REVIEW: Carrera Pit Stop

Carrera Pit Stop Building

Creating a realistic looking slot car environment to race in is a very important part of our hobby for a large portion of enthusiasts. Creating a few hills from foam or plaster cloth and adding a some trees and grass is one thing but building suitable race style buildings for your layout is another. Fortunately Carrera have come to the rescue with a complete range of 'modern' style racing buildings ready to install.

One of the most useful buildings for your layout should you choose to have a pit lane will be pit stop buildings. The Carrera building system is a modular system meaning you can purchase as many as you layout can accommodate and set them up in a configuration that suits your layout.

Carrera: "Buildings can be used as modular system offering numerous possibilities for combination and construction, expandable as much as you like."

The kit comes flat packed with 11 pieces and once assembled measures 22cm across the front and 20.5cm deep, the building is approximately 11cm high. Putting the kit together is straight forward although because the roller doors are designed to move, assembling them is a little fiddly. The building has 2 roller doors at the front and 2 more at the back. You can decide how open or closed each roller door should be which is a great feature especially if you have several of these building setup side by side. Although a little stiff, (as you would expect from plastic) you can open or close a door without pulling the kit apart.

Building assembly time: Less than 10 minutes.

The kit comes with 4 different sets of sponsorship stickers for the front and rear of the building. I picked the Michelin sponsorship for this building and used the remaining stickers on fencing on my layout, quite useful. Also in the kit are side door stickers which look quite realistic when applied.

The pit stop building can house 2 large slot cars easily, the base of the building has 2 slots to accommodate slot car guides which is very handy. You can face the cars out of the building as I have or into the building as the slot runs the length of the building's base. In the above photo I have the slot cars moved as far forward as possible in the base slots. The black base height is the same thickness as Carrera track for obvious reasons, this will suit most track systems.

I talked about the Carrera building system being modular, this means you can add more building onto of your pitstop building if you wish. For example you could add a corporate VIP building on top, (item no. 21105). These building come with a clear plastic front and look impressive. I don't have one of these (at the moment) to show you so see the Carrera website for details, link below.

Although my pit lane has no track at the moment the above photo gives you an idea of how a single building can add to your layout. You can also see that you could use the top of the building to house spectators or something more creative like a helicopter pad, etc.

At only $Au26 for the pitlane building, I think this model is great value for money. I'll be adding several more of these buildings to my layout in the future for sure.

You can read more about these fantastic buildings on Carrera Website Here

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