[Johnno]

Start Gantry & Tower

Part One: Modifications, surface preparation, paint station and perspex installation.

I've had the Gantry Walkway and Control Tower MDF kit from ProScaleRacing now for a little over two years and couldn't work out if it would fit correctly with my track, I bought it for the Scalextric track, finally got stuck in and worked on it. 

As I stuffed up previously gluing it before I painted it, I had to do a partial dismantle of the the gantry and tower, wasn't too hard, a couple of dabs of water on the PVA glued tabs, some gentle persuasion with a craft knife and the couple of sections came away fairly easy. 

The walkway had to be cut in half so I could insert a 65mm section so it would extend across the four lanes of my track, I think it turned out ok. 

From there I utilised a sheet of perspex I found in the gutter about a year ago, there was no window plastic included with the PSR kits for some silly reason, major oversight, I spent the better part of the day cutting the perspex to fit, the hardest being the control tower race control box as the perspex needed to the cut on a 5 degree angle, I simply used my sliding compound saw to do the cutting, started doing it manually then got the saw setup correctly for the angle cuts, sooo much easier LOL, with some very close finger holding at the saw blade.... some very strong concentration was needed for this dangerous job. 

I know what it's like to have a digit ripped off, when I was 13 I was helping my uncle get his powerboat out of the river, I was screwing the D-shackle bolt in when the bloke jumped on the tractor with wet feet, no rubber on the pedals, his foot slipped off the clutch, the boat trailer and tractor went forward, the boat stayed put, the D-shackle corkscrewed itself around my right thumb, completely lacerating it off... damn it all to hell and back... I felt nothing when it happened, just grabbed my thumb and ran to mum, then the pain hit.. that was the last year the power boat event was run :( 

I decided to keep things simple colour wise so I went with an all over gloss white, Sky Blue for the window trims and Machinery Grey for the roof tops. 

From there I decided to add a Falcon car and the SR lettering to the very top of the Control Tower, I loaned the brand new car to another racer to do some vacuum forming and the forming heat actually destroyed the car body some, so that was reassigned to the Control Tower roof :)