January-December – 2009
I did not get very much accomplished over the span of 2009. I was still very involved in slot cars. Sculpting new Speed Inc bodies, organizing the “Racing to the Future” events, consulting for various slot car manufacturers and writing for Slot Car Illustrated kept me very much involved. I did however, start working up buildings for the track. I completed scale drawings for Pit Garages, Grandstands and other buildings (Cardboard Building Plans) that will be scattered around the racing facility. So let’s take a look at the first building I’m prototyping, the pit garage. There haven’t been any new, modern design or historical racing oriented buildings in HO scale for quite some time. The few that were manufactured by Aurora, Atlas and Faller are now collector’s items and garner a fairly hefty price tag. Model Motoring released a small production of copies of the Aurora curved bleachers (MM Bleacher Kit), but that has been the only recent, racing specific structures in HO scale. So that left me two choices, save up a pile of cash to spend on the collectible buildings, or fabricate my own. The engineer side of my brain insisted that I build my own. I think it was working in tandem with the cheapskate side of my brain too. So with that decided, I started looking at historical racing facilities.
Research, Plan, Research Some More…
Because I’m building two different eras of racing on one table, with two separate tracks, the scenery and buildings are going to have to be close to the same architecture. There’s a 20-30 year gap in the times I’m trying to capture. The 1960’s road course (Bridgehampton, Paramount Springs, Riverside) and the 1980’s time frame in stock car racing (Talladega, Daytona, Darlington) will be combined to bring in the best of both worlds and add to the atmosphere of the layout. Finding pictures focusing on the facility structures are few and far between. However, there are tons of pictures with these buildings in the background. A little scanning or copying and some Photoshop zooming, you can see a good amount of the details. In my designs, I have incorporated elements of several buildings to come up with structures that reflect the era, but are unique to Woodrum Ridge Raceway. All of the structures I will create will be built out of cereal boxes or similar weighted cardboard. The only piece I buy for the assembly is a piece of foam board for the bases and some basic white glue.
Dual Pit Garages
The dual pit garages that will be created for WRR was a combination of the paddock garages at Bridgehampton and Riverside. The front stretch of both my tracks share a section between them just perfect for a centralized garage with room for a pit lane on each side (see picture below, building marked “G”). Each side of the garages will reflect the era they will be servicing, 1960’s for the road course side, 1980’s on the oval side. The design can be altered slightly to make the garages one-sided for a more traditional appearance.
Materials List:
I wanted to make these buildings out of something that was readily available, cheap and easy to work with. I had tons of cereal and cracker boxes available thanks to my two young daughters. So thanks to them, Post and General Mills I have enough building material to last a while. The cereal boxes are large enough to make the bigger pieces needed for large walls and the roof. Other boxes of similar material can be used for the smaller parts as well. I guess I’m accidentally recycling! The materials are easy enough to work with that this can be a project for your younger drivers too. Here’s what you will need:
1.) Plenty of cereal boxes. Avoid pieces that are bent or creased.
2.) White glue
3.) Foamboard or Presentation Board
4.) Hobby or craft knife. #11 or #10 blades are what I use the most
5.) Small Scissors
6.) Very Sharp Pencils and a good eraser
7.) A Straight Edge you can cut against, metal ruler etc.
8.) Patterns supplied here (Cardboard Building Plans)
9.) Paint (I use water base colors from Wal-Mart or Hobby Lobby)
10.) Brushes
11.) Rags to clean up with. (No matter how hard I try, paint and glue seem to have a mind of their own)
Here are some of the parts cut out from the cereal or cracker boxes.
The garage on the left was the first prototype the templates were created from.
Here are examples of the design templates. Do not use these pictured below, they are not to scale (1/64th). Go to Cardboard Building Plans link, to download the scale plans. After you download the plans, print them out and simply tape the plan to the cardboard and cut out the pieces using the lines as a guide. I use a metal ruler and a hobby knife to do this part of the operation. The edges of the cardboard come out square and crisp giving a better gluing surface and a nicer finish. I also use a heavy duty paper cutter I purchased from a local office supply store. In some cases, that gets a cleaner, straighter cut.
Parts is Parts
Make sure when you cut out your card board pieces to also cut out your assembly slots, windows and doors. Once the parts are assembled they will be much more difficult to cut out. Now you should have all of the parts cut and laid out, except the floor. Use the roof piece as a guide and trace the shape onto foam board. Cut that out with the straight edge and hobby knife like you did with the other pieces. Make sure to cut the edges square to the upper and lower surfaces or the walls will lean when you assemble them. Now you should have all of your parts and can began assembling the building.
Step 1: Start off by laying the floor piece down and gluing on of the shorter side walls in place. These will become your foundational pieces. Allow them to dry. A hair dryer/blow-dryer can speed the process up. Once the part is secure and dry, we can start building the remaining pieces on a sound foundation.
Step 2: Take one of the lower front banner pieces (there are 2, they are the wider pieces) and glue them to the foam board and the adjoining corner of the side wall (see Pic.). You can repeat this step for the other side. Take your time so you do not move the wall you just installed.
Step 3: Next we will place the upper banner wall in its location. Take your time and allow one side to dry before starting the second piece. This part will become the banner area for the car makes and sponsors and well as side supports for the roof.
Step 4: This step will place the roof supports that attach to the inside of the side walls. Make sure that you have the top of the support aligned with the bottom line of the upper banner wall. This will allow the roof to sit flush with the bottom of the upper banner wall and leave no gaps between the walls and roof. The second illustration below shows the finished location of the roof support.
Step 5: The interior walls also act a support for the roof. Make sure that you cut out your doorways, windows and assembly slots ahead of time.
Step 6: Here are the interior walls in position. The shorter wall section will slide under the counter top area that will be glued in place in Step 7. I leave the interior wall section unglued so they can be removed for clean up or any detail changes I may want to make in the future.
Step 7: Using the interior walls in place (not glued) secure your counter top sections to the lower banner rail and side walls. This will create a lip on the top of the lower banner wall and add a sense of depth. It will also be a great spot to place tools or pit crew “Coming over the wall”. Once the counter is in place, you will have to turn the shorter interior wall to remove and replace it. It will slide under the counter top adding rigidity to the structure.
Step 8: Placing the roof. Take the roof section you made in step 1 and slide it into position on the side wall supports and interior walls. I do not glue this section either, so it can be removed when I change scenes or add details.
That pretty well sums up the assembly of the pit garages at Woodrum Ridge Raceway. I will be building 6 of these units, creating 12 pit stalls for each track on the circuit. These pit garages were specifically designed to meet that need, It would be a simple adjustment to keep one end of the side walls solid to create garages that only need to face one direction. Detailing these garages will be the next article we’ll cover here. As you can see in the photos below, I’ve selected a color scheme of red and sky blue for the tracks logos and facilities. That will soon change. I have created brick and concrete block wall graphics on the computer and will print these as stickers using 8-1/2” x 11” adhesive backed labels and a laser printer. They have turned out pretty nice and I will post the process and some samples in later articles. We’ll add some sponsor and manufacturer banners, posters from historic races, garage calendars, tools and people, as the buildings develop.
Below are some additional shots of the first prototype building. I think this will answer my needs, just need to focus the detailing a bit more.
And here are some possible sources for pit crew and other figures.
A few adjustments and some paint….
It was now getting close to the end of the year, and I was now Owner/Director for “Racing to the Future”. RttF is an education program that teaches students from 3rd-12th grades about science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) using slot cars. Students build a slot car for drag race competition, documenting what they did to make it faster and explaining the STEM related parts of the process. So that put me on the road from September through November for regional competitions that year and left little time to work on WRR. So most of the work was relegated to research and a lot of picture captures off the Internet, referencing anything related to the surrounding environment of a racing facility. More ideas are starting to hatch in the ol’ brainpan!