From Scalextric to E. L. Moore

The E. L. Moore eBook is in the final stages of development - ok, well, the manuscript is almost done, and I'm revising it like crazy.

Early on in the book I talk about how I 'discovered' E. L. Moore by way of a youthful slot car obsession. A friend and I played with Eldon cars and Scalextric track in the summer of '73, and I went all out making buildings for our layout. In my search for building models I stumbled across the work of E. L. Moore, and the rest is history :-) 

A couple of weeks ago I started to wonder if a small Scalextric course for 1/32 scale cars could be built these days. By "small" I had in mind something around 2m x 1m that could be built on a thick foam base.  

PaperClip 7 using Scalextric Classic track

I looked around for a planning tool and came across RailModeller Express for the Mac. It has templates for Scalextic track, and only cost 99¢ at Apple's App Store for a version that can handle up to 50 pieces of track, which seemed like plenty for the little layout I had in mind.

I'd been doodling a paperclip shaped layout so that's what I tried to build. 

It turns out there are two types of Scalextric track: Classic and Sport.

Classic was discontinued years ago, but I remember it from childhood, so I tried something with it first. I was able to fit a layout in 2m x 1m without too much effort.

PaperClip7 using Scalextric Sport track

Sport is the current offering, and can be used for digital or analog layouts, whereas Classic was apparently only good for analog. Any layout I'd build would be analog.

A problem I found is Sport doesn’t offer a crossover on a straight section of track, only on an R2 curve! For reasons of geometry this forces all curves in the paperclip to be R2 and makes for a bulkier layout. Lengthwise the course just squeezes into 2m, but widthwise it's a good 20cm or so too wide.

I used 4 crossovers in the Sport version instead of just 2 to try and make the race as fair and equal as possible, but I wonder if it is too difficult. Clearly I need to keep experimenting with this tool.

Yes, RailModeller Express does allow you to design railroad track plans too as its name suggests! The full version of RailModeller doesn't have the 50 piece limit, so you can dream up a huge empire. It's a great tool if the Scalextric part is anything to go by and I'm looking forward to trying model railroad track planning with it.