So you finally made the decision. You're gonna go ahead and build your very own HO scale dragstrip. I, too, just recently made this decision, and found it can be a very inexpensive investment if you are only racing on a "GrassRoots" level. The following pages also apply to making a competition drag track, as you will see. Now on to design...

First you must make a major choice, even though it can be changed later and even after the track is complete and running. You must pick what scale length the track is to be. You have two major choices:

• 1/8 mile

• 1/4 mile

A 1/4 mile track is 20.625' (247.5") long. This is a good track for those who are interested in a fully scale track, a second drag track, or a full on competition 'strip. For the first timer or the person with not so much room/funding (like me) a 1/8 mile track is in order. It is 10.312' (123.75") long. Other lengths can be used, but i would not reccomend anything under 8' or over 30'.

This is my general wiring diagram, this one applies to those of us going the "GrassRoots" way and using an HO scale train power supply to power our track. I am also using homemade controllers that only use 2 leads. The same would apply to those of you going the "official" way, but a seperate 28 volt/~8 amp per lane. This is easy to figure out from my diagram. Now that you have the track designed, you can proceed to the supplies section.