Category Archives: Track Plan Design

Double Pinwheel Helix

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Double Pinwheel Helix 6

Lots of track plans need a helix, especially if you’re trying to build a double-deck layout to capture your favorite mountain railroad. Ever wonder why I draw most of my helices on Appalachian Railroad Modeling track plans as octagons? Here’s why…

I’ve never heard any model railroader talk about how much fun it was to build a helix, but I know plenty who dread this step in their construction. Building a helix is daunting because it’s a whole lot of track and subroadbed crammed into a vertical circle, and it’s usually hidden, so its construction needs to be bulletproof. My layout requires not one helix but two, so I wanted to find a way to make them in the most … Read more →

Two Key Questions for Track Plan Compression – Derby, VA Case Study

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Derby, VA track plan ideas

One of the toughest parts of prototype modeling is knowing where and what to compress to keep as true to the prototype as possible for a given space. In an ideal world, we wouldn’t have to compress any scenes, but that’s a fairy tale for all but the most compact of prototypes. We’re stuck with the challenge of trying to find the right balance of scenery elements and operations to model our prototype within our space constraints.

The coal mining town of Derby, VA on the Interstate Railroad offers a good case study of how to compress a prototype operation to fit into a range of spaces with different trade-offs, and it’s covered in good detail in Ed and … Read more →