Concept in mind, not sure how to start

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N

Nicole

New Member
Hello!

I'm new. My husband and I are planning an HO-scale mountain layout.

Chip's beginner manual said we need staging so its
business people -> train up mountain -> relax at the tourist trap!
Sell it at the market <- train down mountain <- fresh farm goods

So the problem is, we're not even sure how to get started exactly. We want to build two spirals to take our train up and back down the mountain. I can't seem to find any on-line tutorials as to how to build one. I'm also not sure how steep we can make it without fear of derailing.

Any hints on spiral building?

Thanks,
Nicole
 
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Helix's can be accomplished many ways. There's a few posts here, if you search Helix. Also, there's a commercial product available, if you're less ready to tackle constructing it on your own.

As for grade, there' a debate there. 2%-3% is a good maximum, lower the grade = longer trains, however, it also means less space between levels, or a larger helix needed to gain the space between. If you're daring (and from reading your post, I'd avoid it), you can go up to 4%, but its much tougher on the trains, and requires more power, and/or shorter trains.
 
At the risk of sounding like an idiot... what does 2% mean? 2% of what? I initially read it as 2 degrees... but then you'd need 28 feet for a 1 ft rise so that can't be right?

Does 2% mean it's 2% of 360? So it's a 7.2 degree angle with the ground?

Thanks,
Nicole
 


Yep that is. And that is only to rise 1 foot so if you wanted 2 feet between the two levels that would be 96 feet of track. If you think that bothers you, wait till you get into curve radius and such (unless you have already been through and/or tackled that concept).
 
I haven't been through the curve radius...

I've spent the evening googling helices... and I downloaded some software but it is in inches, and my tracks are metric, further complicating everything.

Hmm. Our plan was a whole mountain, but we're going to need like a million kilometers of track to raise it up enough!

But in any case, I busted out my measuring tape and it's about 29 inches diameter on the inside of the track... when talking about the radius, do they mean the inside or the outside of the track?
 
from your first post what you describe is also called loads in empties out. you could build bench work so the mountain is on one side of layout the valley is on the other. and use the vertical element of the scenery to achieve the same effect. of having a mountain top tourist trap and a valley farmers market.
 


Cool, thanks for the link. They're quite pricey, but hey, my friends warned me that I was getting us into a very expensive hobby... and hey, who needs a house, retirement plan, or kids' college fund anyways?

I did see one on e-bay but it is for n-guage, for two tracks... if I only wanted one track, do you think that would matter that it was for n-guage? I mean, do you think 1 HO track would fit where 2 N tracks would go, or would the curve of the track be wrong?
 
Nicole said:
do you think 1 HO track would fit where 2 N tracks would go, or would the curve of the track be wrong?
Click to expand...

Simple answer, no... most likely. The N-scale kit is problable to tight a radius for any HO equiptment to get around. Does the EBayer tell the radius? If it's 12-15inches, fagutaboutit!
 
With all due respect, a Helix is not what you are really trying to do. They are made to take a train from a lower level to an upper level. One could put a mountain around one, but they are straight up cylinders and mountains, or at least the ones I see out off my Deck here in Colorado are more like an upside down cone. The only practical mountain railroads I can think of that might meet your needs are some of the narrow gauge layouts I've seen from time to time.

Model railroads typically go through mountains in tunnels and may have ramps that elevate a train 3 or 6 inches up or down, but you've already been exposed to the issues of grade calculations.

Take a look at how the Durango to Silverton railroad prototype is laid out. It is basically a long ramp with a lot of curves that slowly climb into the mountains.

Also take a look at the Tehachapi loop which is probably one of the best examples of a real live helix.
 
The inspiration is more the Chur/St Moritz branch of the Glacier Express... it DEFINITELY has weird spirals in the tunnels.

But you're right, we're not going to get as much elevation as we had hoped.
 
There's on idea you might consider, how about a series of switchbacks to work up the moutain? I don't know how common they were in real-life railroad operations, but they did exist and were used to access mines in some steep mountain areas.
 
Wouldn't that take up even more space than the spiral, because you'd have to work in all the hairpin turns and stuff?
 
Not sure how to explain, but I'm not thinking of a winding switchback. A series of switched sidings - short straight sections with "Y"s on each end. The train runs forward up one section, backward up the next.

Here's a photo I found online:
Switchback.jpg
 


Oh, I see... so it over shoots a little bit, and then can back up the next one, over shoots a little bit, goes forward up the next one.

That might look weird, because it's an old-fashioned steam engine from the turn of the century. (Perfect for my tourist concept!)

So the curved track that came with the set actually has about a 15 inch radius, approximately (it's in cm). My husband ordered 36 more of that track.

http://www.modelrailroadtips.com/ says that the smaller the radius, the smaller the train. Our train is very small, just an engine, a passenger car, and 2 wagons for hauling stuff. Do you think that will be ok? We have no plans for making that guy a super long train. The whole POINT of this guy is that he's a small mountain train.

Or we could add straight sectional pieces between the curves, making a bigger loop, sort of.
 
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