Circuit de l'Albion

[Nor Cal Mike]

I made a little start towards conversion of my shop attic track, Circuit de l'Albion. I am stapling card stock over the existing slot car track to cover the slots etc. The wire will be glued on top of that and a new narrower road bed will be built up either with more card stock, the plaster method recommended by Wes or a combination of the two.


The esses come down from Sand Dune Hill on the left side of the track.


This gradual bend over a hump then down through the underpass was a challenge with slot cars. It will be interesting to see how the magsteer cars cope with it.


From the other direction.

[Double Naught]

Your track looks great Mike. Good luck with the resurfacing, I'm looking forward to the results. Hmm just thought, could you use staples for the wire when you are using cardboard?

Paul

[Joel, LeNoir]

Looking good. You are most defiantly ahead of me.

[Nor Cal Mike]

Hmm just thought, could you use staples for the wire when you are using cardboard?

Paul

I thought of that but I am afraid that the staples would mess with the magsteer tiller of the car as it passes pver. For sure, the staples will be handy for holding the wire down until the glue sets. Those staples would be pulled after the glue sets up.

[Nor Cal Mike]

Hmm just thought, could you use staples for the wire when you are using cardboard?

Paul

Good morning all and Happy New Year. Paul, I just reread this comment and realized that I had misread it the first time around. It sunk in this morning as I had thought of the same thing yesterday as I was stabling cardboard down, laying out lines and gluing wire. You are probably quite right that if you used the proper sized of staples that they might indeed be able to substitute for wire. The JT-21 staples that I am using appear pretty close. As it is, I stapled along THE lines about every 2.5cm or so to assure that the paper is well attached under the wire. I don't want any lifting of the surface going on as mag tiller passes over and I didn't use adhesive to attach the paper because I don't wish to destroy the fully functional slot car track that still lays below should I decide to go back to slot racing there. Hence all of the staple. I decided to begin at the top of my corkscrew leading down from Sand Dune Hill as my first section because it has the easiest access and it also has several line changes in it to create a best line as the car travels down the hill. I decided to complete tis section and do some actual race testing with a car to see if my stapled card stock road bed will work. I picked up a gallon of latex based sheetrock taping compound to build up the road surface to the top of the wires. I think it ought to be about as good as the plaster Wes recommends but may be a tad bit more flexible. Here is a picture.

I actually made a little more progress after this shot was taken. I hope to finish this downhill section today so that the glue can well set enough for me to lay the sheetrock mud in the near future.
Mike

[Double Naught]

That looks excellent Mike. I'm curious to see if the staples would work. It just dawned on me that the tracks might need to be designed to run in one direction only. Or could you make it work in both?

Good luck,

Paul

[Keld]

It just dawned on me that the tracks might need to be designed to run in one direction only. Or could you make it work in both?

The track above will only be working in one direction, going from the bottom to the top of the picture.

If you try going from the top and down all cars are going to the left lane in the first right corner
and ind the 2. corner turning left all cars will change lane no matter what you are trying on the controller.

If you try to change lane in a corner you has to go very very slow to get to the inside lane, its almost impossible.
on my last video from my track, the car spin at the end and going the wrong way around, and going to the pit lane.

So if you want a track to be drive able in both directions you has to use you brain a lot when planning the lane change.

[Nor Cal Mike]

Now it is up to us to invent some sort of little rectangular plug that fits into corresponding holes in the track at diverging and converging points in the line. The plug would have a diverging plate on one side and an merge wire on the other side. Just pull the plug and flip it over to reverse directions in the track.

It;s pretty cold here in Nor Cal, probably in the upper 20's F. I know that is nothing to most of you reading this but it is cold for meand it is too cold for the glue to set efficiently as well. I went out to the track attic (can't call it the slot attic any more) in my shop and turned on a heater. Meanwhile I'll have another cup of coffee and type this post. When it is warm enough to start laying glue, I will hopefully lay some more wire into the corkscrew section. I have an idea about laying a wire around the edge of that outside turn with no guard rail. If the car runs off there it will go down into the valley scenery on the right. It used to be more of a gully there but I added the cardboard as "fill: to be more appropriate for these mag cars. If "fill" suits my purpose as I anticipate, I will blend the edges in add some green paint "grass" and a few trees and call her landscaped. Back to the story. The added wire will be about 5-6 cm in from the edge. My idea is that wire will serve as a magnetic catch fence that prevent a car from going over the edge where it would have to be retrieved since it is doubtful that the hilly terrain will allow it to be driven back. The wire round the edge would converge to the closest line somewhere down the hill or it will just end in an appropriate place for the car to manually be steered back to the track. I just figure that it would allow a driver to be able to steer back to the course which would prevent disruption in the racing. I'll send a picture later when it is done.

Mike

[Nor Cal Mike]

Today I finished the rest of the prep work and am ready to lay down some sheetrock topping mud to build up the surface. I will do that tomorrow after I am sure all of the glue has cured.


I marked the path of the wires for clarity.The red line is the preferred line that the driver can follow by steering down through the cork screw. The heavy black lines are the default lines. There is a green line on the far right of the roadway. I placed it there as a magnetic catch fence that will hopefully catch a car that is destined to careen over the side of the hill. It eventually leads back to the default line giving the car a path to follow back onto the roadway. The wire also will double as a screed rail that I can run the taping paddle along to form a flat road surface. The roadway will be painted inward making a smaller road visually so anyone driving out here will be in the boonies so to speak. There is a second magnetic catch rail further down that appears to as the fat black in the photo. It is also green but I switched to PL400 construction adhesive to glue that one as a trial. The green marker shows up as blackish green over the brown colored adhesive.


Here is the bottom of the hill looking up. Again the red line is the preferred line the black lines are are the default and the fat greenish black line is my magnetic cat fence which again floes back to the nearest racing line. It doesn't show too well but I added a second layer of card stock along the outside which serves as a curb that I can screed to. I don't like how it turned out. I used carpenters glue that I had laying around. It didn't hold the paper down as tightly as I would hope. I didn't want to use wire because I don't want a magnetic fence here since a car can bounce of the rail and steer back to the track. If I use card stock curb again I will use contact adhesive.
Mike

[Nor Cal Mike]

I was hoping to edit in something in that I forgot but for some reason this web page doesn't allow edits. What I wanted to say was that the PL400 worked well for the magnetic catch wire that I used it on. It loses its tack faster so you have to have everything that you are gluing lined up and ready to go. It's quite a bit cheaper than the other glue that I am using so there is a financial incentive to using it.
Mike