Dad bought a "Wrenn 152" system (1/52 scale rather than Scalex 1/32).

Motors were effectively ratchet and pawl controlled by contacts and just an on/off controller. Unlike the traditional motors, firstly, these ran on either 12v DC (like most others) or 12v AC! AC was faster and also, because they were ratchet and pawl, they freewheeled, but the motors soon got a bit warm. Driving them required split second judgement as to when to release the power and then put it back on.

Dad would go into town on a Saturday morning and see if the normal 25/- cars had been reduced to 5/- as ex demo models! We ended up with 62 cars. I had seven, my brothers one each and dad had the rest.

Eventually, Wrenn produced DC only motors. Shame.

We played with them just about every night. Happy times. I brought all the cars and a fair bit of track and a pile of spares back to NZ when Dad died.