Blackberry Raceway

[cheesy]

I walked away from this over the summer. It's still a thing and still not working right. Thought that maybe the dc power supply may be lying to me on the current output so I swapped in a 12v deep cycle battery for poops and smiles. Still no love. Ripping out the tape and trying again.

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As I can't do anything on the Diesel Project for the time being, I ripped the tape off the track last night. Believe it or not, it took a good two hours to remove all of it. The trash can looks like it's full of copper shavings. I have some cleaning and paint touch up to do along with building another applicator.

No timeline, just something to do when there's nothing else to do.

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I'm back at this thing.

I gave up on the routed and taped track surface. Test it. Test it again. Test it a third time. Every test passed. The car runs a dozen feet and quits. Try another car, same thing. Sigh. Give it two middle fingers and walk away. For a year. And then some.

I'm going with something that works and that is a boatload of Tyco HO slot car track. I managed to score something like 100' of track for less than $!00, along with the controllers and transformers. I got three different lengths of straights, three different curve radii, banked curves, cross overs, chicanes, wiggles, loops, and lap counters. Everything but the cars.

Still going with four lanes. That kind of complicated things, but I kinda sorta figured it out. After I laid down the fake green stuff, this was the first layout, less the pylons.


Unlike the track I raced on as a kid, this one has no inside lane benefit. I still wasn't 100% for this layout because it seemed a bit too easy. So, I got creative with some of the extra track pieces and came up with this monstrosity, less the pylons.


There are three levels, four crossovers, two chicanes, and no inside lane benefit on the whole thing. Two long straights, four short straights, two medium straights. And something like twenty curves.

There are not enough Tyco pylons in the boxes I got with all the track pieces. They probably wouldn't work with the steep banks anyway. So, the miter saw, some 1 x 2s, glue and a nail gun will see some use in the next couple of days.

And I still have a lot of track pieces left over.

[cheesy]

OMG, it actually works.

I used a bunch of junk to just support the track and did a bunch of cleaning on one lane. I also found my Screamln' 67 Firebird I built up in grade school, with available speed parts, almost sixty years ago. Yeah, I got about 15 laps out of it, before it launched off the track at the first curve and landed badly. There's a T-Jet rebuild kit coming for it.

I started on the pylons last night until I ran out of 1 x 2 boards. I'll rip some 2 x 4s tonight or tomorrow and try to finish up before the weekend.

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About ready to call this a success.



Part of the fleet, all T-Jets.


L to R: 67 Firebird, two AMXs, and a 58 Plymouth.

The Firebird was the terror of the HO track at The Hobby Barn in Antioch, IL in the late 60s, early 70s. Over fifty years later, the new T-Jets are calling it an old man. No gumption. I just did an overhaul on it with new brushes and pick ups but the tires are so old that there is little traction. I gotta order some new ones and put the other ones in their place.

The cabinets that Mrs.C wanted replaced...those are now my new workstation in the basement.

[JerryHawk250]

Boy, i want to come over to your house and play. Nice setup.

[cheesy]

Originally Posted by JerryHawk250

Boy, i want to come over to your house and play. Nice setup.

Thanks. C'mon by. Just brace yourself for the cold and a dog that can't hold his licker.

[cheesy]

I added cars to the fleet today.


We learned of an old timey hole in the wall hobby store about twenty miles NW of us. Mrs.C kind of twisted my arm that we needed to go to see it. Kind of a small and seedy looking joint. I found a few vintage parts that would work with the Firebird but was a bit disappointed with what I was seeing. The owner then told me to open the door to the back room.

O M G. There were hundreds of HO slot cars, model car kits, model rocket kits, and boxes of used parts. Mrs.C told me to go nuts. Problem I have in those situations is I get overwhelmed with so many choices and almost freeze up. Gimme three choices and I'm good. Mrs.C is just the opposite. Give her three choices and she'll want to know what's in the back room.

Three cars are Autoworld T-jets. The burgandy 71 Javelin and blue 79 Jeep CJ are T-Jet Xtractions. The black 57 Studebaker is a basic T-jet and slower than the Firebird. Also known as a Clean Slate. The red 82 Mustang is a Life Like, which I'd never heard of. It was the cheapest of the four. Also the fastest. And I mean fast.

Figures I'd get this all set up and the weather starts tuning nice.