34 replies to this topic

[Keith Tanaka]

Last week my nephew showed me a book he recently checked out of his local public library.

The book is titled "Here is your hobby, Slot Car Racing" by Bob Braverman. It was published in 1966 and revised in 1969.

It covers many aspects of the hobby including commercial raceways (Revell, Tom Thumb in SoCal), ready to run cars, scratchbuilding cars (including how to build your own), building a home race track, etc.

Here's some photos of the book:




The Revell raceway on La Tijera Blvd. in Los Angeles was the largest commercial slot car raceway in SoCal in the 60's.
Revell was the site of my very first slot car race in 1966. My racing buddies, Roger Uusitalo, Craig Gilbert, and Gary Gilmore (Team Rolling Hills members in 1967) used to go there once in awhile. I met Lee Hines at Revell that very day.



A typical Saturday at Revell Raceway.
Wow, look at all the kids! Even housewives and ashtrays at the track! Not an evil bucks racer in sight.
The track in the foreground is a king track with the Regal behind it.



Although this photo says Revell, it's not the La Tijera Revell. Is this the North Hollywood Revell raceway? That's a nice track!
All the turns on this layout have large radius turns. Even the inside lane is not a tight turn as most tracks have.



Very typical scene in those days with plenty of kids at the raceway.
As Barney P. points out, "Surf's Up" on one kid's slotcar box. Either there was a huge flood in SoCal or just some kids who grew 6" in one summer!



50 cents an hour for a controller or car. 25 cents for 15 minutes track time.
I believe these photos were taken at Tom Thumb raceway in Panorama City, CA.



Bob Braverman devotes a chapter in his book on building this scratchbuilt car. It's a typical design around the time of the first Rod and Custom magazine race in 1966. Brass tubing chassis.



Keith

[68Caddy]

Keith,

What a wonderful time it must have been. I wish I was there to see this great tracks.

Thanks for sharing this great moment of history.

Nesta

[Slotgeezer]

I agree with Nesta...

Great photos, Keith... Thanks for the trip down Memory Lane!

Wish I'd had access to that facility!

Take care, & good racing!

Jeff Easterly

[HarV Wallbanger III]

Wow, Keith, what a find! You can "lose" it at my house and I'll pay the fees!

[H10]

I've just bought the book on eBay!

[Joe Mig]

I have that book and I love it . Yours has a beautiful cover; mine is just brown.

It was published 1969 and it was in a school library. It gives the month and date it for the due date but not the year.

[Steve Deiters]

Seeing all those tracks I always ask myself I wonder where they are now?

[tossedman]

I remember taking that book out of the library back in the early '70s and drooling over all the cars and tracks in it. Living in rural Canada at the time I had no idea such things existed. Great book, thanks for sharing Keith, brings back lots of envious memories.

Cheers,

[Larry Mattingly]

I have the same book (brown hardback) as Joe.

Picked it up at a local library for $.50 many years ago.

I think PdL said their weere 5,000 raceways in the mid-1960s. That killed a lot of trees...

LM

[Darkron9]

Jeff,

I used to live within a short bicycle ride from Revell Raceways on La Tiera when I was in high school. The building started out as a supermarket that was converted to the raceway seen in the photo.

[tonyp]

Those were the days. The tracks like that out here all opened Christmas '65-early '66 and made it about 18 months then basically all closed at once.

It was crazy for awhile, reserving an hour track time on Thursday for Saturday night...

[TSR]

And look at the clean-cut kids, that was before we all got polluted by the Charles Manson look!

[tonyp]

I like the length of the pants.

[Michael Rigsby]

Oh man, I'm looking at all the pointy-toed elf shoes the kids have on. Betcha they hurt to wear 'em... I'm like the other kid in pic... I always wore my Converse tennis shoes.

I would have loved to have raced at that track back in the day, even with the junk I ran.

Michael Rigsby

[TSR]

I think PdL said their weere 5,000 raceways in the mid-1960s. That killed a lot of trees...

Indeed. No one is really sure of the actual number, but the most reasonable estimate says 3,500, the most optimistic 5,000. So there must be a number between these two that tells the truth, but things were so compartmented, no one will ever know.

The greatest failure of the hobby in the day, and a good reason why it died, was the lack of communication (like we have today) that meant that each raceway had its own set of racing rules, and there was no discipline between manufacturers as far as keeping to a commercial goal allowing the hobby to be frozen to a certain technical stage where it could actually be profitable.
This has pretty much been accomplished now in the home-racing 1/32 scale field, but it was never really settled at commercial raceways, making inventories obsolete so quickly that unless the track owner was very smart, the businesses simply could not keep up.

But what a magical time it was...

[Prof. Fate]

Hi

Keith, my late friend Charlie Gibbs was a Revell middle management type in those days. And would demo Revell prototypes at that track. Including the unlamented "cricket" controllers that worked by static discharge!

Anyway, P, I have always held it was probably bigger than 5000. In 65, my dad retired from the AF and we spent the summer driving around the US playing tourist. Visiting friends, relatives, things like that.

I didn't see any town of any size that I could not SEE a track from the main through way. Every stop at the end of the day, I could drag out my box and go run within walking distance of where we were staying. I am guessing something around a track per 10,000 people. Where we started, Goldsboro NC, had a track with 5000 population, not counting the club tracks and the onbase track(Seymour Johsnon AFB), When we stopped, my dad retired to Salt Lake, the valley had 500,000 people, and it had 8 raceways!

One of the reasons, and we have discussed this, I never really travelled to a big race. You couldn't throw a dead tire without hitting a raceway!

Fate

[TSR]

Then, there was, according to John Ford, the Vast AMF Conspiracy!
I saw a Sasquatch today.

[HarV Wallbanger III]

Note the "SURFS UP" ON THE KIDS BOX! GROOVY DUDE!

[Hworth08]

Great thread Keith, hope you can post some more pictures.

The tracks are pretty similiar today but the cars were so nice then.

Notice the ash trays. If someone sat down now to have a relaxing smoke he would quickly be reported, by cell with picture and GPS location, and hauled off. And the track owner would be sued for endangerment.

[Don Wedding]

I Have always liked that book, There were 2 others found at our local Library. The Complete handbook of Model car racing published by Aurora plastics Corp. Shows all that was available in the Hobby during 1967. Has alot of Nice Pictures Total of 147 pages. They Don't Even push there line of Slot cars in this book. All pictures are in black and white.

The other is a Childrens book with a plain blue hard cover, Titled Slot Car Racing , by Bowmar publishing Glendale CA. All the pictures are in Color, Some nice Shots of raceway counters .

I liked the Story line in this book , A little Kid Has no Money to buy one of the nice factory ready to run cars , all he has is the Cheap Marx 1/32 home set car. One of the local hot thumbs takes the kid under his wing and gives him some speed tips for his car.

And Low and Behold he enters a race with it and wins the race (As pictured).

As you can see I have that cheap little car .Was it me ?? Could it be ?? I'll Never tell.

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[mcrone619]

Hey Racers

Why can it not be like that now? Kids love video games! Why not slot cars? All kids love cars!

I think they do not like to work so hard to make something and then kill it on the track and then have to make it or fix it without pushing a button to reset it?

Slot cars and model making are arts of the past! Can we make it come back?

Who can we get this art come back to life? Or are all use old guys going to see it die
in our lifetime???

[Mark H]

Hey, I think I checked that book out when I was in elementary school.

What about, "Here's Your Hobby, Model Car Racing", the one with the the orange cover. I remember that being awesome.

[Pat_H]

Here's a scan of the front cover of the "Model Car Building" book from the same series.

[n.elmholt]

I would be super if someone scanned the original slot car book and put it on the web - it must too old to damage any copyrights. :-)

Niels

[Prof. Fate]

Hi,

The Aurora book was a Schleicher project. And he has a memory worse than most. So, fifteen plus years ago I was visiting him and pulled out one of the A Line cars, a 1/32 Ford GT. He loved it...

And didn't actually remember doing the bits for this book on the car. he had completely forgotten!

There was so much going on then. It was a FAD.

Fate