Years ago I worked at a company owned by a man named Bob who had a fetish for “inspirational sayings.” He used to plaster these all over the building, and changed them out often; the office-wide joke was that these little motivationals were referred to as “Bobisms.” One of Bob’s favorite Bobisms was a massive poster in the break room reading “TIMING. IS. EVERYTHING.”
Well, in racing, as in life, Bob was right.
I played around for a while using a manual lap counter and a stop watch racing against the clock, but it soon became clear that what I needed was a timing system. As anyone else into this hobby knows, there are not a lot of commercially available options for this. In fact, I found only 3; one had a nice hardware setup but came with a freeware program called “Race Coordinator” that I absolutely hated; it was ridiculously complex, and although there were a lot of YouTube videos about it, there was no quick reference manual with which to look up an answer to a question. I work with computers for a living and even I had a hard time figuring that program out, and it was clear early on that it did a lot of things I wasn’t interested in and I quickly got tired of wading through all that just to set up a race and time it. The second option I looked at was the exact opposite; the software, “TrackMate,” was pretty good, but the hardware was completely “DIY.” Honestly I’m still keeping this in the back of my mind as a potential solution; I do have the skill to solder and wire up my own sensors if and when I decide I want to devote the time to it. So maybe I’m busy and have little free time (true), and maybe I’m just a spoiled brat (no comment) but I wanted an “out of the box” solution and I wanted it NOW.
In the end I wound up going with something incredibly simple because, often, simple is good. Its an extremely cool product; the only bad thing about it is that is custom made.
There is a gentleman in Brooklyn, NY named Ray Graham; his ebay handle is ray3741. Roughly a year ago he offered a product for sale the likes of which I have never seen anywhere else. You may be aware of a company called Ninco, which makes 1:43 and 1:32 scale slot cars. They make some pretty nice stuff, all very good quality; although most of their car line are vehicles that are too modern for my taste, they have made some beautiful vintage models in the past. Ninco makes a very simple, very reliable track timer called the “Pole Position” that is completely “plug & play.” The only problem: it’s not made for HO scale. This ebay seller I mention was customizing these timers by making very nicely constructed light bridges out of wood and putting the sensors into the track pieces of your choice. I bought one of these for my Tyco track and, after trying out the other products I described above and being unhappy with both of them, I bought a second one for my AFX track. I have been extremely happy with them.
Mind you, they are not cheap, but nothing custom made ever is. The bad news is that he does not appear to be offering these anymore; I have not seen one for sale on ebay since I bought mine, however he may be able to make them to order (note: I do not know this guy nor am I speaking for him in any way; this is not an advertisement, I just like his product).
Last time I checked, his short video showing this system is still up on YouTube:
The beauty of this is that it only does one thing: TIME YOUR RACES! That was all I wanted; I didn’t need a bookkeeping system or a car or driver catalog or 25 different methods of setting up a round robin; I just wanted to time my races by lap speed or total elapsed time, and that’s exactly what the Ninco Pole Position does. In addition, the custom-made light bridge is beautifully finished, painted black and decorated with checkered flag decals, and I love the way the light glows red in the dark; it creates a very cool effect for night racing.
At this point I am beginning to think about taking another look at the TrackMate solution and seeing about buying that setup and putting it together. That system can be purchased with either a light bridge or reed switches. I personally have no experience with reed switches, but how hard can they be to set up? For now, though, I’m pretty happy with what I have, and it’s a good thing, because the biggest news of 2020 put a very quick “kibosh” on the idea of actually racing against another human being.