More Scalextric

Why Do I Need Track Booster Cables

If you have large layout you will probably get a significant voltage drop across the track joints, the further the track is away from the power base the more it will be affected, one car off can cause another to fly off.
If you fit power cables (C8248) you will even out the power all round your layout.

Making Track Booster Cables

We decided to make our own custom track booster cables, as I wanted to hide the cables and they are quite expensive if you want to link to two points.
I already had some cable which I could easily solder to the track and then drill a hole through the board and join underneath.

Separate or Joined Lanes

Before soldering you have to decide if you want to keep the lanes separate (old style Scalextric) or as in our case joined, as our track is digital (C7030 powerbase) with corner lane changes, which connects the two lanes together anyway, we decided to go for the easier option.
If you are not sure, the best bet would be to keep the lanes separate but this is more complicated.
Note if you only use digital straight cross-over’s you can still keep the track separate and if you use the newer C7042 Six Car Powerbase, you can also power analogue cars (separate lanes).

We can now lower the enclosure back onto the tray re-fit the screws and remove excess silicon and tidy up the remaining. We now need to seal the corners from the outside, don’t seal on the inside of the corners, this will allow any water that has got between the sides and the corners to run out into the tray and not get trapped or seep out (see picture).

You need to connect them the track same way around, so to make it easier we used a piece of wire, this was pushed into the slot of the track (in our case brown was the outside lane) this can just be seen when the track is laid flat, see below.