Why not line the inside curve of the helix with a scenery backdrop? You imagine a train leaving a city and ariving in the country as it went up and down a hill.
I know 3"->4" between levels isn’t much, but done properly you could line it with short trees, bushes, a fence, or maybe some street lights. The side benefit is because the inside is lined, it acts as a natural barrier from trains falling into the inside of the helix.
You could get really creative. Imagine doing elevated trains on a hill on one level and circling around on a slightly larger lower loop the next. Now you have 8" between solid levels.
Maybe you could do a bridge viaduct and run one train beneath the other
If you have the room, all your ideas are quite feasible. The main reason for a helix is to lift a train up what would be a steep grade while taking up as little real estate as possible. If you have the room, you can build any amount of line circling up a big enough hill and still have a moderate grade to get to a higher level. The narrow gauge lines in the Rockies did this all the time. Unless I’m misunderstanding a helix, you would end up trying to disguise what’s essentially a big chimney. Either you have enough space to run track enough times around a big hill to maintain grade until you get to the next level or you don’t, in which case a helix is an answer.
There is a really interesting PROTOTYPE helix, on the Alishan Forestry Railway in Taiwan.
The train approaches the base of a spur in the mountain through a canyon, makes a sharp right turn and enters a long tunnel with a sharp right turn just before it reaches daylight. It then proceeds around the outside of the mountain (with a few short bridges and tunnels for emphasis,) crossing above the first tunnel before once again penetrating the ridge.
On around for a second full 360 (which, with twists and turns, is more like 720) The third time, the track tunnels halfway back to the nose of the ridge, then figure-eights over that tunnel and makes a station stop before continuing onward. From the first portal to the station is only a few hundred meters as the buzzard flies, and about 25 times as far by rail.
Did I mention that the whole business is climbing a continuous 4% grade? Or that the track is 30 inch gauge?
I am with Loathar. Mine will be buried in a mountain with a canyon in the middle with the gold mines. The helix will pop in and out of tunnels and across a nice variety of bridges offering many mini scenes for viewing. Until I am done, I do not know how the scene as a whole will look, but the plan will keep the individual scenes separated by illusions of one sort or another.
I designed one in a mountain that popped out at various levels as it wound up to Hogwart’s Castle. The plan died when the kids quit coming to the basement.
There are two non-helix possibilities which have been touched on in this thread, but without the terminology…
1st, there’s the “nolix” which is not using a helix at all. This assumes you have a large enough layout for the mainline(s) to make that 1%-2% grade, perhaps with dogbones at the layout ends, to double back on itself without a vertical helix.
2nd, there’s the time-honored “spiral” that goes back to the days before the vertical helix became a popular option. This also assumes you have a larger layout area for the spirals to spread out & gain some elevation, but not requiring anything near the layout real-estate of a nolix.
An example of today’s underused “spiral” technique…
…is in Carsten’s 1989 “Track Design” special issue taken from their “Layout Doctor” compilations of 25-40 years ago in Railroad Model Craftsman like “Spiral Reverse Loops” on pages 53-54 where the spiral is actually inside the reverse loop. The two other classic spirals discussed in this article are outside spirals and inside spirals.
I’m already working on exactly what you’ve thought up:
My helix will be embedded into an outside corner of my layout room. The “inside” of the helix will be unsceniced, as it will be sharing some space with my hidden staging yards. The “outside” of the helix will be fully sceniced, and the center lap of the five lap helix will feature a small townsite with a depot (train order station) and spur for an elevator. Both the start and end of the helix will also feature parts of towns.
Is this boring…kedie wye on one side, the right side will be the hiway 70 bridge over Oroville Lake, Train truss bridge (38 in long )with hiway on top, will be in place of the chord bridge and wind up and back on top of helix…I think not letting a helix look like a volcano is only one of the problems…John
IIRC think it’s the prototype Cumbers & Toltec RR ( or other tourist RR ), that uses a helix to climb the wall of a gorge before crossing a trestle to the other side. The track goes into a tunnel and out onto the wall and back in to a tunnel ( and so on ) several times. From what I understand, the track does not actualy lay right above the lower track, but is off set a bit as it goes up the side of the gorge, giving it a bit of a stair steped apparence…
I’ll be having a substantial helix on the layout I’m building now, and I planned on blistering one or two levels out a bit and then scenicing them. It’ll make the long out of sight run seem shorter, and it’ll combat some of the anxiety that engineers feel when they can’t see thrir tran for a long period of time.
Great Model Railroads 2007 showed an M-St.L layout with a one or one-and-a-half turn helix which the builder did just what you describe, added some scenicking and a backdrop.
His article pointed out the big problem with helixes - helixes are fascinating!! He noted that whenever a train is in the helix, everyone stops what they’re doing to watch it. I can confirm that from the old Hub Hobby in Richfield MN (when it was actually in the Hub Shopping Center); they had a layout built in the store that had three levels and a helix. Whenever trains were running, there would be several people watching the trains go up and down the helix, and maybe one person looking at the scenicked part of the layout.
I have to admit, I am one of those folks… I find the helixes beautiful. Someday when I have enough room, I plan to build a helix that will somehow have at least 1/2 visible by staging so you could watch it… (gotta give the guy in staging something interesting to watch once in awhile!)
