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First bit of advice would be to get real familiar with the relationship between radius, grade and track seperation. The "oval" approach provides a good solution, but takes a larger (longer) "footprint". These really govern your construction if you have a limited amount of space to put the helix in. Good construction description by prhnkp that I agee with. LAY TRACK ON ONE LEVEL, SPLICE NEXT LEVEL, LAY MORE TRACK ETC. When I built my helix, each section of subroadbed was a quarter circle (90 degrees) of 1/2" plywood. I "spliced" them together with 4" electrical box plates below the plywood, rotated 45 deg so that two corners stuck out from subroadbed (Is only one track wide). This also was very thin, to maintain clearance between levels. Holes had been drilled in the plates for the threaded rod - another good helix construction technique I reccomend for ease of adjustment. To get a low grade (under 2%) in a relatively small area (24" radius curve) I needed to have only 3.75" from railhead to railhead so I nailed my flextrack directly to the subroadbed and use plywood and homosote outside of the helix. I have scale drawings of the supporting framework I can send in .dxf format if you have a CAD program to read them with. You can contact me at rwichmann@voyager.net if you want them. Regards, Bryan
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