Victory in the Spotlight!

1956

VIP Roadedge System

Victory's stand at the British Industries Fair in 1956 was their largest to date. The centerpiece was a huge papier-mâché mountain around which Victory's cars sped along a two tier alpine roadway. What really impressed spectators though was the way that the cars magically steered themselves around the course slowing down for the corners and pausing automatically at traffic lights and at junctions.

Separate small tables allowed visitors to drive the models around a small oval track controlling their speed via a simple variable resistor. The working roadway was the hit of the show, grabbing the attention of the media and becoming the star of many newsreels, even featuring on the BBC's Panorama programme. It delighted the crowds and was later acknowledged by inventor Fred Francis as one of the main inspirations behind his Scalextric system.

Roadedge Demo

Here we see one of the smaller Roadedge demonstration tracks at the 1956 British Industries Fair. Victory Chairman Captain Bill Warren (far right with raised hand) gives instructions on the finer points of car control to Lady Eden - wife of the then British Prime Minister. On the far left (with pipe) is Ralf Burgas, who designed tooling for such things as the Velox grill. He went on to do much of the design work on the VIP slot cars that followed on from the Roadedge system. Ralf eventually moved to M.R.R.C. in the early 60's (where he designed the famous 4WD chassis) and then onto Airfix.

The cars at the show were powered by an independent power supply rather than their internal batteries. Current was collected by contacts beneath the car which brushed against the electrified road surface. The current was returned via the antenna that protruded from the front of the car to the insulated metal Roadedge strip alongside the track. On the Alpine roadway, the cars could be controlled independently  or set to run automatically where resistance was built into track sections where the cars needed to slow down and relays would cut the current when traffic lights around the course changed from green to red.

A Viable System

The original concept behind the Roadedge and Pathfinda project had been to develop a means for fans of road and racing cars to emulate their counterparts in model railways, allowing them to build tracks and layouts around which individual cars could be driven. This idea stemmed from various articles which had been appearing in the British Model Maker magazine around that time.

The Roadedge & Pathfinda system was a simple way to produce a working roadway utilising the existing Victory model range. It went some way towards meeting that concept, but suffered from the fact that even the most basic of layouts took up a great deal of room. Fine for a car showroom where space was less of an issue, but rather impractical for most households. The reaction of the press and the public to the display at the 1956 British Industries Fair convinced everyone that whatever the shortcomings of the Roadedge & Pathfinda system, a truly viable commercial project was not far away so even before the fair closed it doors, Victory's designers were set to work on the next step.

Model Maker

A Question of Scale

The pages of Model Maker revealed how electric rail car enthusiasts at the pioneering Southport Model & engineering club had settled on 1/32 scale as a standard for their track. The Southport club adopted this scale for a variety of reasons chief among them being that 1/32 scale offered a good compromise between cars that were big enough to avoid over-sophisticated engineering (i.e. existing motors would fit without extensive modifications) and tracks that were small enough to be manageable. Victory were quite happy to follow this and many other leads from the pages of the magazine in the configuration of their own design.

Electric rail cars did suffer from a basic failing. Because the cars had to ride a fixed rail above the surface of the track, the cars had to be designed to run with a relatively high ground clearance placing many restrictions on motors and gearing. Victory's un-blinkered experience with the electrified track at the B.I.F. meant that a clear solution to these problems was self-evident. Simply split a conductive road surface into two separately insulated halves and guide the car by an insulated peg between the two. Not only was this simpler to mass-produce, it also avoided the problem of the raised rail which proved to be an unnecessary throw back to gas-powered rail cars

VIP Model Roadway

Model Roadway

The Model Roadway Kit which followed some time after the show was rather more basic than the show displays and offered no independent control of the car, you simply switched your car on and then let it run around and around the track until the battery ran out or your mum told you to tidy up. Additional Roadedge track strips and Pathfinda front axles were available separately so that you could convert your existing models to run on this system.