San Francisco Playland at the Beach slot car tracks

[mattb]

Not wanting to hijack Ernie's swap meet thread,,,,, I thought I would post some of this info here about Palyland.

this is the restored Sovereign (purple mile) at Modelville

this is what it looked like 65 at Playland

Playland must have a been a wonder to most slot car kids. ...they had one of every American Raceways at that location and a great retail counter.

[mattb]

There is a nice website tribute to Playland and the slot car center on the web.....try doing a search for Playland at the beach and is one of the top entries....


American Raceways Orange,,,,,, Yellow,,,,Black/Imperial ( I think),,,thee was also a figure 8 and maybe an oval. ...I will try to find more of my pictures.....Playland was an amusement park on the beach.

[olskoolslotz]

I experienced running laps on a Sovereign (purple mile) in November 1992 while down in Atlanta for the Hooters 500 - King Richard Petty's final race. A slot car raceway in Fayetteville just a short distance from Atlanta Motor Speedway had one at the time. My friend Larry and I hauled our slot boxes down with us from Michigan wanting the experience of running laps on that track. Larry owned and operated a slot car raceway at the time that housed a flat & lengthened American Black track that he kept in impeccable condition. He also sponsored my 1:1 racing efforts for a couple of years and we ran the slot car raceway name on our rear quarter panels.

[mattb]

I need to credit some of the guys on slotblog for the pictures. ...... We have thread on thee about Playland and I copied a few pix from there.......

Dave,,,, the consensus seems to be that the track that was in Atl,..... was not the Playland/Modelville track...... there is a build date under the Modelville track that is a month before Playland opened and that track then went to Tx. ...Peter found some Playland paperwork under the track when Gerding restored it.....Seems nobody knows where the Atl track went,,,but possibly it came from somewhere in Tn.

I like hearing from the guys that ran on the track......they say they spent more time walking to put their car back on after a de-slot then they did actually running the car!

Dave knows this old stuff, too. .... We are trying not to take this info with us when we go the next world....We are trying to pass it on!



,,,,,

[chappyman66]

Great post and pics, Matt.
Van's Hobby in St Paul used to have an Orange....I only ran on it once when my dad took me there.
Now there is a euro Englemann at Scale Model Supplies as well as a tri-oval.

If you see that Yellow in the middle pic of the second post.....make it six lanes and blue Formica instead of 8 and yellow, and that's the old Woodcraft Hobby track that I have in storage......hills on the straight and esses on the back.

[indybob008]

Great pics guys. So cool.

[mattb]

Paul that is a rare track you have. All those old American tracks are kind of rare, but the 6 lane is not even known to many people.

[leadfinger]

Thanks for posting those pictures Matt. I grew up in San Jose, not far south of SF. A friends dad took us up there a couple of times and I still remember walking into that place, just standing there with my jaw on the ground.
Yes I did spend a lot of time walking to get my car. That was probably '66 or '67.

[mattb]

Leadfoot/finger, do you remember what color the sides of the big track were?..... There is an ongoing discussion of that on the slotblog forum. ......... It was always assumed it was purple, but some pictures show it as blue and the raceways paperwork calls it blue. ........ Memories from 50 years ago vary from one slot guy to the next.....There are only a few guys active on the internet that were ever there.

[BIG E]

One of every American Model Car Raceways track... imagine that rent bill today!
It's amazing that Buzz Perry still has Buzz-A-Rama raceway in Brooklyn open on the weekends. He's got the AMCR King, Monarch (orange), black baby king, and the little 80 foot yellow up and running. I show people that original configuration King and say, "try blasting your wing car around THAT with only one blip per lap!" Most can't believe how flat the turns are, and how high the bank is! He may have one other AMCR track disassembled in storage. I believe he owns the building, but I can't say for sure.
Thanks for sharing all the photos, guys. Ernie

[leadfinger]

Seeing the pictures brought back some memories, but not enough to remember the color. But damn that thing was huge.