digital conversion?

[btaylor]

Ok,now i have about a gazzilion feet of new artin track, Not knowing how all this digital stuff works,can i adapt the artin track to digital? i can hack the crossover tracks from carrera or whoever else is best, but is there anything special about the contact strips that im overlooking? i know i would need the digital control system, i could get that from a stater set,and sell off the unused extra track. I have already hacked a Le mans start from strombecker to artin,that was not to hard,could do it again for multiple cars i think, any thoughts on this? or am tiltin' at windmills?

[goosenapper]

[btaylor]

Hacking the actual track pieces is not to hard,a split taper from wide to narrow or vice versa,right down the center.I hadnt even considered digital till my son in law showed me a video of 6 cars battling it out on a track shaped roughly like the one i have,it looked pretty cool! the over all expense would at least be gradual,as i assume i could run the track analog till time to convert? maybe im assuming to much,and some would say why even do this,but with four american thunder sets and four full four lane r1 and r2 curves and all borders,it would be impractical to start over.as i aquire newer cars,i could go digitally upgradable right? Dont really expect to convert all my old strommies to digital.

[Nor Cal Mike]

Adapting Artin track to some other digital system could be done depending how much effort you want to put in to it. It all comes down to money vs. time and which you have more of. Artin did make a very short lived digital system called Digipro. You might post on some of the message boards and come up with someone who wants to part with it. However it wasn't a very robust product which might be the reason it was so short lived. You might be able to move the electronics from one of the better systems to the Artin flippers and power base tracks. You would have to look it over to see how much trouble it might be do decide if it is worth the trouble. If want to use the Artin track as a bulk quantity in a large digital track without starting over from scratch, probably the easiest thing would be to buy all of the digital parts and track from brand X, use those track pieces whole, and make adapter pieces to mate the Artin track to the brand X digital pieces. If you are handy, that could be fairly easily be done with MDF, a router and some copper tape or braid. Artin uses a 3" lane spacing in their track. Carrera is quite a bit wider. Ninco a little less wide than Carrera. Scalextric would probably be the closest match if you want to make short adapter pieces without a serious jog in your slots to mate the two. If you want to make longer adapters, then you could use any of the brands. Once power taps are made to all of the electrically isolated sections you should good to go.