Since I was a kid camping and hiking in the Eastern Sierra Nevada Mountains of California I would always survey the terrain as we drove and hiked.  Each curve and grade an enticing challenge for steel wheels on steel rails.  I'd imagined a route a railroad might have used to open up the vast interior of the high Sierra.  Without a map, it's hard to imagine just how much open space there really is up there:  Alpine meadows that are miles long and miles wide, saddles, valleys, canyons and of course snow-capped peaks.

As progress continues on Wilmington Yard I have a couple opportunities to reconfigure some of the tracks in the area.  

Does anyone know offhand how large a radius a helix would have to be to climb 3" in the first turn while maintaining no more than a 1% grade?

Thanks in advance, y'all!

Doug Alexander

Atlanta

I was hoping to get some input on a small switching layout that I am currently designing for myself. I have previously planned and started building a 4X8 that I had to dismantle due to my wife and I expecting our second child; the train-room must be returned to a bedroom and the railroad equipment is in boxes. Although I no longer have a space to setup some sort of permanent layout, I wanted to start planning “the next one”. I started reading more and more about modular railroading and I was intrigued.