Off The Rug

I took advantage of some spare time [and spare stuff] and put together a "table" to put layouts on. It's pretty much square, at about 8' x 8':

Layers: coffee tables, doors [w/out handles], shelving, rug. So technically, I'm not "off" the rug.

Having a square space kinda limits what I can do regarding layouts. This one is slapped together and is okay, but not a favorite. The various shelving pieces make great track gradients, especially when put under the rug. There are about two cheap ikea bookshelves worth of wood slats there.

Fun factor increased tenfold, and I can either sit on a chair or stand up and have much better view and control of the cars. It's more worth it to me to walk around to the other side of the track to reslot a car than it is to crawl around on my knees all session.
This revived both lanes as well, and I've been switching back and forth with the SCP-1 controller. My biggest fear now is having a car go off the side, so I decided to break out the barriers I never use:

Track with barriers attached....for about 15 minutes.

Let me say this: slot cars are expensive. There's a reason I don't have more track and more cars, and that's because I don't have a bunch of money. But this is the first time since I've had this track in forever that I've used the barriers that came with the kit. They were so ignored that they were buried deep in a box somewhere, along with the attachments.

And while slot cars are expensive, they're also great to look at. And putting these red and white blinders up just ruins everything. I'd rather risk losing the car over the edge than to put those up. You might think I was insane for doing something like that while running cars without magnets, but it's only me, and I haven't lost a car yet.

So they lasted 15 minutes and about two laps with the R18, plus a minute or two for some quick pics, then they were off and back in a box. They'll never be seen again. For about 0.16 seconds I thought about painting them, but figured it probably wouldn't work. Anyway, I don't need a wall to run my cars around on, I'll stick to the inside lane for now.

I mean, seriously. Maybe painted totally white, but then it's still a wall. I just want a run-off.