The FASCAR 500 is a 4-lane HO slotcar track built (mostly) with Aurora Model Motoring components from the 1960s. It is designed for Aurora's Thunderjet-500 and equivalent cars, including the recent T-jet reproductions.

It was built with the aid of my nephew, Alexander, who visited me at Thanksgiving in 2005 and who used to race with this same track and equipment when he visited me as a kid, over 15 years before.

We used it in a Thanksgiving weekend Baby-Boomer Boys' Race Night and Ice Cream Social with some of my old college and high-school friends; we had a multi-class race series run to an old recording of engine sounds from the movie Grand Prix (and Beach Boys albums).

The FASCAR 500 course was built on a 32" hollowcore door with a 1x2" screwed onto each long side in order to get the width for the spin aprons - for an overall size of about 35x79". The table (door) was covered with a green cloth sold for ceramic villages. Hills were built up of simple layers of styrofoam board; model railroad lichen and plastic pine trees provided the greenery.

	Here is a course map. Click on it for a larger version with legend and information. This is not exactly the course you see in the photos, but has had some slight changes in light of lessons learned.
See construction details and a wiring diagram

The course was built to sit on two wooden TV tray tables, about a foot above the coffee table in the living room. The cars were placed, sorted into performance classes, on a separate TV tray at the side. The FASCAR 500 is not permanent, but could be built to be stored hanging on a wall in the garage with only a bit more effort.

The start-finish line is at the beginning of the short straight by the grandstand on the far side of this photo.

Take a photo tour and suit up for a
driver's circuit of the track on the NEXT PAGES