Helix: A potentially stupid idea


Lionel fan

Lionel fan

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Hey has anyone ever thought about building a bi-level layout. But by bi-level, I mean have the layout take two floors of your house. There would need to be an insanely huge helix to bring trains between levels. On the lower level, you can hide the helix in a huge mountain that goes to the ceiling, and have the track run up to the level of the layout upstairs.

I've thought about doing this with O scale, I think it would be neat.

Anyone do this yet?
 
I suppose anything's possible, as long as you have all the materials. But wouldn't you have to cut up the ceiling at weird angles for the helix to go thru to the next floor? Probably a tad more complex than cutting a hole thru a wall...
 
John Armstrong discussed doing something similar in the out-of-print book John Armstrong on Creative Layout Design (with switchbacks, not a helix).

Opening a hole in your house between two floors creates some practical issues of heating and cooling, as well as creating a "chimney" that might be a problem with your insurer in the event of a house fire.
 
cuyama said:
Opening a hole in your house between two floors creates some practical issues of heating and cooling, as well as creating a "chimney" that might be a problem with your insurer in the event of a house fire.
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Not to mention the multiple floor joists that would need to be cut and resupported somehow to make a sufficently-sized opening (particularly in O scale!).
 
I've actually thought about it quite a lot. Though rather than using a house, I've considered doing this in a large round building like a grain silo. The helix would be along the inside of the outer wall, wrapping around the entire building. If the silo was 30' in diameter you could maintain less than 1.5% grade and have more than 15" between decks - effectively making the helix a usable scenic'ed area. It could be two feet deep with rolling hills, buildings, trees ... all the typical stuff. Just that it'd be averaging a 1.5% grade continuously in the same direction.

So then you've got a helix wrapping around the building, potentially several floors worth. The center of the building could be platforms where the helix track splits to a little town that either the main line runs through or is a branch line.

Using this same notion, you could have the "helix" be a "nolix" (I dislike that term) that wraps around some larger room or perhaps several rooms. That way the act of climbing to the second floor is actually viewable as a big mountain climb. Looks like you'd need 600' to climb 9' at 1.5% grade, and I don't think I'd push a climb that long at much more grade than that. If anything comes loose it's going to take off like a rocket.

The other nice thing about long runs along a wall is you can clear floor joists if you need to. I'm not so sure the holes in the floor are such a big deal since you have to use stairs to get between floors anyway.

I've also seen plenty of train elevators as well. Here's an example:

http://www.dccbydesign.com/top-blog...ro-ro-train-elevator-explantion-a-review.html

I think it'd be fun to build a two floor train layout. But you're talking about a spectacular amount of track. The layout at the club I'm a member of has track that changes elevation by more than 6', but I'm not positive of the actual difference. It wiggles around a 60x70 room several times in order to make that happen, though.

I too think it would be most fun to do in O scale. Because it's traveling so far in potentially difficult to reach locations the larger scale would provide greater reliability. It would also provide more powerful and reliable locomotives for longer climbs.

Let me know if you want to get started - I'll bring my tools ;)
 
No disrespect intended, but I think that this is the Mt. Rushmore of stupid ideas!:D;). I would do nothing that effects the resale value of the house. You may intend to live there the rest of your life, but who knows what could happen these days? While you don't have to cut out for the entire diameter of the helix (just a small hole where the trackage actually passes through the floor would do) you would still have to repair everything some day. Nobody likes to admit it, but there is always a time when the layout has to come down.

This one reminds of of one of the typical scenarios that the uninitiated find impressive: Trains running around ceiling of a room. Sounds cool but how do you enjoy them when they are all so far above eye level?

Of course if you are independently wealthy, own the house and don't care, then have at it! :) Of course, if you are independently wealthy, why not just put the layout in it's own building?
 
Alan, this discussion reminds me of Jim Gibson and Jim Thorrington. If you remember, they were going to connect their layouts with a tunnel connecting the two layouts about 75' apart. They never did it though, IIRC worried about derailments in the tunnel.
 
Cjcrescent said:
Alan, this discussion reminds me of Jim Gibson and Jim Thorrington. If you remember, they were going to connect their layouts with a tunnel connecting the two layouts about 75' apart. They never did it though, IIRC worried about derailments in the tunnel.
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I suppose it depends on the directness of the tunnel, the scale of the models, and the underside support of the tunnel. If it's suspended in the air it would be prone to bending and flexing. If it was along the ground it would stand a much better chance of high reliability.
 
Jim told me it turned out to be too much of a climb. The grade was going to be too steep to make it work. I still remember the track stub on his layout!
 
What you need is a building like the Guggenheim Museum in NYC. Hard to define floord. The whole gallery is one big helix!.

Doug Maddox
 
When I worked in West Virginia in 1988 there was a guy that had a 3 level house on the side of a mountain in Belle that had 3 very tall helix's from ea. floor. he built the 1st part of his house in 1957 & it was 2 bedrooms. The back bedroom was all HO trains. Then in 1967 he added a lower house that was 3 bedrooms & he used 2 of the small bedrooms for his trains & then in 1977 he added another house to a lower level that was also 3 bedrooms.
I use to go up there every weekend & his driveway was always full of cars of guys running his trains. Everything was DC(because back then there was no DCC). It would take a long train almost 25 minutes to get from point to point. He had almost all Steam trains in Brass & very few diesels. It was a very private owned layout & the only way you could see it was to get invited by someone that had been going there for many years. His wife did all of his backdrops & painted & weathered all of his buildings. She also supplied all of the refreshments(including beer) for all of the husbands & wives that visited.
he would have to be in his mid 80's by now. He worked for one of the biggest coal companies in WV & thats how I met him. I serviced all of their First Aid Kits & it usually took me half of a day to take care of all of their FA & Safety equip.:D
 
Not in a house, but the Waterloo Region Model Railway Club (www.wrmrc.ca) which I'm a member of is building a layout over 6 levels and 2 floors (with an intermediate floor level).

Here's a full track map of the layout. Scroll down a bit past the overall system map and you can see the individual diagrams for all 6 levels.
http://www.wrmrc.ca/divmap.html

The club is built inside a [previously empty] quonset hut, and all of the structure is built inside. You wouldn't really be able to do the same thing inside a house, you'd never be able to have the intermediate levels or to carry a helix up through the floor and avoid load-supporting floor beams. Our structure is designed around the layout.

The many levels means we have helices going up to the second floor in places, but the ceiling helices aren't any longer than the first floor helices. There's no 50-turn helix at any point.

Here's one of the helices going upstairs (it's actually 2 helices stacked on top of each other joining different levels):
http://www.wrmrc.ca/layout12.html

There was also an article about working on the club layout published in the August issue of Model Railroad Hobbyist:
http://model-railroad-hobbyist.com/magazine/mrh-2012-08-aug
 
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montanan said:
I was just thinking (didn't hurt myself), it would take hours to get to the next level !
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We have two "spirals" at the club which raise and lower the trains several feet. It does take time but probably not as long as you'd think.


I like the notion of making model trains do things out of the ordinary. For me it's less about replicating reality and more about engineering those little buggers into unique and bizarre arrangements ;)
 
LoudMusic said:
We have two "spirals" at the club which raise and lower the trains several feet. It does take time but probably not as long as you'd think.


I like the notion of making model trains do things out of the ordinary. For me it's less about replicating reality and more about engineering those little buggers into unique and bizarre arrangements ;)
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Me too. I'm glad I'm not the only one who has thought of this. I have also thought that it would be cool to have a whole house, or warehouse, to build a gigantic layout. I was actually at a Home Furniture Warehouse and all I could think was "I could build a HUGE layout in here!"
 
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