Why isn't the true function of C8236 short straight, more widely known?

[C742 LE MANS 88]

Hi all, I'm new to the forum and you've probably heard this countless times before I'm guessing; I'm a dad that has recently got back into Scalextric after my son asked for a set for christmas. I am glad that in a world of modern digital toys, he seems to be getting the same enjoyment out of his modern sport analogue set as I did my Le Mans set back in the 80s.

Anyway, to cut a long story short, I tend to be ‘all in’ with these things, as I guess a lot of us are; no point in doing things by halves - I like to know details! One of the first things that struck me when my son was looking to use his christmas money to expand his track, was what on earth is the use of the C8236 short straight?

At first glance it seems strange; only 9mm shorter than a quarter straight. This seemed a fairly arbitrary increment reduce in size by....why not just make a 1/8th straight for example. The more I Googled, the more confused I became. The only use for this straight seemed to be 'to fill awkward gaps.' Well that may be so, but why only a 9mm difference to an existing part; surely with some creative placement of 1/4 straights and the track's natural flex, a 9mm differential could be overcome; and if a lack of flex meant that it couldn't be overcome, then surely lots of other smaller distances of track would need to be produced too, depending on what distance needed to be 'fudged'. 

Eventually I stumbled across a brief reference to short straights in a forum post about integrating R3 curves into a layout; even then the post was largely ignored, even though it answered the OP’s question really well (albeit a bit hard to follow without the aid of diagrams). Upon sketching a few diagrams it became obvious. The reason a short straight is 78mm is because this is exactly half the width of a section of track! I mocked up the diagram below to illustrate, using the AnyRail6 software (why on earth scalextric don't still make their own software is a mystery I will leave until another time; certainly something I found bizarre as a newbie). As you can see, 4 track widths = 8 short straights, or 2 per track width.

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Of course the benefit of this piece now became obvious; it allows multiple radii of track to be combined into a single loop.  Apologies if I am teaching granny to suck eggs to a certain extent here, but I thought I would post this as it will be useful to newbies like me - and i did do a forum search beforehand to check if similar had already been posted.  I have mocked up more pictures below, but essentially, 4 short straights are needed for every step up in radius (e.g. R1 to R2, R3 to R4 etc). E.g. if joining an R1 180 degree curve to an R4 180 degree curve then this represents 3 steps up in radius, or 3x4=12 short straights required. I realise these are fairly contrived circuits, but nonetheless, the same logic applies no matter what else is going on between the two opposite 180 degree curves.

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After this research I now feel a bit less puzzled when it comes to circuit design and we're going to order some larger radius curves to create some fast, sweeping bends (I wish they still made the banked curves like in my old Le Mans set...although they did get bent out of shape easily, perhaps this answers my question!). I still have a few questions though, which hopefully people on here may be answer:

1) Why don't scalextric advertise the true purpose of this product in their product description? Even the 1985 track design brochure doesn't mention this fairly important geometrical relationship, despite having a detailed section on hints and tips for circuit building.

2) Why on earth does this product only come on its own, and in quantities of 2 at that? Surely four short straights should be included with expansion pack 6 (8xR3 curves) for instance, allowing users that have a set with standard R2 curves to easily incorporate the R3 curves into their layouts. 

3) Why are the dimensions of the piece 78mm i.e. half a width of track and not and not 156mm, i.e. a full width of track? That way only two would be required to close a miss-matched ended oval, yet one could still be used if making a half oval, C-shaped section of track of two miss matched 90 degree sections (so that the straight ends lined up).

4) Are there any other nice curve related relationships involving this piece of track that I have missed? E.g. I thought that one could be used to balance out for example a mainly R2 oval, bar 45 degrees being taken out and replaced with R3 (as 4 pieces balance out 180 degrees of R3)…..this isn’t the case though!

Anyway, if you've read this far, then well done, you are clearly as sad as I am! I look forward to seeing if anybody can shed any light on the above questions.

 

[Andy P.]

Well that is something, isn't it?