29th-Apr-20, 08:40 AM
My Auto World drag strip has had a lot of use at fairs and shows and at Worthing HO Racing in the eight years since I shipped it over from the States. Many hundreds of people must have raced on it...
When we set up the strip in public it is always an exact 1/64 scale quarter mile - 20.625 feet. The AW 4-Gears are popular on the quarter mile, as are the Micro Scalextric cars. At WHO, we have run our Modified cars and they really stretch their legs down the strip. However, the strip on the shelf won't be a quarter mile. The house was built quite small amd although that wall is not a bad size, it's a smidgen under nine foot. With the start gantry a foot off the end wall and the need for at least a little shutdown, the length of the strip will be a lot less than that.
It makes sense to run mostly T-Jets on the strip. Those cars were originally designed to run alongside British OO gauge model railways. Scale-wise, that means dividing a mile by 76, rather than 64. Or if I was really cheeky, I could go true HO and divide by 87. After a bit of running, plus testing various end-of-shutdown spongy materials, I compromised on an 82-inch (six foot, ten inch) strip with an abrupt 18 inches of unpowered shutdown. Success on the strip will always be about acceleration. It just so happens that 82-inches is almost exactly a scale eighth-mile in true HO, so I was happy to stick with that.
When we set up the strip in public it is always an exact 1/64 scale quarter mile - 20.625 feet. The AW 4-Gears are popular on the quarter mile, as are the Micro Scalextric cars. At WHO, we have run our Modified cars and they really stretch their legs down the strip. However, the strip on the shelf won't be a quarter mile. The house was built quite small amd although that wall is not a bad size, it's a smidgen under nine foot. With the start gantry a foot off the end wall and the need for at least a little shutdown, the length of the strip will be a lot less than that.
It makes sense to run mostly T-Jets on the strip. Those cars were originally designed to run alongside British OO gauge model railways. Scale-wise, that means dividing a mile by 76, rather than 64. Or if I was really cheeky, I could go true HO and divide by 87. After a bit of running, plus testing various end-of-shutdown spongy materials, I compromised on an 82-inch (six foot, ten inch) strip with an abrupt 18 inches of unpowered shutdown. Success on the strip will always be about acceleration. It just so happens that 82-inches is almost exactly a scale eighth-mile in true HO, so I was happy to stick with that.
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