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TRACK 1 Lost Coast Raceway
When I got back into slots in 2005 after a 40 some odd year hiatus, I bought a Carrera set. It took me all of 20 minutes for me to decide that plastic and magnets weren't my thing. I immediately began building my first wood track since 1965. Here was the start.


The track was self contained with onboard 12v battery power. She was mounted on caster wheels so I could move her around the shop. It was 41 FT, 4 inch lane spacing 2 laner. I thought that I wanted to race 1/24 cars like I did in the old days.



But I soon came to the conclusion that 1/32 was pretty cool so I rerouted her to three lanes.



I got the oval itch so I added on to the outside. The new substructure was cantilevered off of the original framework because the track was still a roller. Note that she had a decent amount of banking at the big end.



Once all of the substructure was built up the whole track got an overlay of 1/4" Melamine board glued over the racing surface before being rerouted. I fixed some little boogers left over from the first rerouting when the original track went from two to three lanes. She was entering into her third incarnation.





She had a independent 3 lane oval and a three lane road tracks with the two tracks sharing one lane via AC2car style diverter to shunt the car in the shared slot to whichever track was in use.

And it Became Lost Coast Raceway

By this time the track had a small solar panel to keep the battery topped off. A computer timing system was built in so that she could still roll about. She was truly a self contained race center.

But over time all good things must pass and she was scrapped.


Stay tuned. Next up comes the Travelin' Big D

What a great track, I remember that :)

Thanks Harry, I miss that track. We spent a huge number of hours on her banging fenders. Even though I hadn't thought of building a truly mobile track yet, this one could very easily have been loaded onto my flat bed trailer for transport. My current Travelin' Big D oval is a direct ancestor to this track.

AC2Car

Before I move on to the Travelin' Big D, let me first show you my experimental diversion with AC2car since it happened at the same time as Lost Coast Raceway.I was intrigued by lane changing and having cars being able to occupy the same space. I looked at digital but saw it as spendy, not standardized, and when it got down to it, I loved my board tracks. AC2car came to my attention because: 1) it is based around wood. 2) with a diode installed, any brand car could be run on it. 3) it was just another kind of analoge track so I could wrap my baby boomer brain around it. I didn't care for the bushels full of parallel slots required with all of the cross overs and dead spots associated with dead spots with orthodox AC2car so I decided to keep this one a simple 2 lane, 2 car only track. I wanted to try an oval which meant the track would have to be fairly fast to be realistic. There would be no hair pins where the cars slow enough to make the hard turn ins to corners that make an AC2car guide able to get across all of those rows of slots without hanging up. 2 lanes would allow simple exits and mergers. I came up with a slot arrangement that looks like this.


There were four individual lane changer actuators (LCA's) on this little 3X6 ft track. The LCA's were set up so that under default the cars would follow the preferred line colored in red. To make a pass, a challenger would have to toggle their lane changer to enter one of the blue lines.

To actuate the LCA's, each driver had a control box containing two double throw, single pole momentary switches. Each switch operated one LCA and the switches were laid out in the same geographical order as the LCA's in the track. To follow the red line, the driver had to do absolutely nothing. It was only when he wanted to make a pass that the switches came into the equation.

Here are some random pics of the construction.





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I still have this track stored in the back corner of my slot attic. It was a fun experiment. The track worked very well but it was way too small for all of the action that was going on. It worked great for playing by myself because I could set up a ghost car with a rubber band on a controller. The ghost followed the red line and I had to weave in an out of to make passes via the blue lines. The system could be simplified by eliminating all of the toggle switches. since the only time that you need to toggle is during a pass and in that case the other car is right in front of you, you could have all four of the LCA's fire simultaneously by one switch without accidentally diverting the other car since it isn't near the other LCA's anyway. I over thunk myself on that one which is something that I am prone to do sometimes.

I came up with another design that would allow 4 cars without cross overs but I don't know if I will ever get around to it. It works in exactly the same way as the two lane track. I just added another outer pair of lines. It would still have the same unequal length issue as a conventional oval. But that could be solved with simple lane rotation of between heats.


I may do a wood digital hybrid too some day. Carrera chips are abundant enough now that I could pick them up and install them in almost any car nearly as easy as installing a diode.

Ya Jeremy. You add a circuit at a time and it doesn't seem like much until you stand back and look at a wider view LOL. There are two things going on. 1) the standard wiring that makes the cars go round n' round and the wiring running the LCA's. As I mentioned, the LCA wiring didn't need to be so complicated when I figured out that one switch for each driver running all the LCA's would' been goodn'uff.

Mike - holy cow was that a history trip. I'd completely forgotten about your bullring. What an amazing amount of experimenting you've done!

Ya Dave, That track is the inspiration for the rather long PM that I sent you awhile back. That one, which would have been a road track, would have allowed 4 cars but all four cars would run the center line in two side by side slots. The passing would have been done on the right or left of the center line depending on which half of the AC wave that you are running on.I may get around to that track some day, the track that I built this year was going to be it but I changed my mind at the last minute and made her a portable 3 lane analogue track.