This mortal coil. A dangerous experiment.

Double-decker insanity. This one just about wore out the engineer.

Another view of the double-decker.

A large raceway with quadruple-decker action at one end.

This was the first raceway to include a railroad.

Right on time--the Just-Try-To-Derail-Me Express. Special railroad crossing tracks came in handy.

Here's a good shot of the pure maniacal quadruple-decker design. This proved to be a problem area of the raceway, as cars often lost juice and stalled.

An engineering marvel.

Racing attire has evolved in recent years to take advantage of slot car racing's excellent safety record .

Ah--perhaps not so safe. You still have to stop and look both ways at a railroad crossing. The gondola cars were stacked with coins, and usually cars would just bounce off them.

A messy result of a previous collision. Note the extra cars being shipped around the raceway on the train. Drivers could pick off a car as the train passed them.

A new track with innovations. The railroad has a more prominent role.

Having a savvy driver in the corner position is vital to maintaining the flow of the race. (Cars tend to fly off at the sharper curves.)

The heart of racing technology: the computerized lap clock and counter. Magnets installed under the track usually detected the passage of a vehicle. For some reason, the police car evaded the computer's sensors.

The grim determination that is a prerequisite for victory on the tarmac.