This is a combined slot car race track and model railroad that measures in at a gargantuan 16 feet long and 8 feet wide, or approximately 4.9 meters long and 2.4 meters wide.
It has a four-lane slot car raceway that is one of the most complex we’ve ever featured, with steeply banked corners, cloverleaf turns, overpasses, underpasses, hairpins, and more – up to four people can race at a time and each lane has color-coded labels for ease of identifying which one you’re in.
As you can see, the four-lane slot car race track is complex and it would doubtless take plenty of time to master, those tight double back turns and banked corners take real skill.
Slot car racing has a surprisingly complex history that dates back to the Lionel Corporation in 1912. They debuted a new kind of toy car that was propelled by an electric motor, with power provided by a toy trail rail that was recessed below the track, inside a slot.
These early slot cars were relatively simple, even speed control was an optional extra, and in many respects they were more like toy trains than modern slot cars, but they did pioneer the fundamental concept.
As the 20th century progressed many other slot car designs came and went, but by the mid-1950s in Britain the modern slot car concept was beginning to take shape. It was around this time that the term “slot car” was coined, but by whom remains a mystery, and a number of companies began offering kits which increased in popularity into the 1960s and 1970s.
Some of the most well-known manufacturers were Scalextric, Ninco, AFX (Aurora Plastics Corporation), Carrera, Revell, Slot.it, and Auto World. Today the most common is Scalextric, with many people using the company name interchangeably with the term slot car.
With the rapidly rising popularity of the remote controlled car in the 1980s, slot cars took a backseat for a while, though they enjoyed a resurgence in the 1990s that continues on to the modern day.
The 16 Foot Wide Slot Car Raceway Shown Here
The race track you see here incorporates both a four-lane slot car raceway and a full model railroad. The slot cars are the main component offering side-by-side racing for up to four cars at a time, and the track has a built-in light tree that counts down to the start of a race – with no power to the controllers before the green light at the top illuminates.
The model railroad includes multiple tracks running around the outside of the circuit, with a number of trains and carriages included in the sale.
The train track runs around the perimeter of the track and it includes a number of separate lines with multiple locomotives and carriages.
The slot car race track looks like it would be challenging to say the least, with steeply banked corners, cloverleaf turns, overpasses, underpasses, hairpins, and more. The whole unit measures in at 16′ long and 8′ wide and it runs on 120 volt.
This track is now being offered for sale out of Evanston, Illinois on Bring a Trailer and it comes with a collection of slot cars, locomotives, and train cars. If you’d like to read more about it or register to bid you can visit the listing here.
Images courtesy of Bring a Trailer
Articles that Ben has written have been covered on CNN, Popular Mechanics, Smithsonian Magazine, Road & Track Magazine, the official Pinterest blog, the official eBay Motors blog, BuzzFeed, Autoweek Magazine, Wired Magazine, Autoblog, Gear Patrol, Jalopnik, The Verge, and many more.
Silodrome was founded by Ben back in 2010, in the years since the site has grown to become a world leader in the alternative and vintage motoring sector, with well over a million monthly readers from around the world and many hundreds of thousands of followers on social media.