[Martin Ball]

Stop me if you have heard this one before.

Have been lurking for a while and finally plucked up the courage to post something. A few years ago I was asked to do something for the local fete (hence the name), which obviously turned into a scalextric track. Then I found slotforum and read loads about what other folks have done. This lead to going digital and buying the Advance Power Base which has worked like a charm.

So now have enough track, power, cars, bits of wood and buildings to finally build something worthy of calling itself a track. I thought it would be neat to share this with like minded people, but I already know I have a bunch of questions that I need help with which is the main reason for starting this.

I'm off to read the posting pictures thread, will post a picture when I've figured it out.

Martin

 

[MrFlippant]

Excellent! I keep meaning to do something similar, so I love it when there are new people showing how they did it.
The two that I like best are the one by Colsy and the more recent one by MrModifier.
I look forward to seeing what you do.

 

[Martin Ball]

Hi Greg

Lots of inspiration on this forum and those 2 were in my reading list along with Rainier Raceways. Also on behalf of all the newbies, thanks for the C7042 Instructional Videos, much better than the manual.

Martin

 

[Martin Ball]

A bit of history

Like many before I was asked to do something for the village fete, wasn't thrilled by having to staff the welly wanging stall and offered a scalextric track as an alternative. If you are thinking of doing this a search for "fete" or "fair" on this forum will be productive, Richardtheforth's Party Track covers it nicely. The idea is simple, the public give you money to race around (or mainly crash) on your track and the fastest lap, most laps or race winner gets a prize.

So I built a baseboard, painted it green, dusted off my vintage scalextric track, bought a lap counter off ebay and came up with this:-

The Fete organisers were great and organised the prizes (on the table in the background). All the racers, young and old, had a good time and Whiteparish Grand Prix was born.

Year 1 was hard work. Vintage scalextric is very well... vintage, cars broke down, controllers melted (I have childhood memories of this smell) , young racers leant on the track and one put their hand through the scenery. Year 2, I was better prepared with spare power, controllers, cars and we collected twice as much money as a result.

The problem is there is a limited to the number of racers when you can only have 2 cars on the track. Now if only there was a way to race 6 cars on 2 tracks? I think you can guess where this is going.

Martin

 

[GregK]

You could probably pick up a spare Pb-Pro for a lot less than the latest version, the C7042. It will get expensive though adding all the digital track bits.

Have you thought of just having four lanes of analogue. I am not very keen on using digital for charity events because the cars can get wrecked big time.

 

[distantkiwi]

I have completed 1 event, and I was shattered by the end of it. Though I did think I could get away without a perimeter to stop the flying cars, oh how naive of me. I felt like a wicket keeper with 6 bowlers bowling at the same time. After 1.5 hours there was finally enough of a break in usage where I could put up the fence I had. I'm currently taking pictures of my setup then you can add another to the list of examples.

Oh and mine is digital and I can recommend it with super resistant cars and a fence!

 

[ss67]

Hi,

I also have a portable digital track I use for events see here

It is exhausting work.

You definitely need resistant cars.

Turn down the power.

Use barriers/fences.

Good luck!

 

[GregK]

This track started life as digital ................. at every event I getting two or three cars wrecked. At one point I put out an appeal on the Forum for spare bodies for Audi TTs. Bigbird came to the rescue ....

View attachment 9813
The Spiral of Doom - thanks J May for the inspiration!

As the cars are now run as analogue, the damage has only been a few scratches.

 

[MrFlippant]

Did you run it as digital with more than one car? I thought it was always a one-car time challenge.

 

[Martin Ball]

A bit more history.

Thanks for the comments. This is one of problems of posting historical progress, like distantkiwi and Simon I went down the digital route even though as Greg points out I'm sure analogue is more robust and easier to fix in the long run.

So for Year 3 at the Fete (June 2011 so this is the last historical post) we had a brand new Advanced Power Base as a result of finding slot forum and reading getting started with SSD, then waiting 4 months for the shipments to reach the UK. Unfortunately there isn't a photo of the day, but the track plan looked like this:-

The format changed a little and became 4 cars on 2 tracks, super resistant cars with removed magnets to slow them down and make them slide, £1 per person for 2 minute races, winner was first person across the line with most laps. Racers quickly figured out that staying on the track was the way to win and consequently the marshalling was a lot easier. A grand final was held at the end of the day to decide prizes as there were 3 racers in the adult category with the same number of laps (13).

3 hours of racing, mainly 2 and 3 car races as we rolled from race to race without a break. Great fun but now starting to plan how to improve for this year.

Martin

 

[Martin Ball]

Some thoughts on what I'm trying to do.

It appears customary to give some idea of the type of track you are building. I doubt I'll stick to this but here goes.

1. Where it will live - Along one wall of the garage, folding up out of the way
2. Portable - Both the village fete (800 yards) and youth club (400 yards) have asked to use it so it need to be easy enough to transport in the back of the car for these short distances
3. Size - Start with 2 8x4 boards
4. Track - Mainly scalextric classic with digital bits added in as funds permit
5. Control - C7042 Advance Power Base (SSDC and Pit Pro at some point in the future)

In terms of look and feel these have all been an influence

• Monarch Street Circuit for look and feel
• Amman Valley Raceway for portability
• Rainier Raceways for track design in a similar space
• Colsey Mission Impossible for the sheer size

So with that said I had better get on with doing something and spend less time talking about it.

 

[Martin Ball]

Baseboards

I was lucky enough to have some baseboards made for me by my Dad and his mate who build model railway baseboards. Nothing out of the ordinary, softwood frames with 6mm ply tops. They look something like this.

There were two 2.4m by 1.2m boards and I had one sheet cut into 4 and the other cut into 3. This gives me 7 baseboards that can be fixed together in a variety of ways. This will allow a bit of flexibility if the location changes, but given the current space I'm looking at doing this.

 

[MrFlippant]

How do the boards get up off the ground? Will they each have legs, or be placed on top of other tables?

 

[Martin Ball]

Hi Greg

Away from home both the locations have tables. So I want to keep the baseboards legless for ease of transport and I have experimented with clamps to keep everything in place. I liked Mr Modifiers solution but that only works if you are using the same tables all the time.

At home the solution will involve storing against the garage wall, possibly hinged with drop down detachable legs. Much to ponder and ultimately I might have to bite the bullet and build some legs.

 

[MrFlippant]

I think it's worth considering.
Of the several school fetes I've done, tables kept getting hard to procure. The last one I ended up with mismatched table levels. The next one, I'll likely put the whole track up on the stage rather than on tables in front of the stage. In the future, I'm hoping to have the time/money to build something custom like some of the great examples on this site. Until then, I'm like you, relying on what's available at the venue, and therefore at the mercy of chance.

 

[Martin Ball]

A bit on fixing baseboards together.

Still avoiding the issue of legs at the moment, will cross that bridge later. As I need to fix 7 baseboards together I been looking at the various quick release catches on the forum and other methods like pattern makers dowels. Then I discovered a neat solution on the Monarch Street Circuit thread using a softwood border to double up as border and baseboard connection.

Liking both simple and flexible solutions, with a few bolts and wings nuts I've now got this:-

And 3 baseboards can be joined together like this:-

This is a nice balance between 7 individual baseboards which is a lot of baseboard joints and bolting it all together into something that would be too big to transport. To join the various sections together I went for an old model railway trick and split some hinges I had lying around, then you can use pins (or a nail in this case) as a simple quick relase fixing.

Next figure out how to fix track across the joints.

 

[sealevel]

To fix the track across the joints, you remove the "locking" tabs that .... lock the two tracks together.
What you end up with is tabs that align with the slots but do not "lock" so easy to remove.
Only do this once you are certain since have track that does not lock together can be a pain.

Cheers!

BTW the quick release latches are available on "that auction site" (link)

I used some inexpensive table leaf fasteners (link) but the bolt and wing nut will be stronger. See my thread below to see pics of my tables suspended.

Cheers!

 

[Martin Ball]

Sealevel

Thanks, your Modular Digital Layout was part of my research. I don't have the roof space available as it is used by the Picture Framing half of the garage for storage otherwise I would have considered something hoisted to the rafters. I may upgrade to quick release catches if the split hinges are too fiddly, I'll see how it goes.

Experimenting with both classic and sport track on the joins. Will post some photos when I have one working.

 

[Martin Ball]

Track design is evolving slowly. Whilst I collect together enough track to fill the 7 baseboards, I've come up with this to use 6 of them. I can then extend to the right when time and track allow so the final two corners are just a means to get back to the start line at the moment.

I've tried to make each corner different mixing r3, r2 and r1. In a perfect world it would be nice to have more r3s, a longer pit lane and more lane changers but this will have to do for now.

 

[sealevel]

So it looks like 4.4m x 1.2m, correct? Or in my measure... 14'3" x 4'.

I like the layout, and if you want, bend the loop on the left so the board and loop are vertical instead of horizontal and I would say you have an expandable 4' x 13' layout.

Cheers!