Inspired by YouTube ~ Monday, February 13, 2012

After watching videos like this we decided to try building a simple helix with Tomix track--and Duplo.



Nathan would probably love it I recreated this for him, but that's a lot of track!

There's plenty more like that on YouTube--search for Pla-Rail (or プラレール--which spells out "Purarēru"), the brand name of this track, incidentally another product of the Tomy/Tomytec/Tomix toy and model conglomerate.

In the picture Nathan is controlling the train's direction via a DPDT knife switch from Radio Shack, which works well for letting little guys run trains--it's big enough for them to easy control, and it takes long enough to throw the switch that you don't have to worry about rapid instant changes in direction damaging motors.