Just wondering if anyone out there ever experimented with “REALISTICALLY” incorporating slot cars to their HO scale layout? I like the Faller Car system but can’t stomach the costs involved, and I have not been able to come up with any realistically viable alternatives. Obviously the trade off with slot cars is the slot and wires imbedded into the roadway, but I’ve almost convinced myself that I could deal with that if it meant being able to add some otherwise life-like animation to my roadways. I’m sure I could eventually come up with a way to camouflage the slot & wires to a reasonably acceptable degree using some creative weathering methods, etc.
Specifically I’m wondering if I could use an old DC power pack to power the roadway and be able to dial back the voltage enough to be able to see reasonably scale speeds. Obviously experimentation is key, but I thought I’d ask to see if there’s pioneers out there that I could glean some info off of.
The problem with doing that is HO scale slot cars aren’t truly HO scale, they will look out of place. You could use a transformer to scale back the speed but to be honest the slower HO scale cars run the more unreliable they are. You couldn’t get one to run at anywhere near prototypical speed, unless you were running from the cops, lol. I use one to break in my slot car motors and actually run them in a glass of water with a little soap added to it. I’m big into slot car racing and collecting and have been for years.
You certainly could use a better controller than typically comes with slot cars, they usually run ont he same 12V DC that trains use. Good pickup may be an issue, depending ont he type of slot car. The little brass flags that Tyco slot cars use to have wear out FAST. The long sliders from Aurora cars always lasted longer.
Back int he 60’s, Atlas had slot cars that had 2 pins, one in front and one in back, plus controllers that allowed you to reverse. They had more street-like track pieces too, not just stuff to make a high speed race track. They were, I think, shootign to make model slot cars more liek model railroading and not just a speed contest, and, well, that didn’t work out so well, but I do rememebr my cousin had a lot of track and a bunch of the cars.
In the 70’s, Tyco tried again, this time with trucks. They had all sorts of trucks, with 2 pins and sliders, or even 3 pins (detachable trailers) and track that was basically a spring switch, drive forward past it, then back into the side road where they had (mostly toy-like) automated loading and unloading. I used to run some of my slot cars along with the trucks, you can definitely run at less than race speeds. The Tyco stuff was USA-1 Electric Trucking.
. Well, pretend your have old trolley lines that used the underground conduit method of power distribution, like the old Washington, DC or Manhattan systems:
Due to the lack of tractor beams at this late date, you’re pretty much stuck w/ physical (slots, wires, embedded strips) or magnets (the Faller Car system uses a magnet on the vehicle which follows an embedded wire in the streets, with special control units at key location to allow wehicles to stop, pass, pull-over, etc).
Woud it be possible to change things around a bit for a cheaper system (it must be, as I have seen and read about such things for years) - still have a thin styrene sheet road surface, UNPOWERED vehicles with strong magnets in their floors and free rolling wheels, underneath the street a plastic tube, inside the tube a plastic track (like a monorail) along which travels magnets mounted on little sliding “sleds” (C-channel sections?) tied to each other so they pull themselves along like…train-like (well, more conveyor belt like, but hey, this is a model railroading forum) - put a vehicle or severval on the road, eventually a magnet picks it up and along it goes (many magnets allows for irregular spacing of vehicles). Not quite sure of the conveyor drive system, but that was probably figured out 50 or so years ago - start searching your MR 75th Year DVD!
So would streets filled with McLarens, GT500s and NASCARS. [(-D]I should have clarified: I was planning on buying the bare chassis, then using them to power true(er)-to-scale ho vehicles. Specifically large trucks, as it would be somewhat easier to retrofit the slightly oversize chassis components into a model of that size.
Scale fidelity isn’t so much of a concern…I can correct that. I’m more concerned with how to get them to operate a scale speeds reliably. What’s your opinion on re-gearing the chassis to get them to run slower?
You might find some of the old Atlas stuff on eBay, they made plenty of ‘normal’ cars instead of everythign a race car. They were also a lot more in scale back then. Today’s “HO” slot cars are a caricature of real cars, even more so then Cup cars are ‘stock’ cars. I have some slot car magazines fromt he 60’s, my Dad was briefly into that crazy as well as trains, and so many of the articles were on making REALISTIC car models that could also race, in 1/32 and 1/24 scale. I even made one, similar to one of the old articles, using a static car model kit for the body and putting iton a 1/32 slot chassis.
I had pondered something like that, except I was thinking of using powered trucks w/ a magnet epoxied to the top riding on code 100 flex track just under the roadway. It just seemed a little too complicated, costly and prone to maintenance and reliability issues.
Although, the thought of magnets fixed to 30 pound test pulled through a channel might not be too bad. The whole affair could likely be powered by one of those Walthers motorizing kits.
I can say the I have not, nor have I ever seen such a thing.
Even the Faller system doesn’t work all that well. We use that at the museum, but it requires constant monitoring. We have ended up with trucks trying to driving across the yard once they lost their “track”.
Theoretically the answer is yes. Aurora Model Motoring even had fixed position throttles where one could set the speed. The real problem is the cars. Slot cars are designed to go fast. There is no thought given to their “low speed” performance. To make it work one would have to do all the same things we do to locomotives to get low end performance. Gear them down. Upgrade to precision motors. Increase the reliability of the electrical pickup. and so on. The biggest issue is the size. Even the Aurora cars with the vibrator motor and pancake motors were too large. Then how does one work with that tiny space. Z-scale motors & gears?
The only “simple” I can imagine for the Aurora MM pancake motors is the opposite of “hot widing” the motor armatures. What we used to do was unwinde all the wire off the armatures, and re-wind it with larger wire but fewer winds. So one would have to undo the stock winds and re-wind with more turns of finer wire. Playing with 34-40 gauge wire is not fun.
How about a bicycle chain on its side with as many magnets attached as you wished. You could dictate the size of curves and change the path followed by using different size chain sprockets. Also it would be easy to attach a motor to one of the sprockets. It could be as long as you wanted by just adding more chain. The road would have to be thin styrene and magnets would need to be place in the vehicles.
I built something similar in Elementary school for a grade 4 science fair in 1967. We used an old piece of counter Arborite for the table and painted roads on it. We put magnets on clothesline cord and used clothesline pulleys for the turns. We used old Matchbox toys for the cars. The magnets we used came out of an automotive part of some kind ( we had connections). I have no idea what, but they were strong. It was hand cranked and not very durable, but lasted the one night of the science fair.
The car and trucks speeds and overall smoothness of movement are easily the least realistic things on those incredible Minatur Wunderland videos that everybody who knows I like trains seem to be emailing me lately.
I had Tyco slot cars in the mid 1960s (a totally proprietary type of track as I recall) and they were reasonably close to HO size.
Here are two impractical ideas for the dreamers and Edisons amoung us …
I saw one display layout that had a oval race track with race cars – quite an attention getter – and the gimmick was that there was a powerful magnet mounted below the surface of the race track and the cars were following the magnet. If a magnet could somehow be made to slowly follow a fixed course right below the street I wonder if the car or truck above would look realistic?
The other idea is taken from a gimmick layout that made the rounds of train shows about 20 or more years ago – anyone else remember it? – with incredibly tiny trains that moved seemingly by magic. What it was, was the track was actually a series of angled holes in the table top, the trains were hollowed out, and a fan down below blew air into those angles holes, pushing the train forward.
Now we do not want angled holes in our streets – that is the objection to slot cars after all – but the main thing, is that what guided the trains was clear plastic sort of a fence, almost invisible. I wonder if a similar nearly invisible clear plastic fencing or pathway with a battery operated car would be a possibility?
Actually I think that video link of “Lorens Animated Highway” that J. Campbell posted a few posts back is essentially that, and also the same concept as my “string of magnets riding a plastic track”, although the bike chain is much simplier, more reliable, and easier to get parts for (bike chain and sprockets).
Looks like the key is:
Unpowered vehicles w/ magnets
Thin streets (probably styrene sheet or card)
A moving guide system underneath the street to pull the vehicles along, and I agree a bike chain with magnets mounted seems to work well.
On the minus side, you can’t make individual vehicles stop, pull over, or pass, but that doesn’t seem to be a big issue for the OP.
On the plus side, once you get the right magnets and chain spacing, low cost AND use any vehicle with free rolling wheels you’d like, including the $4.99 Model Powers - and NO BATTERIES or recharging system. Imagine a 6 lane freeway (3 each direction) with 6 separate chains*, hidden loops at each end to turn the vehicles - now that would be really YouTube worthy!
*(Sort of slow/middle/fast lane speeds - I guess you could gang all 3 lanes in each direction, but that wouldn’t be as cool)
I agree. I think the key is to not have them start/stop…at least not on the visible portions of the layout. For instance, if you were to feature a few lengths of highway where the higher speeds would be appropriate and have the vehicles dive off the layout to some type of “hidden staging” if you will, it would do a lot to increase the realism.
The travel speed is dialed back and you could have the road dive off behind a treeline or into a tunnel to a staging area.
I think the city scenes where these thinks screech to a halt at stop lights and then take off like John Force on the green really kill the realism. However a meandering highway scene I think could really do a lot to compliment a layout.
One other consideration is slot car road/track is generally with sectional fixed dimensions requiring planning around the roadway. This is similar to planning a train layout only using using sectional track with less flexibility.
I was planning on making my own roadway out of plywood (think cookie-cutter benchwork) and using a router to cut the slots for the guide and power wires. However, now I’m thinking I’m going to experiment with the bicycle chain method.
You can get tons of different cars besides those ones. Camaros, Vettes, Trans ams and even VW Beetles are made in HO sclae slot cars. Your not going to get a HO scale slot car motor in a TRUE HO scale truck. [(-D]
