269 replies to this topic

[tonyp]

Ok So I still don't remember you. LOL.

When I would go to Nutley the bus from Irvington, (1 hour ride) would go right down Clinton avenue the heart of the riot zone. I would be the only white person on the bus awaiting an *** kicking. LOL. One time maybe a year later there was trouble again one night and the bus turned around and went back to the station in Nutley. Fortunately I had keys to crash at the raceway.

[John Streisguth]

Yeah, I'm not surprised...I'm the type that stays in the background most of the time anyway. Those were scary times, that's for sure.

[Dooner]

"It would be really cool if someone could put together a history (with pictures) of Nutley."

Checkered flag too. I love to see articles and pictures of old raceways

[John Streisguth]

There are so many raceways that should have their history documented. Nutley's not a bad place to start, especially since there were quite a few "top guns" that frequented the place.

[Bob Chaney]

Thats the track but backwards.

Guess Stan made 'em both ways then .. or perhaps the track at Broadway was not a true Engleman, but I believe it was and I know the picture to be correctly oriented.

Another mystery to be solved ..

[tonyp]

John I for sure know the history but photos would be difficult. Maybe someone out there has some.

[John Streisguth]

Hmmm...sounds like an interesting project. Would Emmott have any pics?

[tonyp]

Not sure, I'll have to ask Bob.

[Dooner]

"I know alot of you guys must remember Checkered Flag Raceway "

I remember Checkered Flag Raceway in Clementon, NJ. My dad took my brother and I there. That was before we could drive real cars. We each had a group 12 car. I had a Rob Renninger Chassis. We were the youngest ones there. We raced against Rob and the older guys. I think my brother won a GP 12 motor with older Mura Can once... or maybe it was at the original The Race Place on the way to the shore.The Mura sticker with arrow is still on the outside of the can. My brother gave me his slot car stuff. I still have the cars. The bodies had short air control. I kept them although they are totally beat up. They also ran Pintos and Vegas. 16 years after CF closed I raced an R.S Racing... chassis at Flamingo Raceway in Cape Coral . I came in 2nd with that chassis several times, but there was a guy that always edged me on speed. The chassis still has R.S Racing engraved on it. I had good memories from CF Raceway. Just walking through the door the first time gave me goose bumps. Does anyone have a photo to upload of CF?

[Pumpkin Man]

Hi Boys & Girls, it's good to see so many familiar people from my "mis-spent" youth still around. I remember the Clementon/Woodbury track well (Had some experience there). The raceway in Clifton (Lemans) was a "MINRA" track and eventually had 3 tracks (Last one was a steeply banked oval by the snack machines in back). The "Lemans" track initially had a banking that was undrivable (the first day they opened the track the only car that I saw that was able to negotiate it was a K&B GT40). They fixed it shortly after. The track was actually closed down by the Town of Clifton one morning since they mistakenly thought that there was betting on the races! I also remember "Felix" almost getting his clock cleaned by an irate father of a boy that had been chased out of the raceway for walking on the track.They also were one of the first tracks to close after the boom. Other tracks I remember:

Center Bowl-Hillside They had a bowling alley in the back, up front on on side I think were 3 or 4 tracks along with the counter, on the other side the Indy 300 track (Originally you had to secure a "Drivers Licence" before they would let you rent track time!)

Daytona-Newark On Springfield Ave, did not survive the riots, also was supposedly owned by a certain Italian/American "Social" orginization

[Noose]

Hey Tom.

Yup the track in Hillside was lovingly referred to as Fun Fair. Raced there plenty of times. Phil Rubin was a regular there.

[tonyp]

There were so many tracks, Daytona was walking distance from My house and Sebring where Noose & I raced we never even bothered to go there.

Johnny's in Morristown was where a lot of the good guys used to race.

My favorite was still JIm's in Jerseycity because they had American tracks... Won a 12 hour enduro there on a red american. Loved his orange american.

Lemans we raced and finished second in a 24 hour enduro sponsored by K&B. Tracks were crap. They did have the first banked oval I ever saw.

[Dooner]

Welcome to Slotblog Pumpkin Man Tom.

[Pumpkin Man]

Thanks Dooner!

I have one that I will be surprised if anyone remembers. Eveready Sport & Hobbiy on Broad street in Bloomfield. The two gentlemen that ran the place once or twice had Ford Aurora Championship HO races there (63-64 time frame) and in 65 they decided to install a Scalecetric "Plastic" track. They did not charge for track time, you had to use their controllers, and the slots were too narrow to run anything but the Scalectric cars (needless to say it did not last long). There also was another track in Belleville further up on Washington (near the High School). The name escapes me but it closed after about a year (1966).

[John Streisguth]

Pumpkin man:
I actually do remember that place, athough vaguely as I had only gone in there once. Might have been for one of those races you mentioned. If you're talking HO, did you ever go to Brookdale Cycle? They had a track and held weekly (?) races. That's where I started racing HO's as well as the Pet and Hobby on Valley road in Upper Montclair.

[Pumpkin Man]

Hi John,
I didn't go there. I moved around a lot with my Mom in the 60's and prior to that for X-Mass when I was six my Aunt bought a Scalectric figure 8 set (we're talking 58 here!). The set was purchased from a long forgotten hobby shop in Cranford and the cars had to be sent back to England almost monthly (I was never easy on the machinery), after that I has an Ideal "Rail" racing set that never worked (it was short parts) and had a layover till late 62 when I first found Polks in Manhatten (where I first met Bob Emott - before his Nam hitch). They also had an interesting character there named "Deadly Dudley". I was fortunate enough to move to Nutley in 64 and used to be a regular at Drewes every Saturday for the HO races (That HAD to be one of the smallest hobby shops ever). I was walking along Franklin Ave. one day and saw the original signs saying that a slot raceway was coming...

[John Streisguth]

I had a Scalectrix set too, probably around 1961, which was when I also got an HO set with the Aurora vibrator cars. I was in Drewe's once or twice too, but that was a long bike ride for me, so I stuck with Brookdale. I had a pretty big home layout so usually my buddies and I played around at my house.

I don't remember when I started going to Nutley Raceway, but that's where I started finding out what real racing was about.

[Gator Bob]

I also visited a raceway in Sayreville, burned down about 10 years ago, had a tri-oval and a drag strip, a small shop. and a much larger shop on Rt130 in East Windsor, i bought the owner's dragster, after he shut down his drag strip, forget the names of these 2 raceways, both closed in the 90's........

when i race h.o. scale in the early 70's, i raced in the hobby departments of toy stores in a series sponsered by Tyco. guess that makes me a bit younger than you guys that raced in the 60's......so now i race 1960's era cars at The Race Place on Rt 33 with the C.A.R.S. vintage club! All welcome to re-visit their past, race vintage cars, swap stories, etc. We are not a competitive group,. rather an easy going club having fun with 40 year old cars!!

-- Speed Zone Raceway - RT-130 -- "thats it !! -

[Gator Bob]

Tom:
That does indeed sound like the Collingswood track, which was there in the 60's when I was a kid and was still in existance when I started back in slots around 1988 (the main business was an auction house). I don't recall if they had R/C's upstairs, or even if there was an upstairs. I believe the Aristocrat is now at their Farmingdale NJ location. The other track they had was like a very short Engleman; when I did a race there in '88 they ran it backwards, from the short chute around the bank to the long straight. I guess it prevented launching. And the bank was pretty steep. You could see the wood through the paint, that's how old it was (and not good particle board either, that crap made from wood splinters glued together). I don't think they have that track anymore.

The location was just a bit north of Point Pleasant, in Wall township near the little stock car bullring down there. Don't know if that's as far south as you were talking about.

In any case, it's nice to see an old track still being used.

--------------------------------------
"He Said BullRing" , guess ur allowed ta say dat over on dis chere form......

Yes, Good Call..Collingswood Auction at the krazy cloverleaf - circle combo @ RT33-34 merge/interchange, it was more like a flea market that held weekly (?) auctions, single story at Collingswood and two story (loft) RacePlace building at their RT33 Farmingdale store less then 3 mi. away.

BUT, I can tell you that I had so much more fun racing 1:1 scale at the highbank "little stock car bullring" known as Wall Stadium then at the RacePlace.
In the picture you can see that de-slotting or launching can be costly but most all came back the next Saturday Night for more Full Contact Racing.
Think I yelled "TRACK" for this one but no could hear or knew what the heck I was talking about....lol.... I remember yelling a bunch of stuff that night

Attached Images

• 

[gritz]

I realize I'm very late to this thread, but just had to comment as a long-ago Jerseyite I lived in Cranford and remember the track downtown. I would have been about 7 and "big" brother was 10.

I don't remember a great deal about the different tracks but I clearly remember the two-level track. It had a pretty short run to rise about 10-15 feet upstairs, and you really had to tromp the car to get up it. You climbed up stairs to sit on a swivel barstool at the top of the track and looked down over the lower track section. It seemed really high up there as a kid. When I hear "hillclimb" referring to certain tracks today I have to chuckle - Cranford's was REALLY a hillclimb. I also vaguely remember the track downstairs that had very steep high banks, and as a young kid it was easier for me to keep the car on the lower track since I had a heavy trigger thumb. The tracks were in an old funky building, but what wasn't old and funky on the edges of Cranford?

My brother had a Cox Chapparal and a LaCucaracha and I had a "Little Red Wagon" wheelie truck. Needless to say, my wheelie truck did not do so well at the Cranford hillclimb track. I remember spending a lot of time chasing down the felled Wagon when it would deslot wheelie-ing on the big hill. But what a blast anyway. It seemed like no time before that green "power" light went out on our lanes, we'd pack up, and head back home.

We moved to Colorado in 1970 along with our slot cars but there was just one track in Colorado (that we knew of at the time) that was pretty far from where we lived. Getting parents to kill a Saturday to let us run the cars wasn't an easy sell. That track closed up in 1972, and we quit commercial slots pretty much for good after that. But myself and some friends picked up again with home A/FX HO sets in the next few years. We'd spend a lot of snowy afternoons putting tracks together, taking apart and rebuilding cars, and having fun. Before very long, dirt bikes, real cars, and girls relegated the slot cars to the dustbin. We all know that story.....

Glad there's a track or two left here in CO and I can still run slots with big brother (and now my son). Thanks for the jog of some nearly-forgotten fond memories from NJ.

[Gator Bob]

Radical Raceway

Rt. 17s  in Lodi.

Owner was Lou Kosco from Paramus

 

2 doors up from The Bada Bing (Satin Dolls)

[sub006]

Tony or anyone who remembers,
Years ago I walked into a raceway in South Jersey that had what I think was an original Aristocrat 135 on the first floor on the left as you walked in the building just past the parts counter. As you walked in straight ahead was another track with a very steep bank that looked like it was climbing the wall. Upstairs was an RC track. The owner's son was not very friendly. He was watching the track for his Father whom I believe was a psychiatrist.
Does anyone remember that raceway or have pics?

Here is a pic of an Aristocrat. Maybe this will jog some memories.American...crat_135.jpg

 

What were the steering wheels for?  Ashtrays?

 

Or was it an attempted large-scale comeback by the designer of the original Aurora HO Model Motoring controllers?  LOL!

[BigR29]

As a resident of Cranford until I went to college in Indiana, I spent many hours at the Cranford track. The owner was a carpeter and had opened the track with the idea it would be something his son would be interested in. However his son was a very accomplished drummer and music was his first love.

I remember one winter we had a Can-Am series. We raced on each of the tracks three times over the winter. One race on each track was run with the store lights off. You had to equip your cars with light so that you could see them. If you thought racing the two story "Hillclimb" track was weird in the daylight, try running it with the lights off.

[Gator Bob]

The original Hillclimb at The Race Place in Farmingdale NJ was recently removed and replaced.

[George Blaha]

Hey Bob,
 
Thanks for the new memories.
 
Shakey George