Ask questions on our forum If you have any questions about SSD, hop over to our forum.
NSCC - National Scalextric Collectors Club 30 enthusiasts formed the NSCC in 1981 to bring together those people who collected Scalextric cars. The club has since grown to over 1000 members worldwide and includes all makes of slot cars, old and new.
The club produces a monthly Journal with articles on various topics such as the background to individual models, members’ collections and layouts, interesting discoveries and ways of improving the performance and reliability of the cars. As well as products from Scalextric, models from SCX, Ninco, Fly Car, Carrera and many others are featured.
The Journal also offers the opportunity for members to advertise models for sale or swap and place wanted adverts for those hard to find cars and spares that they require. Not only can you buy and sell through the Journal, but there are also a number of Swapmeets organised every year. As well as being an opportunity to buy and sell, these are great social occasions where you can meet fellow enthusiasts and discuss all things 'Scalextric'. From time to time, the NSCC commissions limited edition slot-cars, which are only available to current members. Various other events are also organised, the most popular being a joint venture with Hornby Hobbies which gives members the chance to meet and question the top management and design staff of Scalextric.
The NSCC also produces a list of clubs, which is regularly updated. Race meetings are organised by various clubs around the country and these are reported in the Journal giving you the chance to use your cars for the purpose they were intended, and to have some fun at the same time.
The owner of this web store is a member of the NSCC and is currently the club's webmaster. If you would like to find out more about the club and to join, visit the web site, where you can also get details of slot car fairs and open Scalextric meetings you can go along to.
Each of the sites below has a digital forum section, and these are great for finding out the sorts of issues that are exercising the minds of slot car aficionados. But before you enter, please note that:
people who post in these forums are real "slot car petrolheads", many of whom want to get the utmost out of their track and push it or modify it beyond its original (guaranteed) capabilities; so don't necessarily be put off by people's personal agendas, general disgruntlement or by seeing a long list of modifications someone has made to their circuit. For the average home user you should find that your chosen product works perfectly satisfactorily without adaptation
people who are using one or other of the systems will naturally tend to promote the system they have spent their hard earned cash on, so be prepared for much "my system is better than your system" chatter, and
users of a particular brand of digital system may not have sufficient experience of other systems to be qualified to make a judgement of them - yet they still will (you would need to have one of every system, or at least have tested them all equally well, to have made meaningful comparisons)
So exercise caution when making a buying decision based on anything you read in these places, remember that forum contributors represent a minuscule percentage of the global slot car fraternity, and always get a second opinion from a local dealer or owner of your selected system.
Digital racing without a physical slot car track If you like the idea of racing a car (but not a real, full size one) and you also want more cars to race against, try this. Live For Speed (LFS) is a multiplayer online 3D racing simulator and community, that takes over where slot car racing leaves off, for races of more than 6 or 8 cars. We are often asked whether it would ever be possible to have bigger SSD race fields by connecting up two 6 car powerbases and so on. Unfortunately that's not possible, but LFS complements SSD very well in this respect for those who want to race against more people.
For your average household, the problem with going beyond 6 cars on a slot car system would be marshalling the crashes and keeping a clear track, because you need a longer track to provide enough space to race, some thoroughly applied racing rules, and a track room that's also big enough for all the drivers and marshals. On LFS, registered users can participate in full-field (20 car) races in a variety of sports and single seater cars, on a selection of fictitious racetracks. A fair number of LFS users are racing drivers at various levels in real life too. Racing from the comfort of your own home, marshalling of crashed cars and application of racing rules is dealt with by the simulator. You can even race in a Scalextric livery as shown in these examples created by LFS Forum user "unseen".
There is no personal face-to-face interaction and no physical Scalextric model car to collect, tune, and so on, that you have with slot cars, so this is definitely not going to appeal to the pure slot car collector. But you can text-chat to others on the simulator, design your own car livery and you can also get some physical feedback from the racing if you use a Force Feedback steering wheel and pedals. You will need a PC with good graphics capability to take part, and a broadband internet connection with a friendly bandwidth allowance.
For times when you just want to hook up online for a quick race with someone - maybe because it's not club race night, or if you have nobody to race with on your Scalextric track, or maybe your track is out of action for some reason - LFS is a nice alternative to get your racing "fix". If you liked the idea of Sport World internet racing, which Scalextric have now discontinued, this might grab your interest, although the level of car setup complexity needed to be competitive might be off-putting to many. The 126 page (!) instruction manual can be found here (PDF format). However if you don't mind being a Tail-End Charlie for a while, from time to time you will find Martin and other slot car club members on there, so drop an email if you are going online to LFS and we will perhaps try and meet up for a race!
LFS Video The video below shows some examples of LFS racing with huge fields of cars.
Fantasy League Formula 1 2008
Rural Racer
