Speedway fan models ace Belle Vue stadiums

A lifelong and avid Belle Vue Aces fan has completed his second model of one of the team’s stadiums. And he invited the Tameside Reporter to his home to check it out.

Dennis Scott of Ashton-under-Lyne has been a Belle Vue Aces fan for pretty much his whole life, with his father first taking him to watch speedway in 1963, when Mr Scott was just 15. He’s now 78, but still retains his love for the Aces to such a degree that he has completed his second model of one of their stadiums. Mr Scott told the Tameside Reporter that speedway is his number 1 love in life.

This isn’t Mr Scott’s first appearance in the Tameside Reporter. Almost 10 years ago, in September 2016, Mr Scott had a double-page spread after completing his detailed model of the old Hyde Road Stadium. That stadium model even includes a mechanical starting gate which still works to this day, as Dennis demonstrated.

Now, Scott has finished work on the old Greyhound Stadium, where the Aces raced from 1988 until 2015, when the stadium was demolished to make way for the new National Speedway Stadium. The new model took around three years to build, with Mr Scott taking his time to get everything as accurate as he could.

In order to create both models accurately, Mr Scott watched old VHS videos of meetings, as well as referring to his own photos taken over many years of visiting both stadiums.

The original model of the Hyde Road stadium took Mr Scott 600-700 hours to complete, as he treated it like a fulltime job, working in the morning and afternoon, and only taking an hour off for lunch. He told the Reporter that the model often kept him awake at night, as he pondered how to create specific parts such as the lampposts and fences.

The new model depicting the Greyhound Stadium was more a labour of love, as Mr Scott built it after retiring from a career spent repairing shoes and working on surgical equipment for hospitals. He therefore took things a little more leisurely.

Most components of the stadium models are indeed home-made, with an old blanket forming the grass in the middle of the track, for example. The only elements that Dennis purchased are the trees, which he bought from a model railway shop.

Both models are currently housed in Mr Scott’s front bedroom, taking pride of place. And there is just enough space for a third model, which is, unsurprisingly, going to be of the new National Speedway Stadium. Dennis already has the board prepared to house the model. All that’s left is constructing the actual model itself from whatever components Mr Scott can lay his hands on. 

Coming from the mend and make-do generations means that Dennis will endeavour to use everything from umbrella spokes and straightened safety pins to put the model together.

Mr Scott still attends Belle Vue Aces’ meetings, but while he used to have to catch three buses to get to the stadium, he now rides his electric bike to and from each meeting.

The stadium models aren’t the only proof of Dennis’s love of speedway; he also owns two vintage speedway bikes. One from the 1950s, and one ridden by Jeremy Doncaster, an international rider who won the World Cup with England in the 1980s.