Testing, testing...

Louise bought me The Slot Car Handbook for Christmas which has lots of useful information about getting the best out of slot cars.  One recommendation was not to put new cars straight on the track but instead to run the motors in at various increasing voltages.  This is to prevent arcing at high voltages which vaporises bits of brush or commutator inside the motor.  I bought a variable voltage transformer and wired it up to a modified Scalextric Powerbase to act as a testbed.  A piece of MDF prevents the cars shooting off the front and pieces of foamcard underneath lift the driving wheels away from the track.

The other purpose of the testbed is to true the tyres.  Instead of the foamcard lifting the rear wheels clear, a piece of sandpaper is placed underneath and so any bulge in the tyres can be rubbed away.

On the testbed above are two Christmas presents from Andy - both in Martini colours.  In silver is the Porsche 917/10 Turbo Interserie 1974 and in black, a Marcos LM600.

I also got a car from Kieron for Christmas as well, a rather tasty Ford GT40 in silver and black - a Mark II from 1966.

I am, of course, now running these cars in...

Tunnel

I'm getting through the chicken wire and plaster!  The tunnel is now completed and installed.  The entrance on the far side is just carved into the rock...

...and after plastering, painting and grassing looks like this...

The little holes on the right of the entrance have been drilled to accept a barrier.

On the (more visible) exit, I wanted a proper tunnel front with granite effect, so a few pieces of MDF and some railway modellers paper gives this:

With plaster, paint and grass...

And with the lights on in the tunnel...

In this photo, you can see how far the border strip goes.  Standing up, you won't see it.  But it highlights the latest development - home-made borders.  I've used 0.5mm plasticard cut to the shape of the track and affixed self-adhesive red stickers cut to right size.

A bit fiddly but much cheaper than buying Scalextric borders for the entire track.  It's the only solution for going under the tunnel but I've been using it along the straights as well.

Hill Construction

This is the elevated carousel turn going through four stages of construction.  First the MDF pieces were joined together using old video tape boxes and I stapled chicken wire to shape the hills.  Then using kitchen towel dipped in casting plaster, I built up the hills and rock faces.  Finally the rocks were sprayed grey, the grass areas painted green and then flocked with loose grass mix.

It's clearly not finished since there's a big hole in the middle.  This is to allow access to the power relay wires (visible at the back of the photo).  But I have a piece of MDF ready to fit the hole that will also need to be shaped with some feature (yet to be decided) in the middle.  I've got a few ideas but I've rejected the volcano as just too ridiculous!