Tony’s Scalextric Track (23rd June 2013)
Visited my newest friend, Tony. He’s a big fan of NSR Moslers which he races at the London Scalextric Club. He sold me one of his for just £10 so a good friend to have!
Old Layout
Today I visited his home and he had the track set up. It was basically an oval with an exaggerated chicane that crossed the main straight and then looped back to the original side. Imagine looking at a pair of spectacles head-on and the nose support is a lot like this chicane.
The chicane was positioned tight to one end of the oval, though. This created a rather boring 270° loop. It was wedged right up against a wardrobe so there was no border, giving the outside lane a big advantage as they could speed around against the barrier.
The bridge supports were a bit weird in that they didn’t permit any borders. As they were midway between the long corners of the chicane, the slightly sideways cars de-slotted almost every lap.
Assessment
The main straight was the maximum the room allowed and was a genuinely useful length. Especially for a home layout.
The double-apex turn at the kitchen end was like a mini version from the club and drove quite well, so that’s a keeper.
The corners were not that satisfying though so that’s the first thing I set about fixing.
New Layout
Inspired by a few key corners from the Wood Green layout at the club, we basically turned it into an asymmetric figure of 8 with a double-apex turn at one end and a standard radius 180° at the other.
The track crossed the main straight via an elongated S-bend. This featured a pair of 135° standard radius turns with a short straight in between, where it crossed the main straight.
We used literally every DVD in Tony’s possession to support this arrangement but it drove much better! We also had space for borders around every corner which was a huge improvement.
Finally we augmented the double-apex end with a quick right-left flick much like at the club. We used a pair of 45° standard curves to achieve this, followed by a short straight as that gave a really nice rhythmn for the speeds we were getting.
(The club circuit uses a much long arrangement for this turn. This allows all 6 lanes get the same left-right layout by starting with the inner pair of lanes, staggering the next pair after that and the next pair after that. The double-apex turn has 2 or 3 standard straight between the parts so it nearly drives like 2 separate corners. I don’t like its rythmn but it suits the higher entry speeds and is necessary with 6 lanes.)
Photos
(More to follow.)
2nd Visit (30th June 2013)
Went round again. We started the afternoon by watching the British Grand Prix whilst having lunch. I arrived just in time for the formation lap!
After a little while I had my laptop set up and plugged into their router through Ethernet. We were able to watch full-screen this way. We soon had the satellite speakers plugged in, too, making it a nice setup.
We got a lot more racing in as the track is already together. Lap times were under 4 seconds.
Having to marshal your own car makes crashing very expensive. The leader tended to wait for the chasing car but the chasing car didn’t have to wait for the leader! This kept the longer races close. We were wheel to wheel a lot of the time and there was no deliberate bashing.
Sunday Cycling
The weather was blazing hot but the ride to and from his house went smoothly.
The rear light rattled off a lady’s bicycle in front of me. I called out and stopped but it was on Camden Road – no chance of getting out to save it! The lady walked back to try and retrieve it but there was no way. It got squashed by a coach just before that traffic light sequence ended.