An interesting track build into the future
Hello,
what a great place y'all have here
this weekend I am going to try to build a multi car (3 lane) mountain track
from scratch,
current list of materials:
2" pink foam
3 - 6" x 4' cardboard tubes
discarded flooring (6" strips)
glues
additional cardboard tubes of various diameters
elastomertic roofing compound for road surface
edited for new materials:
metal tape and jumbo skewers for straightaway guardrails
disassemble to transport
4' X 2' footprint (yes 48" X 24")
hoping for 40' of track in it
based upon the concept of vintage futurism cities
it also needs to be easy to build the corners
they will be all routed/shaped foam
I will share all weekend (hopefully)
again, thanks for all the knowledge I have gotten,
maybe I can contribute something back
dr
Discussion
so, progress for the weekend
6 corner blanks with 45° add ons done
weighted floor boxes made, but not weighted
simple roll tests yielding hopeful results,
along with power shaping with a sander tests on scrap
(will most likely use 220 wet for finish, and dust control)
the idea is to try and create 3 lanes for racing depending upon the car
hope to launch 4 lanes, wit 2 added launch bays
EMT's in one, out of control semi in the other
(the semi is chaos canyons fault...the street sweeper...lol)
with this in mind for scenery
- It looks great, can't wait to see it finished. An idea occurs to me so that all the curves are not in the same direction, you could cross a straight line to equalize the number of curves to the left and right, I don't know if I'm explaining myself. All the best — riditz
- I think I can fit 2 more curves in, and was seriously thinking about adding another 15° to the 180 curves so I can cross over. It come out as a weird angle with the current curves and suspect it would try to sling the cars into the crossovers gaurd rails to hard — dr_dodge
- I did some mock ups last night, and am gonna pass on the crossover. Messes up the look, and I think I will be hard to see unless you look straight down on it — dr_dodge
So, I glued and spiked the corner assy's last night
each corner is 2 pieces of pink foam, a lower and the 45° added outside rim
the shape is below. so now I would like some input. what shape should I make the corners?
so I am thinking about something like this, (the blue lines below)
corner entry is flat, and then the trought starts
sanding the trouth so the corner is still downhill even though the panel is level
what do y'all think the best shape would be? I have 6 corners and would consider any shape.
I can even make 6 different corners, too and see which is better.
I really want the cars to attempt to settle in 3 lanes and race
(the corner is 24" across the flat)
the various shapes will be the angle/contours of the curve
I think you should try to make the whole turn banked . Otherwhise , the cars might loose a ton of speed , or fly off the track when they hit the turn's outside wall .
(that much banking worked well enough)
I made a tutorial about how to make banked turns in cardboard . It wasn't the waterial you were going to use , but it can still be interesting : www.redlinederby.com/topic/tutorial-how-to-build-180-curved-cardboard-turns/5103
I plan on the curve to be banked, and sloped
I think the first attempt at a curve will try to follow this shape
15° angle changes (in aerodynamics sharp 15° angles are the same as a curve, so hoping this applies to HW's)
I can make my sander block the same 15° cuts and hopefully shape this easily
about a 1" drop from corner entry to exit
with any luck, I can get the cars to "lane up" like this
First tests of the straights has gone well
One of the goals is for the 5 1/2 ft long straights to not have tall retainer walls that obscure the cars. Control of the cars will be by directing the wheels below any body overhangs. The straight is a composite flooring plank, floor finish down, with the smooth plastic surface up. The pointed ends were cut off the skewers, and they were stacked, overlaped and covered with metal tape. The gaurd rails are less than 1/4" tall, but deflected/controlled the cars great (except off roaders, but that will be a different track)
the metal tape I used, bought locally
will take some pics this evening
well, I have come over to the dark side, lol
I bought 3 nascar crash sets today at wally world today
I am going to use the foam to support the crash corners
itching to start running cars, and watching y'all's vids, those curves work well
has anyone ever contacted adventure toys for single parts? If I do 90° corners, I can get 3 extra corners, but need the transitions
by the way, set that thing up (1 set) outside and instantly droze the cat to overdrive, hilarious
dr
Been a while but tore off into this thing today,
using crash track very stable with 4 corners, orange trak launch, rocked!
2 more layers , Very UN stable, need weight in the boxes. and a lateral bar (maybe 2 for ease of setup
scrounged a bunch of 1/4" stainless rods ~10" long
holes in the thick cardboard tubes hold the corners up well, need more, and better spacing.
easy to re adjust to figure this out
used all 3 sets of crash w/ X as a splice (need more track...lol)
and 4 orange sectionals for the hand launch
very happy so far, will post pics (vids?) this weekend
Did some testing, this is what the current config is
Need more grade in the top sections, less in the lower 2
cars ran pretty good
What a great theme. Sounds like you may be a Metropolis fan. There is a subreddit called RetroFuturism that may be helpful for ideas if you need some. Looking forward to seeing this come together.