34 replies to this topic

[Vay Jonynas]

Sweet book! I'm going to check for it in the Toronto library system.

[Kim Lander]

Kieth,

Name here is Kim Lander, over here in GA. My wife is a teacher and one afternoon the librarian came to her with the same book, said she remembered that I raced slot cars and thought I would like the book, (they were going to throw it away). Needless to say I was thrilled to have it. I have since given it to Mike Shepard (an old racing buddy ) who has a small museum at his house.

Thanks for posting the pictures from the book, lots of memories in them...

Kim

[idare2bdul]

I was lucky enough to make friends with Bob Braverman through slots and photography and continued with our interest in motorcycles. His writing on both slots and motorcycles was amongst the best. He had a knack for simple elegant engineering solutions and it usually resulted in him having very competitive machines. He died way too young.

[Brian Frobisher]

The only photo that looks to be of the La Tijera Revell is the one of the outside front of the location. The rest are either another Revell or some other place altogether.

I grew up about a half mile from the La Tijera location, I remember it being a supermarket before it was Revell, and I also remember walking past it when they were building the tracks and we were all wondering what they were doing, we had never seen anything like that before.

At the La Tijera location there was a very cool "Cast Resin" mural between the manager's office and the hallway that lead to the rear entrance, or that is how I remember it, in any case there was a huge resin mural with all kinds of slot car parts in it and you could see light through it.

I seem to remember a kind of creepy and mean manager named Emil?

I remember my brother sent him over the edge one day when my brother placed an HO diesel locomotive body on a slot car chassis and was running it around the track, this Emil guy went berserk and told him to remove it at once, etc...

The La Tijera location had at least two "Pit Stops" where you could tune up your cars, they were work areas in a couple of the corners, I want to think they had a short piece of powered track so you could test your cars motor and gears etc.

I also remember when they had planned races they had a machine they could connect to the track and it was a "Lap Counter" with mechanical display.

We spent a lot of fun times in that place, my brother loved to build his own chassis out of brass and also he was winding little Mabuchi motors with silver windings, etc.

Those were fun times and then they were gone...

[Cheater]

Those were fun times and then they were gone...

Well, you're quite a bit older now and you know what Thomas Wolfe said...

Still, in D3 style Retro racing, you'll find that a lot of the fun has re-appeared (except for the re-winding part...).

Have you visited Buena Park during one of their numerous Retro races?

[marc]

Very nice. It's hard to find any bonded material about this long gone era. There's still some fossil evidence and the rare sightings of beings from that era... like the caveman, Big Foot and the Loch Ness monster, they're very rare and usually if a sighting is reported it's in a back alley in the worst part of town.

It was a different time, when actually getting a job sweeping up, delivering newspapers, raking leaves, mowing grass, collecting returnable bottles wasn't considered demeaning it was a way to acquire spending money. These throwbacks would do just about any thing to play the game with others...

Now it's mommy, daddy, buy me this, get me that. Have you ever seen this? Five kids, age 9 to 12 sitting in the house, two playing a video game, two on the cell phone, one surfing Facebook??? Going outside is out of the question... Do you remember when punishment was you couldn't go outside for a week???

It's very cool to see the remnants of a day and time gone by but it will never happen again. Enjoy what we have left but don't expect the current crop to be interested in something as lame a competing against one another or interacting in a group...

Oh, did I tell ya I love this post about the books...???

[Cheater]

Marc,

I am not quite as pessimistic as you. I honestly think slots is primed to more more into the mainstream as a beter-known leisure-time activity.

[marc]

Greg,

I hope you're right and I'm wrong...

[n.elmholt]

here is some of my collection of slot related books etc

I have a few magazines also but most of the old stuff was destroyed by water damage years ago :-(



My slot car books - Picasa


Great reading

Niels, DK

[Big E]

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

Oh yeah! Wore out my library card on that one and the Louis Hertz book. I'm glad to have a copy of each today. I also managed to score a couple of the Aurora books mentioned later in this thread. This is the kind of stuff ya look at when you need to get your head back to the heart of this hobby. ENJOY !! -- Ernie