GraviTrax

Spent part of the weekend getting to grips with a nearly new to me construction toy called GraviTrax, to which an armchair introduction is available at reference 1.

Elements of both Lego and Meccano, but specialised for the building of more or less complicated runways for ball bearings. Various gadgets to make things more interesting, like a magnet gadget to provide acceleration, perhaps up a runway rather than down a runway. Intelligent readers may be able to spot such a gadget bottom left, in the dormant position with one ball bearing on each side of the magnet, rather than in the active position with two ball bearing on the same side of the magnet.

A well made toy, probably expensive, but provided you have made a big enough investment, splendidly open-ended.

With a sign of the times being that you can buy an app version to run on you telephone or computer. Using this app you can build all kinds of virtual set-ups and then run them - with all kinds of interesting camera angles available for viewing the runs - including a camera mounted on the rolling ball. Maybe a split screen version for when there is more than one active ball? Being an older person, I think I prefer the touch and feel of doing it for real, clever though the app version might be.

Back home, I wonder whether Ravensburger people who make this toy are the same as the people who make the (equally good quality) jigsaws. And indeed they are, as can be checked out at reference 2.

A German company, around 150 years old, based in Ravensburg in southern Germany, on an obscure tributary of the Rhine called the Schussen. Also an odd tributary as most of the rivers in its area flow north into the Danube rather than south into the Bodensee, and from there into the Rhine. Watershed country.

PS: my first encounter with Ravensburger, in the middle of my jigsaw period, is noticed at reference 3. A jigsaw of a large picture I once saw for real in the Jeu de Paume, when it was still an art gallery rather than a media artists' resource centre, and a small reproduction of which still hangs behind me as I type. That is to say, about the same size as the jigsaw. Nicely framed by Heffers of Cambridge, so I must have had it for many years.

Reference 1: https://www.ravensburger.org/uk/discover/gravitrax/index.html.

Reference 2: https://www.ravensburger-gruppe.de/de/start/index.html.

Reference 3: https://pumpkinstrokemarrow.blogspot.com/search?q=ravensburger+hampshire.

Reference 4: http://www.jeudepaume.org/.