Renovation Raceway

[Alan Barton]

Lets see if this works!

[Alan Barton]

Well, it was a fight but I seem to have one photo in place.  Nice of PB to slap a watermark over it but it is a start.

This is the approx 1/64 scale diorama that I created about two years ago.  I had the idea in my head for about 15 years but "hadn't got around to it".  We ahve been renovaating our house for many years and my wife does all the bricklaying - I am just the labourer.  The catch is, I'm not allowed to stand and watch but I'm not allowed to be so far anway that she can't call for mortar, tools, water etc.  So I was looking at this pile of cast off building materials in the garage and wondered, maybe it's time to start that diorama?

I had the worn old coffee table for years but I wasnt about to build a diorama in a carpeted room so I needed to build a box that I could pull in and out of the coffee table as I progressed.  The basic box was made out of an old Masonite back from a demolished wardrobe. I then blocked out the shape of the track with scraps of pine and foam packaging.

[Alan Barton]

[Alan Barton]

OK, looks like it worked this time. My allergy to computers and my craft is conspiring to knock me out but I'm going to keep trying!


I cut a couple of long strips of Masonite to outline the crash barrier wall.  A chunk of particle board was glued into the middle of the track and then the banking of the infield down to the racing surface was roughed in with the cardboard mailing jacket of my Rodder's Journal magazines.  Finally, I started using up an old tin of bondo that was getting a bit stiff to begin the inner curb and some banking.

The white gunk is ceiling compound (you guys probably use similar stuff on dry-wall) that was too old to use on the house but perfect for a base to flow out the roughness of the foam packaging material.

[Alan Barton]

Those two bolts sticking up in the middle of the infield came from a jointing system for an old modular desktop.  I embedded the threaded socket underneath the chipboard.  The little bent brackets, also part of the jointing system, now gave me handles that would let me neatly pull the whole module up and out of the coffee table.  When not required, I simply thread them and place two wreckers or pusher utes over the remaining holes.  Simple!

The design of Renovation Raceway is heavily based on my beloved Forrestfield Speedway, a grass roots track that ran for about twenty years up until 1981.  The shape is about right but it is necessarily shortened in length to fit the coffee table.  The real track was over 5/8th of a mile, huge for an Aussie speedway!

The infield was coated with a layer of chips and dust from my brick cutting efforts for our reno.  The track surface itself was mud collected from the mudflaps off one of our company utes whilst I travelled through the outback on a training job.  After this was sprinkled on, I made a mix of water, white glue and dishwashing liquid that I applied with a Windex sprayer to the whole surface.  It dries clear and flat but now all that dirt is locked in place.

The grassy surfaces began with sawdust out of the bag on our circular saw. Forrestfield was originally built in a  gravel quarry so vegetation was pretty sparse!

[Alan Barton]

Forrestfield originally only had dirt banks around the track that spectators used to park upon but after a supermod had a steering failure and launched up the banking and over the cars, clearing people off the roof of the cars and killing and injuring several, a safety fence was built out of railway sleepers embedded on end into the dirt.  This was a fence that took no prisoners!  I cut up over one hundred popsticks, into threes, scored them with a razor saw and then randomly sprayed shades of black and grey over them to resemble weathered timber.  These were then individually glued to the masonite frame that I built earlier.

The infield tyres were made from slices off some old rubber fuel line.  We've got a field of Hot Wheels, Matchbox and Action Collectibles, sprintcars doing a bit of wheelpacking here.

At this stage, the only money I had spent on the entire project was about $20 worth of white glued - this project drank it like a blown Hemi!

[Alan Barton]

Here is where I had to use a bit of artistic licence!  Ideally, I would love to have had a big old pit area to display my collection but the size of the coffee table wasn't going to let that happen so I just squeezed a few vignettes in to hint at a pit area.  Here is a bunch of Aussie Holdens and Falcons in 1/87 scale.  Some I have had since I was about 12 years old!  I hope all the competitors in B Grade Stock Production get on because it is going to take a bit of patience to get lined up for the next heat!

The tree was made out of a bunch of old copper wire, left over from the wiring of our new garage.  I wrapped it with masking tap and a bit of Bondo and we used moss from a friend who is a florist to get a bit of Aussie gumtree happening!  There was always one big tree on the back straight of Forrestfield but I can't remember exactly where it was - this will have to do!

[Alan Barton]

So for tonight I will leave you with the Start of Season Grand Parade!  Talk to you soon!
Cheers
Alan

[sentsat71]

luv' that track diorama!!!

[Brian Conn]

....That track looks exactly like the Red dirt tracks in Oklahoma!   Oh and by the way, welcome aboard

[Alan Barton]

Here we are looking over the pack as they barrel into Turn 3.  In reality, Forrestfield for most of its life was  run in a clockwise direction - this was to keep drivers of Aussie right hand drive vehicles off the fence.  The one exception was Super Stocks which was the ultimate sedan class in its day.  This was because the big city track, Claremont, some thirty miles away, was an anti-clockwise track like the rest of the world and the SuperStocks did most of their racing at Claremont.

However, I have seen some footage of the early eighties where all divisions were racing anti-clockwise.  I never got to see this as I was 1000 miles away in the mining town of Paraburdoo  with my first high school teaching job so I never got to see her swansong.  This was also about the time sprintcars arrived big time in Australia - Forrestfield was mainly a supermodified track with the likes of the Edmunds Supermod and Lindberg Sportsman Class racer making up the fields.

I saw a trick in the Australian War Museum many many years ago where they had military battlefields constructed using forced perspective. Large soldier figures were placed up close to the viewer with noticeably smaller figures off in the distance.  This greatly expanded the apparent depth of the diorama.  I took this idea and bent it a little bit for Renovation Raceway.

Most of my spectator cars are a smaller scale.  Older Matchbox cars, HO railway accessories and even some uber-rare Aussie cereal toys are all somewhere around 1/87 scale.  On the other hand, most of my racers are considerably more contemporary in the modern scale of 1/64th.  The smaller cars make the track appear longer and the track being recessed into the ground ( it had been a gravel quarry for making Perth roads for many years) keeps the disparity of scale from being too screamingly obvious.

Overall I am happy with the result.  I have plans to put some speaker poles up and some tiny wire fences are needed to keep the spectators from getting to close to the fence.  I recently acquired  a box full of tiny scale figures and they already make a difference by adding more life to the scene.  I will post some more photos when these things are done.

Cheers
Alan

[Alan Barton]

Hi Brian, still building plenty of Fords I guess?

Yeah Australian tracks in the sixties and seventies were often distinctly red and many of the rural tracks still are.  However, for the last thirty years or so, Australian speedway promotion has been totally dominated by sprintcars so the big city tracks are invariably American style black clay and all the other divisions just have to deal with it.  Australia still runs multiple divisions on the same night - sprints, midgets, late models, Super Sedans, even junior sedans and Formula 500s.  On any given night you might see four or five divisions alternating.  In my teenage years, you saw EVERY division EVERY night, and that included the highly popular solo and sidecar bike racers.

These days the bike guys have to build their own speedways because you just can't slide a bike on clay - you need a loose surface.

Cheers
Alan

[Dirtman]

Very, very nice. Great ideas and great ways if putting those ideas to work!

Rett

[steven]

Welcome back and good to see this awe inspiring table. Its way cool. 

[Brian Conn]

Hi Brian, still building plenty of Fords I guess?

Yeah Australian tracks in the sixties and seventies were often distinctly red and many of the rural tracks still are................
  Cheers
Alan

 
 Yep, still building Ford, Mercury, Edsal and Lincoln dirt track stock cars...as of earlier this year I was able to pick up a 1984 thru 1992 Lincoln Continental Mark VII resin body to complete the family.....I'm just not turning out as many complete builds as I wish I could

  If you had not said anything reference the dio track, I could have as easily assumed that it was a track from Oklahoma having a Sprint car race...its that convincing