Month: April 2020

There were a few issues with the folding table setup. One of them was that it wasn’t wide enough to have any “breathing room”. Another was that with no side skirts or outer walls, cars were hitting the concrete pretty frequently.

I could have chosen to build up from the folding table a small extension, fences, etc. However, I’d prefer something easier to move around. So, with that, I built a simple track table. The main sheet is 1/2″ plywood that is 32″ wide and 72″ long.

The lower framing is just pine 1×3 material. The legs were purchased from “Rural King”, and are made in America! The online reviews for the Chinese legs on Amazon or Home Depot were pretty dismal. FedEx delivered them to my house.

The upper walls are a mix of 1×8 pine and a strip of Plywood. The far corners are tied together with 2×2 cleats. It’s all joined with wood screws.

A little breathing room, but overall a similar layout. In order to even out the lane lengths, I opted for a set of cross overs. My son loves these, and they certainly make racing exciting. If things are too exciting in the long run, I can always remove them.

The size and weight of this are so far quite manageable. I can easily fit it in the back of my SUV, and the weight is light enough I can put it up on end and carry it in and out of the basement alone.

I also cleaned a few things up in this area and hung a new shop light over the table. The lighting makes a huge difference.

I have dabbled off and on with making a basic Arduino based slot car track timing system. I was dabbling with it again, and have it working pretty well. As luck would have it though, I didn’t currently have a track setup at home! This is a problem that must be resolved! As is true for most people, space is always at a premium. The is one reason I prefer 1/43 scale slot cars. As I looked around the basement, I spotted an open area that a folding table could be setup in unobtrusively, and set about doing what I could for a track:

I wanted something fun to drive on, and not too technical. Given the space, all of the turns are R1, with the exception of a single turn on the outer loop that is R2.

The biggest issue with this layout is that it is a double loop, compounding the lane length difference instead of reducing it.

However, this proved to me that I could come up with something interesting to build in this space, which is all I was after.