Who *NEVER* Left the Hobby Since Childhood?

[pgtr]

I suspect for most of us - we enjoyed 1/32 slots (or other scales) as kids. Then other things came along, the service, education, marriage, family, career, ... the 'childhood toys' were discarded or forgotten... And after an extended period of time in later adulthood we either discovered 1/32 slots for the first time or re-discovered a forgotten enjoyment of slots. Point is - there's usually a very big gap in there between then and now.

Well this one is *NOT* for you.

I'm curious if there is anybody on the forum who *NEVER LEFT* 1/32 slots as a kid and have generally maintained some degree of involvement in slots since childhood thru to present day adulthood.

Anybody out there?

[waaytoomuchintothis]

Given the parameters you mention, I'm not sure. I kept my 1/32nd and HO, plus a few 1/24th, stuff in careful storage, but there was no one to participate with in the interim, between 1973 and 2003. There was no time from 1962 to the present during which I did not own my slot cars, does that meet requirements?

[gsmea]

Same here, as a kid me and my brother was carpet racers. Until the late 80's where we as a family moved quite a lot. Everything was in storage until about 3 years ago where we took it out dusted it of and started racing again. 132 is all we had and never gave it up.

Gavin

[pastor bubba]

I am the same way. I have all of my ho cars from when I was a kid but were packed away for 15 or so years.

[chris]

I started as a 12 year old in 1965 and have always been involved in the hobby in some form. When the guys I raced with right through school by the mid 70's started other interests, getting married , stuff like that I moved onto wing cars.
I got married when I was 30 (and she was only 23 :oops: ), moved from Sydney to Canberra and although my wife came from a big family none of them had a hobby but she has always been supportive of mine even back in the 1980's I'd set the Scalextric track up on the lounge room floor for a week at a time. We would chat away as she watched tv and I sat on the floor racing and tinkering.
Since the rebirth of the hobby in the late 80's I have raced every Friday night our season runs (well not every Friday, birthdays, anniversary, graduations tend to pop up :dance: ) and have made some lifelong friends.
Sorry for the ramble,
Chris.

[Racie35]

I changed scales but never really left the hobby. I am back at mainly 1/32 though. I think when the crash came and tracks all across the country closed a lot of people gave up though. Home sets kept me and my brother involved.

[RichD]

I guess that my experience is similar to the people that have already posted. I started out with HO Aurora vibrator cars in 1961 and started doing AC Gilbert "O" gauge cars in 1963. When 1/24th commercial raceways opened up in my area in 1965 I raced on those. I was in the Army in 1968-1970, I managed to run a little in Vietnam, but by the time I got home most of the commercial tracks had closed. I only ran for a few months before it got too difficult to get to the last remaining track that I knew of. I did continue running HO cars at a friends place for several years. Eventually my friend moved and the track went into storage. My parents sold their house and the AC Gilbert track went to the dump. I did keep the rest of my slot racing stuff.
From my point of view I never left the hobby, it left me. In those days before the Internet if you were not hooked up with someone that was still racing there was no way of knowing what was going on. In 1990 a 1/24th commercial raceway opened in my area, I was back in the hobby for sure. The old HO track got set up in my basement at that time as well. After six years the local commerecial raceway had closed. By that time I had purchased a HO MaxTrax for my house and started racing with a regional HO club. Former racers from the 1/24th raceway started Shoreline Model Raceways to run 1/32nd cars on three tracks. Thanks to the Internet I became aware of that club and I have been racing with them ever since.

[Modlerbob]

I started with HO but graduated to 1/24th around 1965. From then til around 1973-74 I raced when I could find an open track. I kept most of my stuff and in the mid 1980s slot racing came back in central Florida and has sputtered on and off ever since then. I was introduced to 1/32 five years ago and decided to make the switch as my primary scale.

[DManley]

I did H.O. as a kid, never gave it up in High School and took a small layout to college. I tinkered with Magna Tractions and the like. I didn't have many people to race with, but I always had a short layout and a couple of cars ready to go. I still race H.O., but I got into 1/32 back in the '90s or so. I wasn't a hotshot racer, but I never really packed my gear up for a long time either. It always got set back up shortly after a move. I either used a pair of card tables, or a later "Track On A Door" that got known as T.O.A.D. with the old '70s AFX track. The neat thing about T.O.A.D. was that I could stand it up and store it behind a bookshelf and nobody ever knew I still played with toy cars! (Although people often wondered why I had a huge bookshelf that sat about 6" out from the wall) So, for a bit over 40 years, I have almost always had H.O. slotcars nearby and ready to go.

[SpeedyNH]

agree with waayttomuch and RichD. I've always had slotcars, but there were a few odd times (since the 60's) when there wasn't any action to be had, so then it was usually stashed away (or left out) til I found somebody to race something with again.
speedy

[pgtr]

[dreinecke]

I changed scales, but kept all of my HO and pulled it out annually to play with it. Had a nice HO layout, saw 1/32 and was a goner.

[gonegonzo]

I started racing in 1962 and continued in one scale or another till present . I raced 1/24th until a track would shut down and then race HO in my basement with neighbors until another 1/24th track opened . Now I'm heavy into T-Jet racing and race on occasion commercial tracks with 1/24th .

Gonzo