Building Martinsville Speedway

Making a portable 1/64th scale track for the Real Action Stockcar Championship board game and other stock car race games.

Every year my gaming club BattleGroup Boston runs a gaming convention HAVOC. For this year I decided I wanted to run a stock car game. I had toyed around with different ideas. I wanted a something I could travel with, and was of reasonable size. I had considered a track with moveable sections, but shapes that I would need tended to be awkward. So I decided to keep with a simple oval, and NASCAR's shortest track Martinsville was a logical choice.

Martinsville has been described as "two drag strips connected by two 'U' turns." Its 800-foot straights in 1/64th scale would be 12 ½ feet long - a bit big for my wants. So I scaled the design down to fit on a 6-foot long table. Also, I planned on using this track with a number of different stock car games. Since one of the games required the track be divided into units of 10, I had an additional constraint that my track would have only 40 spaces.

To make the track portable, I decide that I would build a folding case that would be easy to move about and rugged. A 1/64th scale car is about 1 ¼ inches wide and 3 ¼ inches long. After taking the measurement, I then promptly forgot the ¼ inch of additional length and thought the length was only 3 inches. I based all my calculations on this shortened length. This would haunt me later when I went to play with the track. It's not a huge error, but in a crowded field the cars get very tightly packed.

The case I planned would be 33 inches long, and 24 inches wide internally, with a 2 x 1 inch frame around 3 sides. The banking of the corners would be done using ¾ inch pink foam insulation; the track walls would be made of foamcore board. The straights would have 14 spaces and the corners would have 6 spaces. The track itself would be 6 inches wide about 4 lane. The inner pit road would have room for 18 pit stalls and be 2 lanes wide.

Materials

Paints

white, charcoal, soft gray, cadet gray, black (dela creamcoat craft paints) and a random house paint I had laying around for painting the case.

Lighting System

Stage 1 - The Case

I had a friend of mine help me with this. He had a table saw that we used to cut the plywood down to the correct length and split my planks in half for the frame. I had kept one piece of planking un-split to be used as an end cap for the case.

I then assembled the case, gluing and nailing the frame onto the plywood base pieces. Once it had dried I painted up the case. I then added the latches, rubber feet and handle. You need the feet to space the latches off floor so the case can stand upright.

Stage 2 - The Corners

I cut the corners from the ¾ inch pink foam. I had planned on the corners having a radius of 1 foot. Then it occurred to me that I would have to allow for the thickness of the foamcore walls, so I changed the radius to 11 5/8 inches. Then I made the width 6 inches.

Also, I had to allow for the graduation of the banking down to the level track. The solution was to cut an additional 6 inch straight section at the bottom of each corner and then cut back to the inside curve.

Shaping the curves was a challenge. At first I tried to do it with a knife, but I found the right tool was a rasp. This made short work of the banking. I allowed for about 1/8th inch lip so I wouldn't break the foam.

The next part was the wall around the corner. I had planned on the wall being ½ an inch tall and following the line of the track. I cut a strip of foamcore 1 ¼ inches tall and planned on wrapping it around the corner, stopping at the point where the banking started to level out.

This turned out to be a major pain - foamcore doesn't like to bend. The solution was to score the entire length of the strip. I glued the foamcore to the pink foam with Liquid Nails. It was a tricky bit getting the foamcore to align with the bottom of the pink foam and to wrap tightly to the corner. I found that a string wrapped around the corner would hold the foamcore tightly to the pink foam. I used wire nails to ensure the foamcore didn't slip down. I later poured white glue liberally into the gaps and tried to fill holes with it. This was a bad mistake. White glue doesn't sand well and would cause me much heartache later when I was refining and fine sanding the banking. I would later learn wood putty was the right choice for this job.

Once the corner had dried, I then glued the corners into the case with the Liquid Nails. I added additional outside walls, including a section that would go from the top of the banking to the level track.

Stage 3 - The Walls

Once again, the curved sections were the hard parts. I decided as I was sanding down and smoothing out the banking that it would be a good idea to keep a lip on the inside of the banking. This would give me something with which to align the inner wall. I cut strips of ½ inch tall and scored them as required - with the smaller radius, the scoring will create fairly noticeable gaps. To make the walls stronger, I nailed them down with wire nails at about 4 inch intervals. On the corners I added quite a few more.

I then cut a template out of scrap pink foam to make a guide for the inside pit wall corner, using the same methods I used on the inside track wall. Laying out the straight was easy, but I joined the 2 case halves to ensure correct alignment.

Stage 4 - Insanity: the Lighting System

After I had put the walls in, I had the idea of putting in a track lighting system. One of the features of Martinsville is its garage. This is a long low open shed that stretches the length of the pit row. This structure would be useful in hiding the battery pack and give me a location to mount my switch. I found that Radio Shack had every thing I needed they make a 6 position rotary switch, that I could use to set up all the required modes for the lights.

1. Off
2. Track: Green Pits: Green
3. Track: Yellow Pits: Green
4. Track: Yellow Pits: Red
5. Track: Red Pits: Red

Obviously this should have been done before the walls went up, but honestly I hadn't thought of doing it till later. I used a dremel tool to rout out the channels for the wires and dig under the walls. I found some scrap Ethernet cable that I removed from the case and then used a hand cranked drill to wind the wire into a tight bundle to fit into the channels. Once I had the channels cut, I wired up the LEDs and tested them. Then I laid the wires and glued them into the channels, routing them all to the corner of the garage.

I cut the garage walls from foamcore. The actual garage at Martinsville is a single structure, but I had to break mine into 2 building, one for each section of the track. The garage on the lighted section of the track is permanently mounted to the track, while the other is a free-floating structure. This lets me relocate the unmounted building when I pack up the case.

After I wired up the lights and the screwed down the battery pack, I mounted the switch in one wall of the garage. Then I assembled the walls of the garages. I added an extra strip to the bottom of the unmounted garage to provide extra strength for the stall pillars.

Stage 5 - Filling and Surfacing

With the entire track dried, I then started filling in the wire channels, the gaps in the walls on corners, the wall sections and any other gaps I found. After that was dry, I sanded down the putty to smooth it out for surfacing. This is where I encountered my problems with the chunks of white glue and found they would not sand as well as the wood putty.

Once the sanding was complete, I then made a thin paste of Durham's water putty and coated the entire surface of the track, walls and buildings, save for the rooftops. A word of warning about Durham's - keep a bowl of water near by to keep the stuff wet and at a even consistency. I just painted it on, from one batch. Next time I would use a smaller batch and do it in sections. I allowed to dry and then sanded the entire track to get an even surface.

Stage 6 - Painting

Martinsville is not a very colorful track. The walls and garages are white, but the track itself is rather colorful (as a track surface goes). The corners of Martinsville in the racing groove are made of concrete, while the rest of the track is asphalt. Also as it turns out there are 2 grade of asphalt with 2 distinct tones.

The first thing I painted was the walls and buildings, then I started working on the track. In the layout of the track, I planned for there to be 2 good race lines in the corner and in effect only 3 lanes. So I painted out the concrete section first, making it 3 inches wide. I used the cadet gray as my base color, then I painted in the track using charcoal. I followed this up with a heavy dry brush of soft gray on concrete to lighten it up. I then tried a couple of methods to get the asphalt to look right. I finally found that a heavy wash with the cadet gray liberally coated on the track then wiped off with a rag. The effect was perfect. I also went over to concrete to mottle soft gray dry brush. One thing I failed to remember was the infield and pit road had a totally different color. I should have left it in the base charcoal color (Oh well).

Later I painted a black wash of tire tracks to rubber in the corners, and to show the driving grooves.

Stage 7 - Taping and Detailing

The taping wasn't that hard, but as I did it. I noticed that I really didn't need lane markers - the width of the track and the width of the cars clearly indicates what lane the car is in, and it was much more visually appealing not to have the extra lines. The sections where marked out using 3/16 black graphic tape. I also sectored corners with the tape. Then I laid out the pit lanes in ¼ white graphic tape.

Once it was taped down, I added some numbers for another rule set. I decided that I would not need to add the RASC corner modifiers to the track. The concrete corners and the rubbering in of the corners made it pretty clear where the lanes were.

I also added some branding to the track. I pulled the Martinsville logos from the Martinsville track site and some Winston Cup and Craftsman's Truck logos from some NASCAR sites. I printed them out on a color laser printer and glued them in. Then I spray matted the entire track and walls.

Comments and Things I Would Do Differently

If could, I think I would keep the case and track at 8 feet. The requirements of the other rule sets said 40 spaces, but if your only going to run RASC on this track, I think the extra distance on the straights would make it a better track.

Wood: I got my wood from Home Depot, and it was green. It turned out that it oozed sap. So the lesson is buy good wood. Also it turns out Home Depot's plywood cutting machine was not square and I failed to notice it till I put the two track halves together. Also I would change the side plank size from 4 inches to 5 inches. This makes the gap from the top of the corner wall ½ inch. Right now it's flush, and I had to trim mine down so it wouldn't rub when I put the two halves together.

Running Martinsville in RASC

Martinsville short track is very different from the high speed tracks that come with the game. I wanted to keep the ratios of my track similar to those of the game. In order to do this, I had to change the game scale from 10 seconds to 6.6 seconds. This allowed me to get 3 dice throws into 1 lap, for more variation for a time trail lap. Max is 14 and Min is 11.

I also used the optional pit speed rules, Max 8 and Min 5 in pit lane. Though it is not stated in the Realism Rules, none of the damage, track setting or tire damage modifies the die rolls in the pit lane or in the pit stalls. Using Realism Rules Pitting Track the acceleration and deceleration is based on 120 mph vs. 150 mph due to slower Martinsville track speed.

Martinsville has only 2 grooves in the corners, so the inside groove is a 0 and a -1 on the outside groove. The outer lane is littered with rubber from the very wearing curves and is rated as a -3. To hit the apex of the corners correctly, the 2 spaces of the inside lane entering and exiting the corners are also -1.

Bonus Materials

A Picture of the Real Track

Track Conditions Cheat Sheet

Word DOC file (best quality)

HTML

Car and Driver Cheat Sheet

Word DOC FILE (best quality)