22nd-Feb-20, 01:12 PM
Rock County Raceway, part one - The original Tyco oval
The idea for the Rock County Raceway came from browsing obscure Californian slot car forums and learning about the great fun to be had with short 'bull ring' ovals. Real-life bull rings were the tiny ovals that appeared around the USA from the 1930s to the 60s that satisfied an appetite for racing where there was either a lack of money or a lack of space to build the more usual quarter-mile or half-mile local tracks. There's no official definition, but a track length of anything less than a quarter or fifth of a mile counts as a bull ring. The racing experience was a very short blast on a very short straight and then skilful driving round the tight corners. Here's a couple of pics of the Kearney Bowl in Fresno that inspired the Californian HO bull ring racing circle...
After much playing around and taking advice from the other side of the pond, I set about building my four-lane HO bull ring. I would use Tyco sectional track on a 4 x 2 foot lightweight board. The track and most of the materials were things I had lying around. The table was built with 3mm mdf on top of a timber frame. I squeezed some PVC angles between the frame and board to give an integral retaining wall on each side. The Tyco plastic sectional track was attached using silicone sealant with power wires soldered to the underside of the rails. I drilled holes for light sensors to hook up to a computer via a Trackmate board.
I tested the track and it was just what I'd hoped for. The straights were just under 4 feet long and the turns have an outer radius of just under a foot - a custom six inch radius turn piece inserted at each end to make the corner entry tighten. Overall, the outer lane was thirteen foot long and the inner is ten and a half feet. The average lane length is 11.82 feet or one seventh of a 1/64 scale mile or one sixth of a 1/76 scale mile. The Rock County Raceway was comfortably a 'bull ring'.
Having filled some gaps between track pieces and painted the main straight grey, I held a successful test night in late 2011 - and then that was it for nearly three years. The trials and tribulations of life in general, plus a leaking roof meant the oval stayed in storage until 2014. There was then a whirlwind of activity to get the oval ready in time for its first proper race in August.
The first task was to re-think the oval in light of things I had learned in the three intervening years. I had built two more tracks and my grasp of slot car-related electronics has come on leaps and bounds. I have also become fascinated with the original 1/76 scale cars - particularly the Aurora Thunderjets and their Auto World copies. On dusting down the oval and running some cars, I realised that it was really too small for the quicker cars I'd originally planned to use. The T-jets were perfect and Aurora Magnatraction and Auto World Xtractions quick, but not too quick.
I rewired the track, then built UK club standard 3-pin driver stations, using CAT-6 cabling to connect to the track. I fitted a relay to control track power and reed switches hooked up to Trackmate to provide lap timing and race management.
That done, I flipped the board over and finished painting the track, added an infield and painted that too. I used foamboard as end barriers and added some advertising hoardings.
I was basing the look of the raceway on a Wisconsin short track. My partner's mother grew up in Beloit and hung out at the local track with her friends - it was just something to do in the summer. In homage, the track was named Rock County Raceway and I added some local ads to the hoardings. Many of the Wisconsin short tracks have now closed, but I looked closely at one of the survivors, the quarter-mile Rockford Speedway just over the border in Illinois. I hope I captured something of its character...
One thing I definitely needed was catch fencing. Nothing I could find commercially looked like what I wanted. In the end I found some plastic netting used for keeping pet reptiles and threaded through piano wire as poles. To avoid injury, I added heat shrink tubing to the top of the wire. The bottom of the wire sits nicely into plastic tubes cut from cotton bud sticks that are glued to the back of the side walls.
For some final touches I added a wrecker truck and ambulance to the infield and then we were ready to race in my basement kitchen.
Seven club mates from Worthing HO Racing joined me for an excellent evening trying out different race formats with a set of four race-prepared Auto World T-jets. By the end of the night, the quickest drivers were turning sub 2 second laps with the T-jets and even faster with their Magnatractions and Xtractions. The track got the thumbs-up. Here's a very quick taste of the action...
We raced on the oval again the following year, adding in a very enjoyable race with Gareth's Aurora trucks...
However, despite everyone's enthusiasm for the track and the racing, there were a few issues that I wasn't happy about - and they weren't going to be solved easily with plastic sectional track. The track surface wasn't as smooth as the T-Jets really needed and there were some electrical issues too. I took the plunge and decided to commission Cheryl and Paul at MaxTrax Scale Racing in New York to build me a plastic routed oval. That moves us on to part two of the Rock County Raceway story...
The idea for the Rock County Raceway came from browsing obscure Californian slot car forums and learning about the great fun to be had with short 'bull ring' ovals. Real-life bull rings were the tiny ovals that appeared around the USA from the 1930s to the 60s that satisfied an appetite for racing where there was either a lack of money or a lack of space to build the more usual quarter-mile or half-mile local tracks. There's no official definition, but a track length of anything less than a quarter or fifth of a mile counts as a bull ring. The racing experience was a very short blast on a very short straight and then skilful driving round the tight corners. Here's a couple of pics of the Kearney Bowl in Fresno that inspired the Californian HO bull ring racing circle...
After much playing around and taking advice from the other side of the pond, I set about building my four-lane HO bull ring. I would use Tyco sectional track on a 4 x 2 foot lightweight board. The track and most of the materials were things I had lying around. The table was built with 3mm mdf on top of a timber frame. I squeezed some PVC angles between the frame and board to give an integral retaining wall on each side. The Tyco plastic sectional track was attached using silicone sealant with power wires soldered to the underside of the rails. I drilled holes for light sensors to hook up to a computer via a Trackmate board.
I tested the track and it was just what I'd hoped for. The straights were just under 4 feet long and the turns have an outer radius of just under a foot - a custom six inch radius turn piece inserted at each end to make the corner entry tighten. Overall, the outer lane was thirteen foot long and the inner is ten and a half feet. The average lane length is 11.82 feet or one seventh of a 1/64 scale mile or one sixth of a 1/76 scale mile. The Rock County Raceway was comfortably a 'bull ring'.
Having filled some gaps between track pieces and painted the main straight grey, I held a successful test night in late 2011 - and then that was it for nearly three years. The trials and tribulations of life in general, plus a leaking roof meant the oval stayed in storage until 2014. There was then a whirlwind of activity to get the oval ready in time for its first proper race in August.
The first task was to re-think the oval in light of things I had learned in the three intervening years. I had built two more tracks and my grasp of slot car-related electronics has come on leaps and bounds. I have also become fascinated with the original 1/76 scale cars - particularly the Aurora Thunderjets and their Auto World copies. On dusting down the oval and running some cars, I realised that it was really too small for the quicker cars I'd originally planned to use. The T-jets were perfect and Aurora Magnatraction and Auto World Xtractions quick, but not too quick.
I rewired the track, then built UK club standard 3-pin driver stations, using CAT-6 cabling to connect to the track. I fitted a relay to control track power and reed switches hooked up to Trackmate to provide lap timing and race management.
That done, I flipped the board over and finished painting the track, added an infield and painted that too. I used foamboard as end barriers and added some advertising hoardings.
I was basing the look of the raceway on a Wisconsin short track. My partner's mother grew up in Beloit and hung out at the local track with her friends - it was just something to do in the summer. In homage, the track was named Rock County Raceway and I added some local ads to the hoardings. Many of the Wisconsin short tracks have now closed, but I looked closely at one of the survivors, the quarter-mile Rockford Speedway just over the border in Illinois. I hope I captured something of its character...
One thing I definitely needed was catch fencing. Nothing I could find commercially looked like what I wanted. In the end I found some plastic netting used for keeping pet reptiles and threaded through piano wire as poles. To avoid injury, I added heat shrink tubing to the top of the wire. The bottom of the wire sits nicely into plastic tubes cut from cotton bud sticks that are glued to the back of the side walls.
For some final touches I added a wrecker truck and ambulance to the infield and then we were ready to race in my basement kitchen.
Seven club mates from Worthing HO Racing joined me for an excellent evening trying out different race formats with a set of four race-prepared Auto World T-jets. By the end of the night, the quickest drivers were turning sub 2 second laps with the T-jets and even faster with their Magnatractions and Xtractions. The track got the thumbs-up. Here's a very quick taste of the action...
We raced on the oval again the following year, adding in a very enjoyable race with Gareth's Aurora trucks...
However, despite everyone's enthusiasm for the track and the racing, there were a few issues that I wasn't happy about - and they weren't going to be solved easily with plastic sectional track. The track surface wasn't as smooth as the T-Jets really needed and there were some electrical issues too. I took the plunge and decided to commission Cheryl and Paul at MaxTrax Scale Racing in New York to build me a plastic routed oval. That moves us on to part two of the Rock County Raceway story...
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