Introducing Bayview International Circuit
21st September 2021 - Initial ideas and ramblings
I've always wanted to build my own permanent slot car track, and finally, I might, just might, get the chance to do so. I may be getting ahead of myself in making elaborate plans, because a lot of things need to fall into place for it to happen, and none of them are guaranteed.
But I haven't been able to resist thinking about the exciting possibilities, and the process of putting together some ideas has provided some rare moments of pleasure, in what has otherwise been a really rough six months for me.
Track Room
My potential track room is situated in a long, brick built outbuilding, which is around 27m long and 6m wide. Internally it is divided into three sections, one of which I might eventually be able to use as a track room. This would give me a working space of 9m x 6m, which is more than enough.
Unfortunately the building itself is not in great condition. It's a 1930s, single skin building, and one end of it is structurally unsound, so that will need some serious building work. The roof, the windows, and the electrical supply will also need repairing, or replacing, and the track room itself will need insulating and decorating.
So you can expect progress on this project to be extremely slow, and if circumstances don't fall in my favour, it might not happen at all. For now this diary will be all about my plans, research, and general ramblings and entries might be few and far between at times. It might even end up as just a pipe dream, but I really enjoy the planning stages, especially when it's something with such huge potential.
Track Plan
There's an old saying that goes...
“If you want to give God a laugh, tell him your plans!
Well I reckon the big man upstairs needs a good laugh as much as the rest of us, so I'm going to prematurely plonk down my preliminary track plan long before I even know if it's even going to be feasible...
So there you go. The plan consists of a two lane rally and race track, a single lane rally track or country lane, a four lane autograss circuit, and a railway line.
The tracks will all be routed, and there will be a substantial elevation change from the detachable autograss oval down at the bottom right of the plan, up to the top of the main rally track at the top left.
There is another saying up here in Yorkshire...
“If in doubt, splash out.”
It basically means, if you're not sure about something, be bold. Well there's no harm in being ambitious, and having waited fifteen years for this opportunity, I wasn't going to settle for just putting some Scalextric track down on an 8' x 4' board.
Rally Tracks
The main rally and race track will be loosely based on Olivers Mount, with it's steep elevation changes and impossibly tight hairpins, which earned it the epithet of “the mini mountain course”. The Scarborough track has fascinated me ever since I saw Timo Mäkinen tearing round the Mount on his way to his third consecutive RAC Rally victory in 1975.
The track will be bi-directional, running clockwise for rally events, and anti clockwise for races.
There will also be a single lane rally track using the paddock roads, and a track by the railway. When it's not being used as a rally stage, it will have delivery vans picking up deliveries from the goods yard.
Autograss Track
The Autograss track could represent any one of the many, many dirt ovals there are around the country, with this entry level motor sport being so popular that these 400m ovals are said to “outnumber all other types of tracks combined”. However my little oval will represent Hunmanby Raceway, which is about half a mile outside the village I grew up in.
Railway
Although the two main tracks will be right next to each other in my fictitious scenario, in reality Olivers Mount is about nine miles away from Hunmanby Raceway. But there is a railway line which joins them, running from Scarborough, along the lower slopes of the Mount through a cutting at the back of the Raceway, and on to Bridlington. It's the line I used as a young man to get from home to college, and it was on those trains where I first met my wife.
Nostalgia
This will be a hugely nostalgic build for me, and this has been further emphasised by the serious illness, and passing of both my Mum and Dad recently. As I type this, I'm sat in their house on the hills overlooking Filey Bay where I've been for six months, first looking after my parents, then laying them to rest, and now looking after their cats, chickens, and horse livery business, whilst we work through sorting out their estate.
When I walk our dog on the land at the back of the house, I will occasionally see the little passenger trains on their way into Hunmanby Station. To the North I can actually see Olivers Mount on the high ground overlooking Scarborough, and sometimes on a Sunday I can hear the scream of engines from Hunmanby Raceway less than a mile away.
Obviously I'll be hoping to tie all those elements together in my track, in a nostalgic celebration of the happy days when I first got into motor sports and Scalextric.
Well that's the basic idea. I'll be back to bore you with more details, history, and plans of the tracks, the cars, the railway, and the scenery, but pleases don't expect any actual physical progress for a while.
