Saturday 18 June 2016

Wiring Board

I rewired and tidied up the Phidget board and associated electronics that control all the lights and lap timing on the layout.  This hasn't provided any additional functions but valuable to check all the connections and satisfying to make it look neat.  Well, neater than it was.


Monday 6 June 2016

Refreshes the parts other hobbies cannot reach

One of the few vintage Scalextric buildings absent from my layout is the refreshments kiosk (item A228).  They are occasionally seen complete on eBay but for quite high prices.  I picked up a bag of bits at the recent Slot Car Festival that provided a starting point for making my own.


This had some of the right parts - but the tea urn was missing, the cake stands had no picture backing, and the base building was a pit building not the kiosk.  I quickly found a missing tea urn and extra cake stand on eBay, and scanned and printed a copy of the picture backing on the latter.  I also scanned the tatty insert and reprinted onto new card, and printed the right stickers for the building to disguise its pit building origins.  The result is this;


You can see the insert and backing for the cake stands more clearly here:


The original kiosk has a flag with Scalextric printed on it.  I didn't want to replicate that: I know my layout is only a model but I don't think it should be that obvious!  So it got a Refreshments flag in the same style.  And I managed to just squeeze it onto the layout by moving one of the TV camera towers to a new location.