11-14-2014, 09:30 AM
Thee are interesting ideas. Adding a spur at the summit is one possibility, or a crossover, which would at least let the helpers get out of the way onto the other main. I designed my current layout with possible helper operation in mind, although I never followed through, at least on DC. I decided the way to do it on DC block control was to have a short block at the summit where I could uncouple the helpers (manually, with the train stopped) and either cut off the power for the helper block once I'd done this, or transfer the block to the other cab and let another operator run them back down. If you did successfully speed-match some helpers on your layout, you could also do this by just adding a short block at the summit, so you could run them up and down again without staging. It occurs to me that it would be an easy solution, requiring some rail gaps and a block selector switch, and you'd be in business. A crossover would be more work, but wouldn't use extra space.