Minic Motorways
Tri-ang Minic Motorways
The Tri-ang Minic Motorway system was introduced with electrically powered vehicles and expanded into a complementary system for the model railways. There were a number of associated buildings and interchange road & rail pieces, level crossings etc made to combine the two systems. Later more emphasis was placed on the racing cars etc. Production of Minic Motorways ceased in 1970.
Minic Motorways was a system of HO-scale road vehicles that followed a slot in a plastic roadway. The system aimed as far as possible for realism, and therefore the slot was as narrow as possible (about 1/8'') with brass conductors placed vertically at each side. The vehicles picked up power via a small wheel (called a Gimbal Wheel) on their underside, which was divided into two halves by an insulating flange. At some time in the 1960s this mechanism was replaced by a pair of vertically spring sliding pickups. This design differed from that of electric racing car systems such as the same company's Scalextric, in which the electrical conductors were spaced more widely apart on each side of the guide slot, and were hence more stable.
Vehicles were controlled by a hand-held controller, which had a thumb-operated speed control plus a rotating reversing switch.
Minic Railways
Between the years 1963 and 1965, Tri-ang introduced a miniature 10.25'' gauge 'garden' railway entitled the 'Tri-ang Minic Narrowgauge Railway (TMNR)' produced by the Minic factory in Canterbury, Kent, England.