minimum centre well size is 4ft x 4ft and preferably twice that to allow people to move around easily. The useful space in the loft is 16ft x 12ft so in theory a centre well of 10ft x 6ft should be possible but any wider sections that are inserted into the design, no part of the track should be more than 3ft from any access side and all places should be reachable from the centre not the outside edge. No part of the centre well should be less than 4 ft at any point.
10) Hardest of all is that the extra bits of track required cost no more than £100 or so (her in doors does have a say) any extra spent over this would have to be recouped by selling other bits of Scalextric to pay for it... The cost of preparing the loft, fitting a bigger loft hatch, a ladder etc would also have to be covered by selling off other stuff on ebay to keep the powers at be happy.
I know that is quite some wish list but with some time on my hands due to an ongoing health issue I have had plenty of opportunity to play with the options of what I can do. Having been a stalwart of the UR3 camp of track planners, issues with track pieces jumping around to wrong places was making using it a bit of a pain... sure it is loads better than the free scaley offering... but a change to Trackpower made planning this epic layout a lot easier... at 17 Euros its pretty cheap and apart from a few quirks in operation I would say it is better to use and worth the small investment.
So this is where I am at the moment...
![]()
The black lines where the "A" frames run and the thick red lines show the basic floor space without having to weave between the rafters... Obviously a lot of tweaking may be required once I get up in the loft, but the layout is compressible/expandable as there are points in the circuit on the north south and east west axis where all track run in the same direction which should make adjusting the design to fit a little bit easier...
And the stats... Designed to fit a space 15'6 x 12ft...
Fast Circuit
Lane 1: 51ft 7in
Lane 2: 51ft 6in
Yep thats a 1inch difference in 600 inches... now thats what I call even racing
Full Circuit
Lane 1: 104ft 7in
Lane 2: 105ft 1in
Yep thats a 4inch difference in 1200 inches... can't argue with that
So with that wish list a track design would be needed and the loft would need converting and of course how to power this new layout would be a big issue... so before we get to the exiting stuff... The next post will cover power choices for those interested in how I made my choices.
Preparing the loft as well as buying another pile of Scalextric stuff is no small amount of money... I was going to need to sell some bits off to finance the project... So making sure I had covered all the bases was important... And to be honest it was something nice I could do sitting on the sofa over the Christmas holidays... Dreaming of a scenic spectacular!
Ok so what was is the wish list for the new layout...
1) It has to be BIG... If I am going to all the hassle of boarding, insulating the loft, fitting a new bigger loft hatch and a loft ladder the track would need to be worth all the effort. My current layouts are 45ft and 25ft so something in excess of 70ft would be possible as I also had a pile of "track" which I had bought cheep on ebay... So with the ENSCA track at about 80ft it would be somewhere of that order... a real world track 1 Kilometre in length would scale to 31.25M in 1/32nd scale or a tad over 104ft! So that would be my target.
2) I like a big fast track for edge of the seat racing which is great for tuning "club" cars and for the less experienced racers. Using the bigger R3 & R4 curves means the track will be quick and cause less de-slots and has the big advantage of allowing pace cars to run quick for more fun when solo racing. On the other hand a more technical race circuit is more fun when racing solo and trying to beat your best times... tricky curves including R1's make for more challenge but ruin the pace cars... So a circuit with a "split" which would allow you to choose the all fast or fast and slow bits together for a longer lap would give the best of both worlds.
3) Any split in the circuit would have to be"automatic" so cars would not have to remember to change lanes to follow the correct line... Modifying pit lane pieces to allow this to happen is possible so more on that as the build goes on. Travelling in the Forward direction a choice between tracks should be possible for digital cars... In Analogue mode going in the forward direction I want the cars to automatically take the first circuit... Running In the reverse direction in analogue mode I want the cars to always use the long circuit and this has the added advantage as the analogue cars will not be accidently redirected by drifting flippers and offer a different driving experience to the Forward Digital direction.
4) The circuit should be as even as possible in terms of lane length. The fast circuit using mainly R3/R4's will be easy to achieve as long as a figure 8 approach is used but no more than one bridge should be included in the design of that part of the circuit. The more twisty section should also keep a balance of similar curves R2's and R1's in each direction to keep the lanes balanced in length as Inner lane lengths are much sorter on R1 curves to ensure that both the speed and the distance are even for analogue racing when lane changing is not possible. All bridges must be at least 10cm tall to allow for "Fly Trucks" etc so far I have not come across any car taller than this from any manufacturer.
5) The circuit has to have a pit lane with my pit pro in it, using the new APB and SSDC V5 to control it to give full refuelling control. The pit lane should be mainly a straight line so I can have a line of pit buildings. The circuit would have to be designed with the Powerbase followed by the Pit lane Followed by the track junction to allow the use of the "Anti pit" PR function to prevent pace cars using the pit lane or taking the wrong circuit for a few seconds at the start of each lap. I could use the PO anti pit function to stop cars pitting at the end of the lap but then I would have to remember to reset the time when I switched the part of the track to be used as the Fast track would be shorter in total tome to the longer full track.
6) The track design would be built on baseboards no wider than three feet and because of the position of the "rafters" in the loft would mean building a U shaped layout with a centre well, this also has the advantage when solo racing of easily being able to reach all parts of the circuit. The layout height would be 2ft-2ft6 from the ground so racing can be done from a seated position... Preferably with wheelie office chairs to get around to bring out the kid in me. I would prefer to have an entrance that is unobstructed to avoid a duck-under or if I have to resort to a circle it must have a "removable" or lift up section for easy access preferably with only one track on it to minimise connection problems.
7) I would like to avoid the "spaghetti" problem associated with long tracks by putting the fast track on one level and the longer twisty track at a lower level so it is easy to see which track you need to follow with your eye. There needs to be a lane change opportunity at least every 15 feet or so with the bulk of opportunities using straight lane changers at either the start of a straight to help get past pace cars or at the end of straights in braking sections to help avoid misses or de-slots on lane changers.
8) The track design should mainly use the parts I already have and use track borders on the outside of all curves and inner sides on twisty sections. All tracks will need to be "buried" so there is no step between the scenery and the track. The layout will be fully scenic but the narrow boards and two levels will mean minimal space scenery solutions will be a must. No doubt I will have to spend quite a bit of cash on borders but they are easy to re-sell later if I decide to try something else so I don't actually think of them as being expensive
9) The centre well needs to be big enough to get 4 racers in... so with a minimum space required for a racer set at 2ftx2ft therefore the minimum centre well size is 4ft x 4ft and preferably twice that to allow people to move around easily. The useful space in the loft is 16ft x 12ft so in theory a centre well of 10ft x 6ft should be possible but any wider sections that are inserted into the design, no part of the track should be more than 3ft from any access side and all places should be reachable from the centre not the outside edge. No part of the centre well should be less than 4 ft at any point.
10) Hardest of all is that the extra bits of track required cost no more than £100 or so (her in doors does have a say) any extra spent over this would have to be recouped by selling other bits of Scalextric to pay for it... The cost of preparing the loft, fitting a bigger loft hatch, a ladder etc would also have to be covered by selling off other stuff on ebay to keep the powers at be happy.
I know that is quite some wish list but with some time on my hands due to an ongoing health issue I have had plenty of opportunity to play with the options of what I can do. Having been a stalwart of the UR3 camp of track planners, issues with track pieces jumping around to wrong places was making using it a bit of a pain... sure it is loads better than the free scaley offering... but a change to Trackpower made planning this epic layout a lot easier... at 17 Euros its pretty cheap and apart from a few quirks in operation I would say it is better to use and worth the small investment.
So this is where I am at the moment...
The black lines where the "A" frames run and the thick red lines show the basic floor space without having to weave between the rafters... Obviously a lot of tweaking may be required once I get up in the loft, but the layout is compressible/expandable as there are points in the circuit on the north south and east west axis where all track run in the same direction which should make adjusting the design to fit a little bit easier...
And the stats... Designed to fit a space 15'6 x 12ft...
Fast Circuit
Lane 1: 51ft 7in
Lane 2: 51ft 6in
Yep thats a 1inch difference in 600 inches... now thats what I call even racing
Full Circuit
Lane 1: 104ft 7in
Lane 2: 105ft 1in
Yep thats a 4inch difference in 1200 inches... can't argue with that
So with that wish list a track design would be needed and the loft would need converting and of course how to power this new layout would be a big issue... so before we get to the exiting stuff... The next post will cover power choices for those interested in how I made my choices.
