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Old 11-17-2018, 01:35 PM
Thumb Dog Thumb Dog is offline
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Slot Car Buildings

Slot Car Buildings In Paper
Hi All,

Like tens-of-thousands of other boys my age, my most memorable Christmas present of 1964 was a brand new slot car set. It was a basic 6-volt, 1/32 scale Eldon set with the standard figure-eight of track and a pair of stock car racers. Eldon was then, and is now, on the lower end of slot car hierarchy, but I didn’t care. I was having a blast going ‘round and ‘round…and ‘round.

The set was expanded over the next few years until my interests changed from toy cars to real girls. (It turns out that the girls-thing is basically just another ‘round and ‘round thing, but the crashes are more momentous.) My beloved slot cars were finally given to my cousin for use in her special needs classroom where I’m sure the kids had a brief, but happy time with the layout.

Time-travel to a Minnesota hobby shop in late 2000. I was surprised to find myself in an isle full of huge boxes containing modern 1/24 and 1/32 slot car sets. I knew that the hobby still existed, somewhere…practiced by bearded eccentrics who smelled of both 3-in-1 and wintergreen oil. But this return of slot cars to a wider, more adult audience was a revelation. I immediately coveted the 1/24 Carrera Avus set that lay before me. It included an extended figure-eight of track along with a streamlined Mercedes W 125 and its Auto Union Type C counterpart. But, I didn’t have the money at the time, so I slunk back home, unfulfilled, but now keenly covetous.

Within the month, I had purchased a more reasonably priced Avus set off the internet. Even though I still fondly remembered my long-gone, custom-decaled, 1/32 Eldon slot cars, I had always wanted a layout using the larger, 1/24 scale cars. However, after finally getting the big, streamlined Avus racers, I realized I didn’t have the room or the budget for the beefier models. So, I resolved to scale back and build a 1/32 layout, set in the mid to late 1960s. Fortunately, the wide Carerra track from the Avus set would work with all current makes of 1/24 and 1/32 scale cars, too.

Assembling a collection of modern/retro cars and track was easy enough, but it turns out that 1960s themed slot car buildings are hard to come by. Few original plastic buildings were produced by the major slot car manufacturers of the time, and those that still exist are commanding high prices in the vintage model market. Limited-run manufacturers are continuing to produce plastic, resin, wood and cardstock buildings today, but they are usually too modern for my layout. As is often the case, the best way to get the models I want is to create them myself. So, it was time to clean off the cutting pad, stock up on some new blades and start cutting some cardstock.

But what to build? For nearly 40 years, I had wanted a copy of the Scalextric Control Centre, Model Number K/703. This large, expensive, three-tiered model was rare in the 1960s and is now the most coveted of all the slot car buildings, with some MIB examples selling for upwards of $500. As I didn’t have access to a model to measure, I thought I was going to have to guess at the dimensions. But luckily I found a page from the 1967 Scalextric catalog that not only listed the model’s length, width and height, but also showed pictures of the front and back of the elusive kit. A bit of internet image research also helped to fill in the gaps with the paper model’s design.

A second Scalextric kit needed to be built too, and that was the Marshal’s Hut, Model Number K/704. Both of my scratch built models are pictured below, and while I’ll provide some more insight into their construction later on in this thread, it’s time to wrap up this long-winded introductory post.

Thanks for sticking with me through some of my youthful reminiscences.

Score and fold,

Thumb Dog
Attached Thumbnails
Slot Car Buildings-img_1988.jpg   Slot Car Buildings-img_2007.jpg   Slot Car Buildings-img_1731-copy.jpg   Slot Car Buildings-img_2024.jpg   Slot Car Buildings-scalextric-catalog-1967.jpg  

Slot Car Buildings-img_1576.jpg   Slot Car Buildings-img_1734.jpg   Slot Car Buildings-img_1788.jpg   Slot Car Buildings-img_1789.jpg   Slot Car Buildings-img_1792.jpg  

Slot Car Buildings-img_1560.jpg   Slot Car Buildings-img_1774.jpg   Slot Car Buildings-img_1775.jpg   Slot Car Buildings-img_1779.jpg   Slot Car Buildings-img_1778.jpg  

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Old 11-17-2018, 02:25 PM
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SCEtoAUX SCEtoAUX is offline
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Well, shoot. That's purty neat.
You could come up with quite a layout for your slot cars using paper models.
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Old 11-17-2018, 04:09 PM
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Wonderful story. I look forward to future installments.

Don
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Old 11-17-2018, 06:47 PM
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Vermin_King Vermin_King is offline
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Very nice. I once thought about reworking my model railroad with card models, but the utter destruction left by my cousins while I was away at college depresses me every time I try to figure out where to start
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Old 11-18-2018, 09:07 AM
aansorge aansorge is offline
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always on the lookout for uses for the paper cutter in the basement.... i can see people in a grandstand being a candidate. Ten or so shapes, a couple color schemes for each shape, line them up in rows, that seems like it might be attractive.
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Old 11-18-2018, 09:24 AM
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Miles Linnabery Miles Linnabery is offline
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Dear Thumb Dog:
Epsom Printers has a paper modeling site with lots of 1/32 scale pit stuff for racing. and I remember a German site from 10years ago having a lot of paper models designed for slot car tracks. Try googling Bastalbogan slot car
Good luck,
Miles
If you have no luck PM me as I have files stashed on floppy and thumb drives
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Old 11-18-2018, 11:47 AM
Thumb Dog Thumb Dog is offline
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Hi All,

And hello, fellow paper modelers, and thanks for your comments. I haven’t said much about my slot car layout and the various paper building on it, but in future posts I’ll try to describe where I got the various buildings and how they were constructed. Some were purchased as printed models while quite a few were found on the internet. All this will be revealed in time.

And VK, I’m sorry to hear about the abuse your cousins committed on your train layout. We must all learn to respect other people’s toys. I’m guessing your trains are HO. And while I’m not current on available paper buildings for HO railways, there are a number of paper buildings out there for England’s slightly larger OO scale trains. Many of them are very nice. Don’t let the vandalism of others keep you from having the things you want.

Score and fold,

Thumb Dog
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Old 11-20-2018, 06:28 PM
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nebeltex nebeltex is offline
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I have a bunch of the Aurora/AFX stuff. Not long ago I found some small square (unfinished) wooden boxes. I bought a few and then printed out some exteriors. I made them each a different garage building, and with some padding on the inside, they made great storage for the racers.
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Old 11-22-2018, 01:29 PM
Thumb Dog Thumb Dog is offline
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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
Attached Thumbnails
Slot Car Buildings-img_1584.jpg   Slot Car Buildings-img_1617.jpg   Slot Car Buildings-img_1541.jpg   Slot Car Buildings-img_1622.jpg   Slot Car Buildings-img_1896.jpg  

Slot Car Buildings-img_1900.jpg   Slot Car Buildings-img_1572.jpg   Slot Car Buildings-img_1754.jpg   Slot Car Buildings-img_1756.jpg   Slot Car Buildings-img_1770.jpg  

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Old 11-30-2018, 12:27 PM
Thumb Dog Thumb Dog is offline
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Hi All,

The attached photographs show two more paper structures by Bauer of Germany, the Dunlop Tower and the white Shell Column. Last I saw, these 1/32 models were still available through a few German slot car retailers. The unique Dunlop Tower was built in 1954, and introduced the first electronic score board in the world. Placed just past the Start/Finish line, the tower served as the perfect roost for track officials to observe the race. Much has changed over the years at the Nurburgring, and judging by recent photographs, the Dunlop Tower no longer stands watch over the track.

Also shown below is the Bauer model of the Shell Column, the white model on the left. This column once stood quite close to the Dunlop Tower and the two are natural companions. The pair make good models for a slot car layout, as they are tall, colorful and most importantly, they both have a small footprint. This makes them much easier to place anywhere around the track.

The yellow Shell Column seen on the right is one of the many models that is freely available from:

Carrera4Fun.de - Die Webseite für den Carrera UNI 132 und Slotcar Fan

With its distinctive flair near its top, the shape of the yellow model is a more accurate representation of the original structure. Painted both white and yellow over the years, it served no other purpose than to advertise Shell Oil products. If recent pictures of the Nurburgring are any indication, it too was removed from the track some time ago.

Also seen in the pictures below is the Continental Clock, another offering from carrera4fun. I haven’t seen this clock in any historical photographs, but it may well have been part of the track. There are a few paper clocks around my layout, and they all seem to be set at about 10 minutes to 10. Everybody should be right at least twice a day.

It’s not that my memory is failing, it just takes me longer to remember what I forgot. Like the photograph of the back of the pits that I meant to include last week. See? I remembered.

Score and fold,

Thumb Dog
Attached Thumbnails
Slot Car Buildings-dunlop-tower.jpg   Slot Car Buildings-img_1716.jpg   Slot Car Buildings-img_1824.jpg   Slot Car Buildings-img_1826.jpg   Slot Car Buildings-img_1828.jpg  

Slot Car Buildings-img_1784.jpg   Slot Car Buildings-img_1780.jpg   Slot Car Buildings-img_1782.jpg   Slot Car Buildings-img_1785.jpg   Slot Car Buildings-img_1661.jpg  

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