Hi All,
Continuing on with the structures that decorate my slot car layout, the largest paper model is the four-and-a-half foot long pit lane complex seen in the first photograph below. As it sits now, the structure is actually made up of two buildings, the line of eight connected pits and the yellow Continental, or “Conti” tower. These models recall the old structures that once stood near the Start/Finish line of the fabled 14 mile long Nurburgring racetrack in the Eifel Mountains of Germany. It’s because of this historic pit lane model that I decided to build more of the available paper structures from the notoriously dangerous track. The great Jackie Stewart once called the Nurburgring, “The Green Hell.” I named my layout Winzig Nurburgring, German for Tiny Nurburgring.
The 1/32 scale pits and tower were published by the German firm of Bauer and are unfortunately no longer available. Bauer still produces a 1/60 paper version of this pit lane to complement their HO line of slot cars, but they dropped this larger model some years ago.
For those interested in building a similar model, one is freely available at:
Carrera4Fun.de - Die Webseite für den Carrera UNI 132 und Slotcar Fan
There are many paper models for slot car layouts on the above site, and I’ll write more about Carrera4fun in later posts.
The pit lane and tower were an easy build, as nearly all the folds were a simple 90 degrees. The glossy finish on the paper needed a little more attention to stick together, but there were no real problems. The kit included both a large and small tool box and a shelf for each pit, but I wanted to fill up the small enclosures with more items, so I copied and built two sets of each box and shelf and this allowed me to more thoroughly furnish each pit. The pits sit on a long piece of painted fiberboard to keep them in line and make them easier to move for cleaning. The small enclosed room at the end of the line was a rest room that also served as a first aid and communications shack.
Another feature of the Bauer kit was all the colorful, rectangular signs that are seen along the roof railings of the pits. I copied these as well, and the copies can be seen around the inside perimeter of the track’s enclosure. The different signage found on the back of the pit building and inside the eight pits themselves came from the internet. The old racetracks were quite colorful, with a wide variety of signs scattered around the facilities, not at all like the more sterile but safer tracks of today. Finally, the gooseneck lights seen along the railing came with the kit as well.
At the real Nurburgring, the barrels on the pits roof were filled with gasoline that was gravity fed through a hose down to the ground, and that’s how they refueled the cars during a race. Safety was never much of a concern at the old Nurburgring. The plain paper templates for the barrels came from carrera4fun, and using Paint, I dropped in the gas company logos and set the finished barrels onto scratch built wooden racks. I omitted the fuel hoses in my model as they would have been a messy tangle and would have been easily broken.
My finished Conti Tower measures 19 inches tall to the top of the flagpole. The cardstock for all the Bauer kits on the layout was plenty stiff, so there was no need for any reinforcement. I made the tower’s flat roof from a thin sheet of aluminum, leaving plenty of room for the lone man with the binoculars.
In my last post, aansorge mentioned that a grandstand full of people might be a good addition to the layout. And while I thought about it, I went another direction. Scattered around my track are small, wicker windbreaks called strandkorbs, also available at carrera4fun. As you can see, they each comfortably seat two little plastic people.
The Nurburgring has grandstands, but it is worth noting that Europeans like to view their motor sports differently than Americans. We Yanks like to watch races on closed tracks, like NASCAR, where we can see most of the cars most of the time. However, spectators in The Old Country prefer to take a picnic basket along with some wine or beer and sit out in the countryside and watch a rally car go screaming by, one at a time. The hundreds of acres contained within the 14 mile long Nurburgring circuit are perfect for this European-style viewing, and the strandkorbs on my track give my layout that picnic feel.
All for now, more to come…
Score and fold,
Thumb Dog