MID BC - new track build

[Cgyracer]

Quick update, the last two days I installed Armco Barriers made out of painted 14/2 electrical wire. For the wire ends I cut the copper wire inside and pinched/glued the ends of the insulation together. I went with a double Armco Barrier thus using two sets of wire.



Camber doing a inspection lap making sure the barriers are up to Team Pacific standards.

[Double Naught]

The track looks awesome Rob!
Paul

[BARC 1]

[Cgyracer]

Progress has been slower but it has been progress.......plus it doesn't help with me being at work right now on a National Holiday - Canada Day. But I have accomplished a lot in the 7 months since I started on November 23rd.

I noticed the plywood top around the track can fray with continued rubbing so I bought from Mcmaster Carr a hundred foot roll of U-Channel made of very flexible metal / plastic. The surface has a slight texture that is smooth. Works well and feels solid.
I also painted the outside of the plywood a dark semi-gloss grey. Yes that is dust you see from the sanding I had to do before painting.




Next step was finally sheeting the bottom of the framework. The framework looks really good but I was happy to start covering it up! I used thin sheets of 1/8" door skin. Light and cheap but looks good. I've hit my head a few times on the cantilevered table sections as they stick out quite a bit while I was moving up and down with sheets of wood and gathering fine nails!




All done for now. I need to sand the wood filler and paint the sheets a shade lighter grey. The gussets down below that the framework is bolted together with will be painted too.






I have a section of panel on the front side with large head screws so I can remove the panel for access.

[Xr4ti]

Quite elegant. Nice to see slots done right on here for something all of us long time racers can really appreciate.
Enjoy your dream!

[Radarek]

Rob is definitely setting up a very high standard in track building, but what you can expect from him? As his cars - only the best. Its a pleasure to watch this thread. Great job Rob

[Cgyracer]

Been slow getting at the track this summer, lucky I was able to do a lot of work earlier this year the first six months since I started. I was able to slowly get to a few of my ideas bouncing around my head before the thoughts got lost!

Kind of funny every time (and its not much!!) I show my wife what I have done in my man cave she comments the walls need to be painted nothing about the track!

Installed LED lights under the track. The track is cantilevered and I have have always wanted LED lights to give the track a "floating" effect.








I have a number of pieces of Scalextric barrier left over from my previous track. I never did care for the way the plastic barrier looked so I did a few simple modifications. Trimmed the bottom strip of plastic at ground level to give the barrier more definition then that same strip I trimmed into smaller pieces to glue onto the back side of the post. Barrier was painted flat grey and the new posts painted camouflage color.
Thinking back I should of converted the original shorter Scalextric posts (in between the long posts) into longer posts. Someday when I have time!







That's all I need for Armco Barrier I think! During some recent race sessions the barrier did the job and kept cars out of the dirt! One out of control car even "skateboarded" along the top of a stretch of barrier after the underpass......love it!!

I painted white lines for the roadway edges, pit area, and lap segments. Just like the last I track I had for a number of years I used BIC white-out pencils for the lines. Easy to apply, very thin, and no masking involved. The white sometimes does not stick as its applied if you are holding the pencil crooked but that gives the lines a really neat "used" appearance. Once the white-out is on it does not come off.




Start line / Pit in and Pit out lines are actually painted. Optical switches in the slots.


Segments....I like a even decimal (10's...100's) this way it is easy to add up the heats and no conversions afterwards is necessary. I felt ten segments is too large and more chances of ties.....One hundred segments was the way to go I felt,..... one other track here has the same 100's system and it works well. Twenty segments were marked with white lines and labelled 5, 10, 15......90, 95. In between the segments I painted dots for the individual five segments. Each segment on my track is 10.5" as it is a 87 foot track.
In this example you can see segment 80 and the little dots representing 79, 78, 77.....the dots don't seem to be an eyesore.


I wanted a tire wall for my sand trap on the tight decreasing radius corner that drops 6 inches in four feet. 210 tires and lots of glue later.....!






Track call lights.....my track is wired with individual track calls plus a master track call. In regular club racing during a crash the crashed racer depresses his station's track call button that signals a 5 second penalty where his lane stops receiving power for 5 seconds as his car is marshaled while the other cars keep running. Racing resumes after 5 seconds has elapsed. This seems to promote good racing plus all deslotted cars are reslotted equally an equal amount of time versus inconsistent marshaling.
Each lane has track call lights on top of the pit building in front of their driver station. Track call lights are the same color as the lane so its easy for the marshal to know what color lane the crash occurred in. The lights also aid when Drivers have a habit of forgetting their lane color when they crash!

Blue Lane...Blue track call lights


Yellow Lane...Yellow track call lights


Bales have been glued onto the track in various areas


There has been some racing sessions in between to make sure all is working well.

[Xr4ti]

Those track call lights are so totally trick, I've never seen anything like that before. Pure genius.
Under track lighting looks really good and does give it that 'floating' effect, very cool! 8-)
I guess all that's left for you to do is wear it out :D

[Cgyracer]

[Dogsbody]

Love the track! The ambulance on the outside of the corner? Talk about drumming up business! :)

[Cgyracer]

Busy weekend, worked on Saturday 5am till 4:30 PM then spent Sunday afternoon scratch building guard rail for my overpass out of strips of vinyl, gutter guard, and wire insulation. Tried to achieve a painted concrete / steel look for the rail.

Rob

[ken weir]

All this while four of your team mates were struggling to not come in last at this years Tourist Trophy event in Edmonton. You have done an incredible job on your MidBC layout!!! IT looks like Kelowna.

[TAMELESSTGR]

Love the large layout and attention to detail. How is the copper tape holding up to wear? Love the white-out application idea!

[Cgyracer]

Tape is doing very well. I expect the tape to last a lot longer than it did on my garage track which underwent major temperature changes....this caused the tape to expand in the heat. The bubbles in my tape would need to be pushed down if I wanted to run the track in the summer. Air conditioned environment has put an end to that major problem! Three power taps to the track is a big plus too from my garage track as well.

Rob