UK Slot Car Festival 2014

Last Saturday, Andy and I conducted our annual pilgrimage to the UK Slot Car Festival at the Heritage Motor Centre.  Beautiful weather for the first long journey in my new MGB on some fabulous A-roads.  The show was a little bigger and is now spread over two days.  As well as a large number of traders and manufacturers, there were lots of tracks to try out and appreciate.  Our favourite amongst these was the Targa Floria track and we chatted to the creator about the design and techniques used.

Another highlight was one chap's Italian Job project.  This had started with the minis and a wonderful scratchbuilt coach (which had powered braid inside so the minis could be driven up the ramp!) but grew to encompass all the main vehicles in the film - police cars, jeep, digger, the Lamborghini Miura that gets trashed at the beginning of the film (in both perfect and trashed versions!).  A really great job.

Another new product from Steve Ward of Penelope Pitlane caught my eye - genuine 1:32 scale go-karts.  There have been a couple of models of go-karts produced by Scalextric and Ninco.  The Ninco in particular are great (Andy probably has the largest collection in the country!) but at 1:18 scale, they are over-sized for my layout.  The new ones really are tiny but the scale is perfect.  They come as a kit but here's the couple painted up that were on display at the show.

In my continuing search for unusual pairs of cars to race against each other, I bought a couple manufactured by Carrera modeled on streamlined German cars from 1937 - the Auto Union Typ C Stromlinie and Mercedes-Benz W25 Avus Stromlinie (it says W125 on the packaging but it's definitely the W25).

They are huge cars with removable covers for the large but very skinny wheels.

They run very fast and have magnets fitted in the centre of the chassis and ahead of the rear axle.  I took the rear magnets out to slow them down, help get the rear end out and make them more interesting to drive.

Highwood Pre-War Classic complete

Started by Andy and me way back in September, the Highwood Pre-War Classic was our first attempt at a race series.  16 cars - racing in four heats of four cars each, then two semi-finals leading into a final race.  84 races in total over seven evenings, spread over six months.  Phew!

We were very strict with crashes - three strikes and you were out of the race.  Probably too strict.  We think perhaps a simple deslot should be forgiven - but a roll is a write-off.  The points we awarded (3 for a win, 1 for a lose, 0 for DNF, and 1 for the fastest lap) need refining too.  But it made for some tense and close racing, and was a lot of fun.

None of my four entries made it to the final, but the eventual winner was one of Andy's MG K3s.  Andy bought me one of these for Christmas so when I've finished it, perhaps I'll have a more competitive entry!

We're thinking of similar race series e.g. 1960s cars, American cars.  And to start setting up a 1950s class, I bought a couple of Scalextric GP cars - a Ferrari 375 and Maserati 250F.