I know that Tyco had Electric Trucking in the early 80s and that most slot cars are O scale. By the way Slot Cars are coming back espcialy in New England Region.
i was thinking of having a piece of track near the background somewhere and have the cars loop around a backdrop as to look like a busy freeway. I think at a distance the scale would not be as noticeable
I don’t have one now, but when I was a kid I had a slot car track that came with a 9" HO scale train crossing in it. We spent literally hours trying to beat the train with our slot cars and had tons of fun. I have never seen another one since and don’t know how many were made, must not have been many. I think it was made by TYCO but unsure.
When I was first getting hooked on G scale stuff, I saw a major permanent demonstration layout that had a freeway on it. There were rails hidden in the road (as much as could be expected. I tried to find out more about this layout but was unable. I would like to know more about the cars and trucks that ran on the rails but looked completely like normal vehicles. It sounds like some really cool DCC operation ability to me.
Triang Minic was a brand in the UK in the late 60’s / early 70’s. I had an OO scale train and slot car combo. There was a ramp leading up to a car loading facility. The slot car could theoretically drive onto a car carrier and be transpored by the train. It never worked very well and in a fit of juvenile rage, I stamped on it!!!
http://www.tri-ang.co.uk/Minic/layout.htm
A quick search revealed this neat web site which has a display layout.
Way back in the early 60’s I had an Aurora HO race car set on my layout that I used as a Freeway (my dad rewired the track so cars would run in both directions). For a kid, I thought it was great at the time, but being a slot car set, I wouldn’t even consider it for a moment today.
The slot car/railroad crossing WAS made by Tyco. In fact they sold a set or two that had both slot cars and trains in it.
The Aurora Model Motoring sets from the 60’s always could go both directions - they had pins front and rear like the Tyco US 1 Trucking from the 80’s. The controllers were like little consoles, the steering wheel controlled speed and there was a forward/reverse switch and something else, maybe a brake button?
–Randy
I have some old running gear from a slot car track in H.O. Scale. These have the front & rear pins for the slots. They don’t have any mfg. name on them, but I expect they are Tyco. They are actually to big for the scale. I have some pickup trucks that run on the rail
& they are also oversize for H.O.
Larry
Way back when, the original Aurora stuff was awefully close to HO scale. Contemporary “HO” tracks are closer to S gauge (1:64?) than HO.
About the original Aurora Model Motoring sets. The very first were actually AC powered. They used a serrated drum on the rear axle and a spring steel reed running forward where it was attached to the chassis. An electromagnet in the center of the cars caused the reed to vibrate coming down and catching the serration on the axle drum. (think how a watch escapement works) These would run in either direction, but there was no speed control. The controller was no more than an N.O. momentary pushbutton switch.
Later, when they went to DC sometime around 1960, they slipped their trademark “pancake” drive motor into a chassis quite similar to the original AC unit.
In either case, there was always a guide pin in front of the front axle, secured to the chassis by the front body-mount screw. There was an optional rear guide pin, but I never used one. Not much challenge to that sort of configuration. [:)]
Whether or not there was a rear guide pin had little to do with running in either direction. DC is DC whether it’s a locomotive or a slot car.
Check these guys out for some near-HO slot car stuff (in fact, they’re touting a slot car/rr track grade crossing as "coming soon!):
http://www.modelmho.com/
NO. 9000PQ TYCO “SUPER ROAD & RAIL” SET HO Scale. It came with SF F7’s in Warbonnet Red scheme. Included were 4 cars, caboose and a Piggyback Flatcar set. The road racing included 2 cars and enough track for all the configurations of the time. The road/rail crossover section was unique for its day. I still have this set and put it away when my girls lost interest. Someday I hope to use the racing road for a long view(8’) background scene. Maybe it won’t work but I’ll try it anyway. I bought it around 1973?
I believe Life-Like offers a piece of HO auto track with an HO train crossing. Life-Like also has the broadest selection of adaptor track so you can use your Tyco, AFX, or Hot Wheels. So kids, you still create a layout with a beat the train aspect.
There’s been one Aurora HO car kicking around the workbench drawers. I had a bunch of these when I was a teenager with a 4’ x16’ race track set up in the basement, with full scenery & scratch-built structures.
This particular car is more out of scale than most of their later-model cars (“later” being the 1960s.)
The guide pin is missing on this car. Rear guide pins were for “woosies” and prevented “fishtailing” which was an important tactic in races since you could send an opponent crashing into the wall. The rear threaded axle, wheels & tires were added on.
The metal brushes are showing wear which was common and took seconds to replace. (It was fun to open one of these up for the first time in maybe 35 years.)
Brett, I had forgotten about the early AC cars. They were hard to soup up. I don’t remember them being manufactured long beforethey changed to a DC system. That was a huge improvement. We used to remove a lot of wire from the armatures to make them run faster.
Fun times. We had a racing league at the hobby shop, racing these and then larger scale cars. A cool place to hang out & wait for girls to wander by.
Not sure I’d want to incorporate these into an HO layout, though.
Wayne
I don’t know…as crappy of slot car driver as I am that would be terror on the layout with my slot car projectile driving skills! Some of my hard scratch built stuff would need some serious beefing up! 
5150[B)]
Well, you certainly wouldn’t use the rear pin to actually RACE, unless you were a cheater. But you can’t run a slot car in reverse very well without a rear pin, it will just veer off the track. I recall that Aurora had some track sections that were more like a typical road than a race track, like intersections (basically a track switch) - or maybe that was some other brand, but I remember seeing something like that eqipped with traffic lights and all.
–Randy
the car Muddycreek shows was also available as the Faller AMS sytem, HO sized cars and tracks available in the '60-'70ies
the Faller AMS system had all options available to build in cars on a HO layout
FYI: I found this picture on Webshots album http://community.webshots.com/album/13542612nOwkivhcnz
Hey ,don’t that go along the lines of the old TYCO and Aurora mini- slot car sets that were sold back in the mid 60’s. They had train crossings for the slot car tracks. Used to be great fun running the cars into the trains and vice-versa!
So were would I get a slot car switchtrack in HO scale or O scale…By the Cool Photos of Model Car layouts we may start a new hobby here. MRR should do a artical on this stuff.[8D]
I believe that in the '60s Model Railroader had some articles about having slot cars in a layout.
Jaime
Both Tyco and Aurora made the grade crossing section with HO track crossing an HO scale roadway. Those sections of track were both discontinued in the late 70’s, as it was deemed to be sending a bad message to future drivers about racing trains.
At one point Tyco was actually packaging trains and roadrace together in some of their largest sets.
The photos of the Faller system above are very interesting. They remind me, a lot, of the Aurora model motorway, which also had single lane and turnoff track sections.
That URL I listed: http://www.modelmho.com/
is a company that is repopping all of the Aurora Model Motoring cars, parts and track. I get quite nostalgic looking at the stuff they’re selling.
That Willy’s coupe suffers, scale-wise, because they only had one chassis, so stuff sorta got scaled up or down to fit comfortably over it. The wheel base was adjustable, by moving the front axle to on of the other pairs of holes.