Marc G. Millis,Westlake OH
Dear Slot Car World.
Here is my entry into your 1/32 Slot Car Track contest.
What an amazing selection of contestants you've compiled!
I'm seriously impressed.About my attached photos...
One photo is an overall shot of the track and the others show details.
One is a composite that shows how the track can be stowed.
A description of my track, for posting on your site, follows.

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VINTAGE POINT
Designed and Built by Marc G. Millis
Cleveland Ohio

STATISTICS:
Vintage Point is a homebuilt, routed-wood slot car track having 3-lanes,
51+1/4 ft lane length, with 9 turns twisted onto a 13 ft x 5+3/4 ft rectangle.
Lane spacing is 3+1/8 inch with a total track width of 12 inches that
accommodates both 1/32 cars and the older, narrower, 1/24 scale cars.
In the turns, the slots are shifted to the inside edge to allow for drift.
The slots are 1/8 in. wide by 1/4 in. deep, like commercial tracks.
All 3 lanes (w/ copper tape contacts) are fed from a single 12-V,
20-Amp power supply; each lane fused for 5-Amps. Also,
the direction of each lane can be individually switched, which adds variety.
And finally, the entire track can be flipped up on edge for stowage, cleaning, or maintenance.

HISTORY:
The track became operational on January 9, 2000, after 14 months
and 350 hours of construction. It will never be fully finished.
I'm not keeping tabs of the scenery labor. The track is used for
home recreation for my daughters and I, and I have a few friends
over from time to time to play with this big toy.

DECORATIONS:
Vintage Point is stylized in 1960s European racing motif, including
cars, scenery, and people. All of the structures were scratch built
from a variety of materials. The lights and clock in the pit area actually work
. Virtually all placards were produced using computer recreations of 60s style advertisements.
All of the figures (over 120 of them) are hand painted and come from a variety of sources.
The greenery is built using standard model railroad products,
but is built on a lightweight base of "Great Stuff" spray-foam insulation.
The hill-climb area has not yet been decorated, except for the stone fences,
styled to look like Italian mountain roads. The hill-climb fences are made
from a dense foam rubber core covered by a vaccuformed plastic stone fascia, capped with dense foam rubber.

ABOUT THE PITS AND THAT EXTRA TUNNEL:
The pit area has several extra slots for parking cars. One pit slot is connected
to the closest racing lane power. It is possible to drive from the pits back
onto the track, but not vise-versa. There are ramps in the pit slot to lift the
guide up and over the lane gap to fall back into the racing lane.
You have to hit it at the right speed to get the car back onto the racing lane.
It is built this way so that the racing lane's power strip is not interrupted.
The extra tunnel is part of the scenery. Since the pit area is completely
surrounded by track, the extra tunnel serves as the pretend "exit" to the paddocks and parking.

BUILDING MATERIALS:
SURFACE: The track surface is made from birch plywood, 3/8 thick (ACX Superply).
Because the banked curve and hill climb required bending and twisting,
this 3/8 thick material was used instead of the more typical 1/2 inch medium-density
particle board. The top is finished with Sherwin Williams "Industrial Enamel" - paint intended for garage floors.
BASE: The track is built onto a frame of 1-inch pine walls and a 1/2 inch BC ply base,
with 2x3 framing studs underneath where the track is sectional.
The frame is built so that it can be taken apart if we ever have to move,
and extra strength was added to endure the stowage feature.
The outside corners of the frame are chamfered back about 3 inches
so that track marshals won't clip their hips as they dash around to re-slot a crashed car.
One of the challenges of track construction was ensuring that the racing
surface was at the correct height and angle - which often could not be judged until after sections were installed.
STOWAGE: The whole track is built so that it can be tipped up on edge and
stowed against the wall when not in use (for the wife and kids to share basement space).
Actually this tipping feature makes wiring and cleaning much easier.
When on edge, both the top and bottom are easily accessible.
Stowing sequence: (1) Fold up the outer two leg assemblies,
(2) Pivot up the track and lock it in its saw-horse-like castored A-frame
, which holds the track at a 67 degree angle. (The pivot point is at the apex of the A-frame).
(3) Fold in the forward-center leg assembly. (4) Wheel the track over to the wall.
(5) Tip it up the rest of the way (90 deg.) so that it now fully on edge.
This also tilts the A-frame base so that its castors are off the floor.
(6) Collapse the A-frame into the base of the track. Deployment sequence is simply the reverse.

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Thanks for running this contest. It has inspired me to make
progress on my track scenery and I've enjoyed seeing all the other entries!
There are some really great tracks and cars out there! You'll have a challenging job picking the best.

Marc