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Abandoned track


Mark_C

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Happened to be passing today, so stopped and grabbed a few pictures. I'd guess its been out of use for 10 years, maybe more ?

 

Local news story when it opened http://www.dailyecho.co.uk/news/5629545.Model_car_club_back_on_tracks/

Strange they were able to raise such a large amount of money but the track fell out of use so quickly. I can remember there being a viewing platform to the left and a 20ft container (which presumably held the equipment) on the far side.

 

Last year this piece of land and the surrounding fields were subject to a planning permission application to build 48 houses. The application was withdrawn, probably because they are going to amend it to work around issues/objections.

 

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No idea at all why it failed, there was a track a few miles away on the shore, as mentioned by the article - that says they got chucked out because of noise complaints but as far as I remember they got chucked out because it was all built on, maybe a bit of both.

 

The old track had been there for as long as I can remember, so there was enough support, the article says they had 58 members which is a fair number. I wonder if anyone here remembers either this or the old track ?

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Just been looking for the club that used to run at the track, long gone of course - the URL was www.srcmcc.co.uk, the wayback machine has a few captures and I found this picture of the track in its heyday, this is taken from the far side of the track to my pictures, you can make out the scaffolding for the viewing platform on the right:

track_n_s.jpg

 

There are result pages in the wayback archive, wonder where all those people are now.

 

From what I can see the website wasn't updated all that often - a capture in early 2003 advertises the next summer race as being 2nd May that year, the same page exists in a capture for December 2003 and in fact a capture from March 2004 shows the same page. A June 2004 update notes that they cannot run a night race due to a complaint from a local.

 

There is also a link to http://www.slccup.co.uk in 2004 which was the Southern League Challenge Cup according to the archive, they ran the following schedule in 2005. 

Round 1 Aldershot April 10th

Round 2 Southampton May 22nd

Round 3 Tolworth June 19th

Round 4 Barham July 10th

Round 5 Bashley August 21st

Round 6 Bisley September 18th

That site is now dead too, I wonder if any of the other tracks are still there ?

 

The wayback machine has several captures between 2005 and 2008, but none are viewable for some reason. The earliest capture in 2009 has a note on it that the track was closed due to falling numbers and rising rent, one or two more captures in 2009 (with no changes), then the next capture is 2012 which is just a domain holding page. So somewhere between 2005 and 2008 it all fell apart it would seem.

 

By 2008 the league cup where going to Eastbourne, Yateley, Yeovil, Kemble, Bashley and Hillingdon (West London).  This is the last year there are any captures for that site too.

 

The Bashley track is still active - see http://www.wannarace.co.uk/

 

 

 

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Hey guys, I remember going to that track a very long time ago to watch my friends and couple of guys who ran Kits and Bits race there.

 

Maybe 2-3 years ago a few of us used to take our drift cars there, platform was still standing.

 

Whereabouts in Southampton are you guys? Only recently been back out with cars.

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  • 3 years later...
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