In just two weeks we went from 31 Celsius temperatures to snow. It is time to get back into the swing of things and get my layout going around the room.

now that my garage is built and I got all of me tools and garage junk out into the garage, I have room to continue building. First project is a work area. 6 and a half feet of desk to store stuff on. The layout will go over the desk to allow a continuos loop of track.

now to work on that portion of the track. More to come soon.

You can see an updated track plan of my layout here.

This is a forum post showing how I went about reducing the size of my HO scale model railroad layout. The process took a little over a year, required a lot of thought and planning, and now I feel that I am at the right size that matches my lifestyle. At the same time, I decided to adjust my model railroad prototype while keeping the central theme. I’ll explain everything that went into this and show what the layout looks now. I hope this post shows that you don’t need a large layout for your dream layout and that small layouts can be fun to build and operate as well.

Is there some kind of a standard for choosing it?

I tried looking for more details on the web but nothing meaningful comes up. Sure, there are plenty of photos of helices, but that does not tell me their background story.

Which direction should be chosen and how is that direction decided upon (is it based on the direction trains come from or go to; whether trains change direction, or not inside the helix; some other parameter, etc)?