Track Build Notes - Elevation and Mulsanne

A couple of posts ago I mentioned adding some found wood as under supports for the Mulsanne Straight. They work great, but I can see now where the under support will be a great equalizer regarding any radical track height changes I might try to introduce.

Here's my problem:

When I added the two flat pieces of wood, a few things happened. The first part of the Straight, coming right off the curve and going until the drop starts, had been previously at a very slight downhill the entire way. So once it hit the top of the hill it was already going downhill. The first wood piece smoothed that first section out, giving me an easier chance to raise the whole corner.

A level shot of how the beginning of the Straight had a slight downward slope before hitting the true downhill, which started at the white box support.

What also happened was, because of the addition of the 2nd flat wood piece, the bottom of the downhill was also a smoother transition. That was great going into the Kink and setting up for the Sweeper, but in adding the two pieces I ended up softening the drop of the hill.

So I'm adding an apex. It didn't have one since the highest part was the curve going into the straight, so I need to add one to give the up to the down. There's a point in the straight that, when you're racing, there's a noticeable unweighting of the car. You can hear it. I want the idea to be, if you're going to punch it through this section, expect a bit of a light race car.

With new, taller under supports added, the apex now begins and ends between the two Lego structures instead of at the turn before it, allowing for more of a drop.

I don't want the hill on my Mulsanne Straight to feel like a normal straight away. I want there to be a noticeable hill you have to negotiate to get just the right amount of speed, acceleration and then braking to be successful throughout the section. I got there on an early version of this hill, but since I've strengthened it is has lost that edge.

The angle of the hill itself was okay when the track was unsupported, as each individual piece would flex a lot more at the joint without any support. So the drop could be more radical, and there would be that ever present "clickclickclickclick" as the cars would race over the uneven track joints. The straight is as smooth as a carpet now, which contributes to the lack of hairiness in the drop. Gotta get that drop. That's the whole point.

The base of the hill. I'm going to run a pencil between the two layers of wood right about to center of this picture. That'll smooth out that slightly uneven joint. I have to be careful doing little things like that, though, because those types of changes are exactly what can smooth out the track and take out the strategic effectiveness of the hill itself.

There's also the issue of getting just the right banking at the Kink [and past it] to make an entry into the Sweeper that is fast. The thin wood allowed me to start the bank during the descent, which helped the other side of the Kink to drop a bit on the inside lane. There are a few points on the outside lane that need addressing now, though.

The run up to the Mulsanne Kink is looking great, but there are some issues with the outside of the track going in to the Sweeper. The area right where that black tuft is sticking out above the track needs a little support.

So that's what I'm talking about. I try to add about an inch of height in a section, and it ends up affecting a section 10 feet away.
In my years on the rug, I never bothered with elevating track, even when I was a kid. I was more into making a flat, fast track than bothering with all the loops and circles and crap. But that also meant that I didn't have any practical experience regarding that stuff. Now that I'm on a table and making a committed plan, I need to be satisfied with every square inch of the track before moving to the next step, which will be permanent installation of the under-support. I'll have to carefully measure out everything so that what's finished is the same height as what was in the plan. If I'm off anywhere, the track will run different than I want it to. That's no good.

Lego

Up until recently, the supports had been made out of a number of things: actual Carrera plastic supports, small blocks of wood, with the larger pieces being cookie boxes wrapped in unused black t-shirts. Yeah, not glamorous, but you do what you have to do. The problem is that I need to control each piece's overall height, and the cookie boxes are of finite proportions.

Here's where I switched to Lego. It just makes sense. I need a temporary, adjustable support that can hold up the track neatly, be adjustable in more than one direction, and serve as the support until the time it is replaced with the permanent version. I can't think of a better building block to use than Lego. Even doing something like banking a raised track section can be done very simply with a Lego structure on each side of the track. This will also help with adjustments that need to be made after any track adjustments are done anywhere else on the track.

This is one of those things that is perfect for Lego to be involved in, especially in the planning stages. Since adding it I have had much more flexibility in those portions of the track. I don't have enough to outfit the entire track, but I do have enough to work off the existing cookie boxes when I need to. They're holding up fine and will work just swell as base structures for a small Lego support.

A little over table-level, and it's easy to see just how high up the track gets in a short amount of space. So adding an apex also effected Pike's.  Most of the load is going to be put on the curve just to the right of the picture.

 There will be a point where I'll have to stop going higher. I still have plans to extend scenery behind the entire section, and it needs to be higher than track level at that point to stop cars from hitting the wall. The more I raise the track, the closer the roof gets, which cuts of my scenery possibilities. Between the border, the run-off, and the protective barrier, there will need to be enough space to handle scenery as well. My other option would be to make it a town instead of a forest and build a row of buildings against the wall. That has always been a thought in the back of my head. I could probably get away with a combination of both. Some houses going around the outside curve, followed by a forest section on the upper straight that tails off as the hill goes down.

Now you see it...now you don't.

I just talked to my wife about the need for wood for the under support, and she asked if I needed any more track pieces. I told her no, but that I will likely need some borders. She was okay with that and okay with the wood for the track, so the next step might happen sooner than I expected.

Naturally in a case like this racing takes a back seat to building. Nice thing is that it's all going to the same thing, which is making everything better. Just adding those two boards as under supports to the back straight made such an improvement I can't wait to get to the finished product. I expect much faster lap times than 5 seconds once it's all said and done.

When I recently ran the Midwinter Marathon, I neglected to mention that I had started working on the Mulsanne Straight after the race had already started. That's why I didn't make such a big deal out of the slower times. The #5 and #11 Fords ran before I added them, and I think track times improved as I went. I imagine if I re-ran the race for the Fords they'd be right up with the rest in points. Problem is, I can't really stop now and get an official run, because I've already improved the Straight again since running the other three cars. That means I'd have to run all five cars again to get a proper result. I'm not going to do that.

So, I'm going to suspend racing for a bit, work on the track build, finalizing my elevations, and running time trials. That'll give me plenty to do and still keep the racing fair. To be honest, I should probably disqualify that race from the program altogether. We'll see about that. Lap times will change until it's permanent, in which case I'll likely start over from scratch tracking car progress. There won't be any point in comparing the time of the cars on the finished track to what they ran when the track was under construction.

This is the 100th post on this blog. I didn't think it was going to be what it was. Originally it was just going to be some cool shots of my basic track and that was about it. But, as the slot car fever gets hotter and hotter, so does the need to do something like this for completion purposes. I don't know if anybody reads it, and that's great if there are people actually reading it. But I won't let any of that slow me down around here.
So, happy 100th post to me. Let's see how fast we can get to 200.