[woodcote]

   

I have a few lockdown projects on the go and one is updating my HO drag strip. With the future of club racing very uncertain, organising some proxy drag racing might just be a handy stop-gap.

I built a strip three years ago. It should have been a weekend job... throw up a shelf on the wall, set up my Auto World drag strip and - voilà - let's race. But I didn't count on the geometric idiosyncrasies of my house.

This street was built in the 1840s. With bricks and timber in short supply, many of these working people's houses were put together with shingle from the beach, bits of scrap and anything the builders could put their hands on. This is the infamous Brighton 'bungaroosh'. Improvements have been made in the intervening 170+ years (most of the street is still standing), but the outcome is wonky walls, uneven floors and tilting ceilings.

My plan was to put the drag strip on the wall above my test track. I grabbed some perfect five-inch wide strips of scrap mdf sheet surplus to requirements at a house renovation a few doors down. I then realised the wall was really wonky - the middle bowed out nearly three inches from the corners...

I considered cutting out the curve from the mdf, but soon realised this wasn't going to work - they'd be no room for the track. Instead, I cut the mdf into three pieces and did a little trimming so it skirted around the bulge and allowed the drag strip to stay fairly straight. Batons and a couple of braces were fixed to the wall, mdf fixed to them - and I had a shelf. The mdf was sealed with grey primer and the bottom of the shelf, batons and braces painted blue to blend into the wallpaper...

   

[woodcote]

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.

[dvd3500]

Our house was built in 1972 and is nearly as strange. They used some sort of brick that has black glass in it (?!)
No to doors are the same width or height and the floors and walls aren't square or plane... But no 3 inch bulges!


Looks cool though!

[BAracer]

I'll not hear a bad work said against builders thank you. 

Back to the drag strip...will you be hosting proxy races Mr Woodcote? Will you be issuing any regs?

[woodcote]

I hope so with the proxy races. I have some ideas for regs - a street stock Micro Scalextric class would be perfect and very accessible... although I do like the T-Jets, but those need to come from the States. A couple of us in the UK send cars to races in the USA, so it might be nice to do something this side of the Atlantic. I'm pretty sure Clive has a strip with timing up in Norfolk and Gareth has plans (and all the pieces) for an HO strip in his shed in Bevendean. With the Brighton Speed Trials more than likely cancelled this year, it would be apt to hold an HO race down here. Speaking of which...

       

I was always in two minds whether the strip should be North American themed or whether it should be Brighton through-and-through. Starting in 1905, the Brighton Speed Trials are claimed to be the oldest running motor race of any kind. It would be cool to recreate Madeira Drive in HO scale, but the HO drag cars available from Auto World and various talented resin casters just don't look right on Brighton seafront. And I do love all the American drag race history. So a simple 'somewhere in 1960s USA' style - or a modern-day nostalgia strip - is what I'm looking for...


       

[woodcote]

There was a lot of testing to see how the strip would work, whether I'd need to fit  any cork borders (no - the cars ran pretty straight) and how to stop the cars after the finish line sensors. Plus there was a lot of messing around with low-relief scenics - some of which were re-used from my original Tyco bullring oval - plus PVC angle along the front edge to tidy everything up and catch any errant cars...

       

Stopping the cars is always an issue. Straight after the finish line module, I'd cut a break in the rails, so cars would coast to a stop and those with traction magnets would slow more quickly. Limiting the voltage to around 15 volts with relatively low-speed cars did help. However, I did need to short-out the shutdown section - soldering wires to connect the two rails to give dynamic motor breaking. That meant I could get away with just a small amount of foam at the end - although a small towel positioned before the end prevented too sudden a stop if the shutdown hadn't quite done its job...

   

With everything functionally correct and the basic decoration done, I had this...

   

And here's a good view of the wall...

   

[BAracer]

Woodcote

I'll see your Brighton 1905 earliest UK speed trial and raise you with 1902 in Bexhill (allegedly).
   

How about if you turned your back on the rusting arcades and go with a Brighton beach backdrop? 

You could always tell visitors it was Daytona...

[woodcote]

But does the Bexhill speed trial still run? Brighton isn't the oldest, but it has been going for the longest. I did consider the beach scene (there are very oblique views from the window), but decided on the American strip...

       

It was a good enough set-up to have some races, do some basic testing for proxy cars and be a nice backdrop for some photos...

       

The Auto World strip has proved itself great value, enormous fun and pretty robust. I wholeheartedly recommend it as an introduction to HO drag racing. This is what it does...




It's a video that both highlights the plus points and hints at the weaknesses of the system. Of course, there is no timing. That can be added as a direct upgrade to the AW strip using the stand-alone Dragon Racing System (here). However, all that stuff about cleaning the track until cars run down the strip without hesitation - that isn't ideal and it is hard to get a really smooth track using traditional HO sectional track pieces. You have a guaranteed clickety-clack and the occasional judder that can ruin a race. Soldering copper braid onto the cars' pick-ups does help - as does using the magical INOX MX3 (yes, it works on HO track too). Ultimately, nothing beats a routed, continuous rail strip with lots of amps and pro computer timing - like this portable strip built and used by Paul and Cheryl at MaxTrax (www.maxtraxracing.com/dragstrips)...

       

The thing was, I wasn't serious enough to invest over a thousand dollars on a routed strip and the gold-standard Track Mate DP3000 timing hardware and software (here). And with the wonky wall, it wouldn't be an easy fit! On the other hand, what I had wasn't getting a lot of use. The location of the strip - in a small room at the top of the house - was not conducive to having a bunch of guys round for an evening of racing. And the Auto World format is not ideal for racing on your own. As a result, the drag strip laid more-or-less dormant, the start and finish sections being ripped out regularly to be used at public events and at the club.

However, that is not the end of the story...

[dvd3500]

Would a massive magnet at the end help slow them down?
Even magless cars have some metal in them...

[Scuderia_Turini]

Hello Andy, regarding drag racing by proxy - is that run two cars at a time and reliant upon the reaction times of two drivers or is the power simply switched on so the cars start simultaneously?

Leo