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[quote user="MisterBeasley"] Outstanding work.  I think the whole helix structure shows excellent craftsmanship. While you still can, though, think about hiding those Atlas switch machines.  It's a bit tricky, but you can glue them to the underside of the turnouts themselves and mount them in the roadbed.  I really wish I'd done that before I ballasted a lot of my track.  They just don't look right anymore.  Also, you can get small SPDT momentary contact toggle switches, electrically equivalent to the Atlas buttons, for about 75 cents a piece.  The Atlas buttons have a poor reliability record.  Worst case, they sometimes stick on the down position, and if you don't notice it pretty quickly you'll have a fried switch machine.   [/quote] Thanks for the comments.  Doing the climbing loops (helix) was a lot of fun and kinda like weaving a basket to fit a mental design.  I sure will need a lot of tunnel portals. I decided that the atlas switches (due to cost) were acceptable to me; even though others would look better.  They are mounted on plywood without cork.  I am not going to cut the plywood to try and hide the switch machines. I do plan on using control panels with momentary toggle switches and LED status lights.  This will happen sometime in the future.  That is why the control panels are just printouts instead of nicely laminated and colored stock.  I now have two fried switch machines from leaning on them while working on the layout (I now turn off power to them when working on scenery).
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