Detailing Plastic Track - Great Article!

[HomeRacingWorld]

[Burrell]

I knew this article was coming at some point. Thanks for the great info, John! As someone in the process of moving and getting ready to rebuild my plastic track, I'm glad to have it for reference.

[chappy]

John what an excellent article you have put together.
kudos and thanks as I am sure many a racer will find valuable information
from your insights and experience.
Bob

[TsgtRet]

Outstanding article! As I am in the process of doing my plastic track layout, many of these processes are going to help. Thanks!

[mattb]

I've put together about every kind of plastic track the last 30 years and even some junky stuff back in the 60's. I've built routed tracks and currently Carrera plastic, which allows changes every year or towo.

I'd like to add 3 points.

Taps are really desired so your cars have immediate throttle response even on the back side of your track.

Track design can be a lot of things, but most important is "FUN". Forget "technical", "hi-speed", "realistic" and other terms. Design and experiment with your track so it is fun for you and everybody else. It's not much fun to constantly be putting cars back on the track and not being able to run a couple cars side by side lap after lap.

Track pieces can be cut to any degree of corner or straight length. You are not obligated to use only factory produced pieces. It takes minimal skill to remove rails and cut track and glue it back together. Rails can easily be cut to fit right back where they were or the track piece can have copper tape applied, which many guys like to put on all their plastic tracks. A glue gun and scrap plastic makes it easy to make up any kind of piece you need. From seeing the work on this website I bet most everybody can make track sections they desire. Plastic is fine, routed is fine. It's all fun and the same hobby.

[HomeRacingWorld]

[MichiganCur]

Nice, thanks for the info

Sent from my SM-G900V using Tapatalk

[ourwayband]

Well done!

Rusty

[Broman62]

Absolute great write-up John!!! :text-thankyouyellow:

[Hotrodbob]

That is great. I painted my last Carrera track with Rustoleum texture paint. It made a big difference for RTR cars, but not for the foam tire type cars. I will try the latex paint next.

Just quick question. I like the layout design, can you tell us the table dimensions?

[carlosinseattle]

In the first paragraph of the article John says "With some additional work (tuning) you
can eliminate all of the drawbacks of plastic – except one." What is the one drawback of plastic track that cannot be eliminated??????

[Czar]

Bob, sorry to be so late in answering your question. Table dimensions are: 16 ft. x 7 ft. The "esses" are made up of #3 and #4 curves.

Also, not sure I mentioned it in the article, but at the location of each lane change receptor light, I painted a small yellow bar. This is so the point of lane change can be seen and anticipated.

Carlos, the only thing that (in my opinion) you can't do with plastic is have lanes with custom radius corners and/or non parallel lanes, like Luf does with his layouts.

[Hotrodbob]

[SpeedyNH]

also with plastic track, you've got all those joints the cars click over. that one drove me crazy.

[bobbyraz49]

AWESOME advice. Thanks !