Drivers

Any slot car layout looks a bit bare without figures.  In addition to the Chinese spectators, I also have 50-60 figures from a British company called MRRC.  MRRC make a range of figures covering drivers and pit crew, track officials, vendors and newsmen, and spectators.  These white plastic figures are 1/32 scale like Scalextric, making them around 56mm tall.  They are really nicely moulded and were originally designed in the sixties so the drivers, for example, all have open face helmets and goggles, which I much prefer.

I'm going to paint these up over the next couple of months.  These four drivers are the first figures to be finished.

Spectators from the Far East

I ordered 40 spectator figures from China recently.  They were pre-painted and sent postage free, all for £18.  They are not painted brilliantly - there are more pinks and purples than in your average Grand Prix crowd and (unsurprisingly) they all have black hair.  But the plan is that these figures will occupy the back few rows of the grandstands and I'll use better quality figures painted by me for the front row.  Even without the front row, they don't look too bad - certainly better than a track with no spectators.

I've also finished grassing all the outside corners ready for the grandstands and other buildings and structures.

It's curtains for the Scalextric layout

Literally.

I was fed up with how messy everything looked under the table with boxes of cars and wargaming terrain on one side, and dozens of games on the other.  So a couple of chequered flags have now been transformed into curtains.

On the left you can also see the grab picker I recently bought for retrieving those troublesome cars that deslot in the far corner.  No-one else can reach them unaided and I'm doing my back in trying to reach over every time!

On the right hand side, you can see the lighting board.  There's a 24V supply that goes through these switches to the various lighting circuits on the layout.  The first four items on the left hand list are all constructed and wired.  The other switches are ready for future lighting projects - the compass points are to indicate areas of the track that may have lamppost-type lighting at some point.

And yes, I did do the sewing of the curtains all myself (proof below!) but I was supervised by a responsible adult.