Scale Slot Car Racing

Hi and welcome to my Website.

My name is Alan Tadd and I live in Bath, UK. I have been involved ( off and on) with slot cars for most of my life.

My first track was given me by my parents as a Christmas present when I was 10, and I fondly remember a blue Porsche and green D type Jaguar. How I wished I had kept them......the first "upgrade" I  bought was a transformer to replace the battery pack I had been using. I remember the building the battery pack was located in and the bridge supports were both made of cardboard.

The attractions of football and girls soon put paid to my interest in slot cars and I didn't think about them again until my twenties when I found out that one of my best friends had some Scalextric track, so I then thought I had better get some so we could combined it to race around our respective houses. We soon started building or own cars, mostly from Riko kits, which were very poor performers on the old Classic Scalextric Track.

On a visit to the local Model Shop, we got talking to the owner who also happened to be a leading light at the local Slot Car Club. He invited us to come along to one of the race nights to see some real racing.

Well that was it, we were blown away by the track, the cars and the great Club atmosphere. In those days there was a waiting list to join the Club, so we added our names to the list and waited for the call. The club was Bath Model Racing Club which was part of Area 7 under ECRA Rules. Cars were lexan with brass chassis. Motors were in the main Mura Group 20's.

I guess I was a member of the Club for about eight years, the last few of which were fairly sad as Slot Racing was in decline. There are many theories as to why this happened, a lot of it was due to the ever escalating cost of the cars, the ever increasing speed of the things and the trend away from scale appearance. Whatever the reason I gave up Slot Racing at this time.

After brief forays into other forms of modelling, railways, static’s etc, I took to the slots again in the early eighties, this time concentrating on HO scale tracks and cars. Great fun as you could get a lot of track in a 6 X 4  base board. The cars were Ultra fast, due to the magnets holding them to the track, I guess I stuck at this for about three years.

Following the arrival of my kids I bought another Scalextric track in the late eighties with a view to having some family fun, but they soon tired of it and the set once again returned to storage.

I took up Slot car racing again in the late nineties after discovering that the Hobby still existed, (thanks to the Internet) and the superb quality of models on offer. Since that date I have started once again to build my own cars and soon work is to start on my own routed track (Update: My track is now finished and can be seen in the "Track" section of this site)