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Planning Stage...
Can you imagine all the excitement and pageantry of the Daytona 500 in a spare room? OK, it would have to be a really big room - even for HO scale - that's 1' = 87'. I didn't even bother figuring the dimensions required for 1/64th scale - the size that is closer to HO Scale slotcars. This is what I calculated just winging the dimensions from the grandstand map that I found on the Daytona Speedway WebSite. 2.5 miles works out to be 151 running feet of track! The long straight would be (I calculated .675 miles) 41 feet long - not including the corners, across to the dogleg is 32 feet! If you want a little room on the sides and include the grandstands - we're looking at a bedroom that's 45' by 65'....
I found a cool site with Daytona Track Statistics at (
About.com) Now I have exact dimensions - let's see how close I got. The Turns have a radius of 1000' and are 3000' long, banked 31 degrees. The Tri-Oval banking is 18 degrees at the Start/Finish line (not that I'm gonna worry about the banking being to scale!). The Frontstretch chute (from the turn to the middle of the tri-oval) is 1,900 feet and the total length is 3,800 feet. The Pit Road is 1,600 feet long and 50 feet wide. The Backstretch is 3000' long. Some other interesting specs that don't affect the scale is: there are 7 garages with 82 stalls (spaces for 164 cars) and the Speedway Facilities are on 480 acres with the track encompassing an infield of 180 acres (this includes the 44 acre Lake Loyd). I also did the calculations for both scales (that's the beauty of my Scale Calculator), so I'll present it in a table.|
Track |
1:64 (Scale) |
HO (1:87) |
|
Total Distance (2.5 mile) |
206 1/4' |
151 1/2' |
|
Backstretch (3000') |
46 7/8' |
34 7/16' |
|
Frontstretch Chute (1900') |
29 11/16' |
21 13/16' |
|
Front (turn to turn) (3800') |
59 3/8' |
43 5/8' |
|
Pit Road (1600') |
25' |
18 3/8' |
|
Turns (3000') |
46 7/8' |
34 7/16' |
|
Turn Radius (1000') |
15 5/8' |
11 1/2' |
|
Total Acreage (480) |
7 1/2 acres |
5 1/2 acres |
|
Infield Acreage (180) |
2 13/16 acres |
2 1/6 acres |
OK, so from Turn to Turn we need 3000' for the Backstretch and add the 1000' radius for each turn, that's 5000'. That is 78 1/8' wide in S scale or only 57 7/16' in HO. From the Backstretch to the Start/Finish line is a bit more difficult, we could do it with geometry. We could wing it from the track map or better yet, use the TerraServer site and the US Geological Survey Spin-2 Satellite image (
Terraserver.com). The distance measures to 900 yds or 2700', that's 42 3/16' in the larger scale and 31' in HO.How'd I do from the first paragraph where I just winged it? I estimated the backstretch (HO scale) at 41' and 3000' actually is 35 1/2 - not too bad. Across the infield, I guessed 32' and the satellite shows the scale distance should be 31' - impressive! I figured you'd need an area 65' by 45' but you could get away with about 60' by 33' with a foot extra all the way around in HO. The closer to scale (S scale or 1:64) would be about 80' by 44' - that's about half the size of the lot my house sits on!
So I think that what is required here, is what the Model Train guys call "Selective Compression" (using the winged it dimensions). Even at 1/3rd the size, we're talking about 15' by about 20' - so let's make it 1/5 - that would be 9' by 13'. OK, you only have a 10 foot spare room - make it 7' by 10' - that's about 1/6th actual scale.
Using the HO dimensions I calculated, still shows a 1/6 compression from 60' by 33' down to 10' by 5 1/2'. Track size wise, that's taking the 2.5 mile Tri-Oval and compressing it down to 7/16 mile (.42 miles). Now let's talk reality - there's a local paved track nearby, it's a 3/8 mile (.375 miles) semi-banked oval, that can be done reasonably in full scale! I've recently tried to contact the officials to try to get the inside scoop and maybe work out a deal for making the layout portable to bring on race nights in trade for free admission. There's a new page that will document the progress of this project.
Local Racetrack - Charlotte County Speedway
Mini-Sebring - running on the floor for now
GatorNationals - fast & straight - built from scratch
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